Description
Book SynopsisWhat work did physically disabled characters do for the early modern theatre? Through a consideration of a range of plays, including
Doctor Faustus and
Richard III, Genevieve Love argues that the figure of the physically disabled prosthetic body in early modern English theatre mediates a set of related likeness problems' that structure the theatrical, textual, and critical lives of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The figure of disability stands for the relationship between actor and character: prosthetic disabled characters with names such as Cripple and Stump capture the simultaneous presence of the fictional and the material, embodied world of the theatre. When the figure of the disabled body exits the stage, it also mediates a second problem of likeness, between plays in their performed and textual forms. While supposedly imperfect textual versions of plays have been characterized as lame', the dynamic movement of prosthetic disabled characters in th
Trade ReviewThis monograph is important both for performance studies scholars and for literary historians of disability. * Theatre Journal *
Love promotes the “figure of disability” as
the key figure for the ways that early modern theatre imagined itself, a figuration of and for figuration – this book is a stunner from the very first word to the final full stop. -- Professor Paul Menzer, Mary Baldwin University, USA
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Note on the text Introduction: Disability and/as Theatricality
1 The Work of Standing and of Standing-for: Disability, Movement, Theatrical Personation in
The Fair Maid of the Exchange 2 The Sound of Prosthetic Movement: Transnational and Temporal Analogy in
A Larum for London 3 ‘Faustus has his legge again’: Truncation and Prosthesis, Theatricality and Bibliography in
Doctor Faustus 4 Richard’s ‘giddy footing’: Degree of Difference and Cyclical Movement in Shakespeare’s
Richard III Notes Bibliography Index
