Description
Book SynopsisGames 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.
Trade Review"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)
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction (Tom Bishop, Gina Bloom, and Erika T. Lin)
Part I
1. The Player’s Game: The Activity of the Player in Early Modern Drama (Stephen Purcell)
2. “The Madnes of Tenys” and the Commercialization of Pastimes in Early Tudor London (David Kathman)
3. The Roll of the Dice and the Whims of Fate in Sixteenth-Century Morality Drama (Katherine Steele Brokaw)
4. “The games afoote”: Playing, Preying and Projecting in Richard Brome’s
The Court Beggar (Heather Hirschfeld)
Part II
5. Playing with Paradoxes in
Troilus and Cressida (Patricia Badir)
6. Bowling Alone, or The Whole Point of No Return (Paul Menzer)
7. Playing (in) the Streets: Games and Adaptation in
The Merchant of Venice (Marissa Greenberg)
Part III
8. The Moods of Gamification in
The Tempest (Ellen MacKay)
9. Videogames and
Hamlet: Experiencing Tragic Choice and Consequences (Rebecca Bushnell)
10. Shakespeare Videogames, Adaptation/Appropriation, and Collaborative Reception (Geoffrey Way)
11. Shakespeare, Game, and Play in Digital Pedagogical Shakespeare Games (Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Shawn DeSouza-Coelho)
Epilogue: Field of Play: Gamifying Early Modern Theatre and Performance Studies (Natasha Korda)
Index
