The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage
Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:25th Nov '21
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The Diva's Gift traces the far-reaching impact of the first female stars on the playwrights and players of the all-male stage. When Shakespeare entered the scene, women had been acting in Italian troupes for two decades, traveling in Italy and beyond and performing in all genres, including tragedy. The ambitious actress reinvented the innamorata, making her more charismatic and autonomous, thrilling audiences with her skills. Despite fervent attacks, some actresses became the first international stars, winning royal and noble patrons and literary admirers in France and Spain. After Elizabeth and her court caught wind of their success in Paris, Italian troupes with actresses crossed the Channel to perform. The Italians' repeat visits and growing fame posed a radical challenge to English professionals just as they were building their first paying theaters. Some writers treated the actress as a whorish threat to their stage, which had long minimized female roles. Others saw a vital new model full of promise. Lyly, Marlowe, and Kyd endowed innamorata parts with hot-blooded, racialized passions, but made them self-aware agents, not counters traded between men. Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster and others followed, ringing changes on the new type in comedy, tragedy, and romance. Like the comici they recycled actress-linked theatergrams and star scenes, such as cross-dressing, the mad scene, and the sung lament. In this way, the diva's prodigious virtuosity and stardom altered the horizons of playmaking even on the womanless stage. Capitalizing on the talents of boy players, the best playwrights created bold new roles endowed with her alien glamour, such as Lyly's Sapho and Pandora, Marlowe's Dido, Kyd's Bel-Imperia, Webster's Vittoria, and Shakespeare's Beatrice, Viola, Portia, Juliet, and Ophelia. Cleopatra is not alone in her superb theatricality and dazzling strangeness. As this book demonstrates, the diva's gifts mark them all.
convincing and thought-provoking * Opera News *
Rigorously researched...a landmark in both performance studies and transnational research in the field. * Scott A. Trudell, Shakespeare Quarterly *
Brown writes with vigor and flair...Brown's book makes the most detailed, sustained and persuasive case for the currency of the Italian actress on the Shakespearean stage, and for her invigorating impact on its drama. * Sophie Tomlinson, The University of Auckland *
[a] striking work of feminist scholarship. * Year's Work in English Studies *
Brown's work... is a virtuosic mix. Joining source study, performance history, and close reading, The Diva's Gift also folds in biography, vivid description (one of the great pleasures here is Brown's ability to conjure a scene), and methodological insight. Like the performers at the heart of this study, Brown wears her learning with grace. The result is a book that is not only deeply informative and thoroughly convincing-certain to reshape scholarly and classroom discussions of Shakespearean character-but also an outright thrill to read. * Laura Kolb, Modern Language Quarterly *
An excellent work that combines rigorous study of the Italian diva with often electric readings of the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Brown's text is a fine addition to ongoing thinking about the discourses of gender, sexuality and nationality...Historicist, stimulating and lively, this is a fantastic piece of Shakespearian scholarship. * Ezra Horbury, ShSurvey *
innovative and beautifully written book. * Erith Jaffe-Berg, EMW Vol. 19 *
...a formidable achievement ...it combines theater history and literary interpretation based on meticulous close analysis in its exploration of the ties between the Italian divas and Shakespearean heroines...[This] is an exciting, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural analysis of how Shakespeare and his peers engaged with the dramatic tradition of continental Europe [to] come up with their own divas and innamoratas in a theatrical culture that at least on a surface level was trying to banish women from the public stage...Students and scholars will find The Diva's Gift to be essential reading, as it lays out a blueprint for examining one of the most decisive of Shakespeare's borrowings from a fresh and convincing perspective. * David Amelang, The Bulletin of the Comediantes *
ISBN: 9780198867838
Dimensions: 240mm x 162mm x 26mm
Weight: 634g
308 pages