Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England
Tom Bishop editor Gina Bloom editor Erika T Lin editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Amsterdam University Press
Published:5th Oct '21
Should be back in stock very soon
Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games—from dicing to bowling to role-playing to videogames—to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare’s era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.
“This engaging and provocative essay collection opens by attempting to answer the question “What is a game?” but, by the time they finish, readers are also left with a range of new and surprising answers to the question “What is a play?”
-Theatre Survey
“Through a set of wide-ranging critical approaches, Games and Theatre in Shakespeare’s England not only reveals the pivotal importance of “play” in Renaissance drama, but also in theatre studies in general”
-Theatre Journal
"This latest entry in the Cultures of Play, 1300–1700 series with Amsterdam University Press is essential reading for anyone studying, teaching, or interested in games then and now. … From beginning to end, the editors have gifted their readers with a thought-provoking collection that advances the study of early games with a stellar constellation of chapters. As Bishop, Bloom, and Lin state, ‘videogame culture today has come to resemble the improvisatory and participatory culture of theatregoing in early modern England’ (30), and their collection of essays is an important step toward understanding the interconnection between these two worlds and forms of play."
- Mark Kaethler, Early Theatre
''The editors of Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England have delivered a carefully curated volume that offers an evocative hermeneutical paradigm that changes supposedly settled critical assumptions as well as an impressively wide range of conversations and materials that will benefit students and teachers at all levels of education.''
- Kurt Schreyer, Renaissance Quarterly, 2023, 76(4)
ISBN: 9789463723251
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
332 pages