Has anyone else read Tiffany Stern's Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Clarendon Press, 2000)? Fascinating. And fairly radically different from the theatre practices we know.
First the author would audition the play to a small group of the sharers: give a sketch of the scenario, read a few scenes. If they approved, he'd go on to finish
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I think this may not be far from the truth. I've seen a sheet of the various "gestures" that indicated various moods and intentions, and there was a fairly standard set of sartorial conventions, too. (No need for Hamlet to open his mouth to announce himself as a melancholic: his black clothes do it for him.) All this makes sense when you think of the open air, nuts cracking like small arms fire to right and left, etc. What's a groundling at the back to make of it all without these stylized helps? Throw in short rehearsal times as well, and your patterned blocking seems almost inevitable.
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Of course, things changed very rapidly--as fast as pop music in our time--going in Shakespeare's span from innyards and dumbshows to masquing and scenery.
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It always amazes when actors- Rylance and Jacobi for instance- come out as Oxfordians. It's as if they don't understand their own craft.
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I think Jacobi may have class issues, having risen (like Shakespeare) from provincial origins to theatrical godhood.
Rylance is just bonkers.
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(Glad this got through.)
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