Description
Book SynopsisExplores the theater’s unprecedented focus on the contemporary city in early modern London. Examines plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to consider how this new, experimental theater created a medium for urban plurality, opening up a reflexive space within which diverse populations might begin to “practice” the city.
Trade Review"Instead of choosing a single, limiting dominant metaphor or thematic element to organize the book, Nina Levine manages the difficult task of weaving together a range of organizing principles across the chapters. That diversity of topics creates a multifaceted argument that matches early modern London, its politics, its culture, and its plays in breadth and complexity." -- -Adam Zucker University of Massachusetts, Amherst "Practicing the City makes a substantial, original contribution to the expansion of our understanding of the interrelation of London and early modern drama in the light of the unprecedented urbanization that occurred in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries." -- -James R. Siemon Boston University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Presupposing the Stage 1. Extending Credit and the Henry IV plays 2. Differentiating Collaboration: Protest and Playwriting and Sir Thomas More 3. Trading in Tongues: Language Lessons and Englishmen for My Money 4. The Place of the Present: Making Time and The Roaring Girl Epilogue: The Place of the Spectator Notes Index
