Spectacular performances;essays on theatre, imagery, books, and selves in e
MANCHESTER UNIV Press
2017
EISBN 9781526130532
Spectacular Performances; Half Title Page; Title Page; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Illustrations; Previously published essays; Introduction; Part I: The construction of the self; 1. I am Richard II; 2. Seeing through costume; 3. Jonson and the Amazons; Part II: Drama; 4. Othello and the end of comedy; 5. King Lear and the art of forgetting; 6. The case for Comus; 7. Completing Hamlet; Part III: Books; 8. Open secrets; 9. Textual icons: reading early modern illustrations; 10. Not his picture but his book; 11. Plagiarism revisited; Part IV: The visual arts; 12. Devils incarnate.
Why did Queen Elizabeth I compare herself with her disastrous ancestor Richard II? Why would Ben Jonson transform Queen Anne and her ladies into Amazons as entertainment for the pacifist King James? How do the concept of costume as high fashion and as self-fashioning, as disguise and as the very essence of theatre, relate to one other? How do portraits of poets help make the author readers want, and why should books, the embodiment of the word, be illustrated at all? What conventions connect image to text, and what impulses generated the great art collections of the early seventeenth century?I.
Why did Queen Elizabeth I compare herself with her disastrous ancestor Richard II? Why would Ben Jonson transform Queen Anne and her ladies into Amazons as entertainment for the pacifist King James? How do the concept of costume as high fashion and as self-fashioning, as disguise and as the very essence of theatre, relate to one other? How do portraits of poets help make the author readers want, and why should books, the embodiment of the word, be illustrated at all? What conventions connect image to text, and what impulses generated the great art collections of the early seventeenth century?I.
