Description
Book SynopsisRich connections between gaming and theatre stretch back to the 16th and 17th centuries. In the first book-length exploration of gaming in the early modern period, Gina Bloom shows that theatres succeeded in London's new entertainment marketplace largely because watching a play and playing a game were similar experiences.
Trade ReviewA smart, invigorating intervention into early modern theatre history and historiography. Not only specialists in Renaissance Drama, but also cultural historians, game and gaming scholars, and specialists in performance studies will find this book accessible and engaging. Bloom moves masterfully across scholarly registers, showing how theatre remembers and reconstitutes the chanciness of everyday life."" - Ellen MacKay, University of Chicago
""Bloom's central argument concerns the ways the strategies of playing different kinds of games are worked into the action of early modern drama, and how the affectual and kinesthetic structure of playing/watching these games provides an index into the plays' potential theatrical experience . . . a deeply researched, well-conceived, thoroughly engrossing book."" - W. B. Worthen, Barnard College, Columbia University
