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play’s sources, laying bare its textual layers for all to see, this recent film alludes to the play’s performance history, with ageing actors who once played Hamlet ’s leads now relegated to playing memories and quotations, ghosts from the distant past. There is almost a kind of humour in the way these iconic figures from the stage are relegated to playing silent non-characters, a humour similar to that
of its own histories but its subsequent histories rethink its mappings. From the contexts of division and the early modern mapping of Britain, I want to turn to the play’s performance histories, to see how the map has figured in particular productions. I suggested earlier that the map poses a problem for directors. I want to note four of their solutions, examining them for
’s performance history. There was a remarkably stable mean and median average of five annual performances of the play in London across the eighteenth century, and this consistency was maintained in the troublesome years. 12 Macbeth ’s apparent quarantine from the real world can largely be explained by the insularity and inertia of the theatre as a cultural institution at this time. Theatrical productions
assumption that these dramas are unperformable, through both theoretical and practical work with the plays, and Yasmin Arshad's research on Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra has uncovered evidence of a potential performance history for the play. 12 It must also be noted that the dramas in this group were subjected to the public eye through such channels as print, manuscript circulation, or performance at one of the aristocratic estates belonging either to the authors themselves or to their patrons. The nature of the audience or readership for these dramas
during the sixteenth century. Archival research into the performance history of drama, especially in the provinces, by the pioneering project REED (Records of Early English Drama), 3 has revealed a diverse, thriving theatrical landscape. The records for towns such as Norwich and Coventry, for instance, show that traditional religious drama continued to thrive during the sixteenth century and that it did so by adapting to weather the doctrinal changes produced by the Reformation. The Norwich Grocers’ Play, concerned with the Temptation of Adam and Eve, provides a
Dukakis herself. These Prosperas differ in many respects, not least of which is the age of the actors at the time they played the role (Brown was 53, Mirren 62 and Dukakis 81). Because the magic in the play endows the protagonist with authority and control, these productions help us to understand how, at this moment in time, our culture envisions powerful, creative women. In the course of its 400-year performance history, The Tempest has been interpreted on stage in a remarkably wide-ranging number of ways. The Victorian era focused on Prospero as
the stage and performance history of the Dream . While fairy flight appears in a number of stage productions, and numerous film adaptations, the play text does not require it. As Martin White observes, the play itself (with its original stage directions) ‘[m]akes few technical demands’. 3 In the play, the word ‘fly’ or ‘flying’ is used seven times, mostly in reference to the lovers or Bottom, to describe the leaving of a place or person. The word ‘flight’ is only mentioned four times, also mostly
accepting such conventions; what is involved is a process of engagement with them, or as Berliner puts it: ‘ . . . from the outset an artist’s ongoing personal performance history entwines with jazz’s artistic tradition, allowing for a mutual absorption and exchange of ideas’ (1994: 59). This set of conventions, which Berliner terms ‘the formal structures of jazz’ (ibid.) constitutes the model, in Nettl’s sense, with which improvisers work. In very general terms, improvised ‘solos’ must conform in acceptable ways to the harmonic progression and formal structure of the
formal concert, perhaps by an African-American choir, and harmonised according to the conventions of nineteenth-century European art music? Or the versions regularly produced by thousands of English rugby union fans (who have adopted the song) at international matches? Some might argue that the former is a ‘real’ or ‘correct’ rendition, citing the performance history of the song, and the traditions of black music. Yet, firstly, such an argument nicely illustrates Becker’s point that ‘ . . . the general choice of the convention by which works will be recognised results
rounding it off. An example can be found in A Most Pleasant Comedy of Mucedorus , a remarkable play for a travelling company, which enjoyed extraordinary popularity in print, with its staggering nineteen editions, and a live performance history extending to as recently as the 1830s (Proudfoot 2002 : 18; Kirwan 2015 : 99–106; Chambers 1933 : 190–1). Mucedorus is