Theatre and testimony in Shakespeare's England : a culture of mediation /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Syme, Holger Schott.
Imprint:Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Description:1 online resource (xiv, 283 pages) : illustrations
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11829770
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9781139206488
1139206486
9780511997204
0511997205
9781139204903
1139204904
9781107011854
110701185X
9781139203500
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Print version record.
Summary:"Holger Syme presents a radically new explanation for the theatre's importance in Shakespeare's time. He portrays early modern England as a culture of mediation, dominated by transactions in which one person stood in for another, giving voice to absent speakers or bringing past events to life. No art form related more immediately to this culture than the theatre. Arguing against the influential view that the period underwent a crisis of representation, Syme draws upon extensive archival research in the fields of law, demonology, historiography and science to trace a pervasive conviction that testimony and report, delivered by properly authorised figures, provided access to truth. Through detailed close readings of plays by Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare - in particular Volpone, Richard II and The Winter's Tale - and analyses of criminal trial procedures, the book constructs a revisionist account of the nature of representation on the early modern stage"--
"The Authenticity of Mediation: A man dressed in a simple black gown or an elaborate robe of office stands before a crowd of listeners. He speaks, and as his audience attend to his words they understand that the words are not his at all, but belong to another, absent voice. Continuing to listen, they begin to hear, through the conduit of the man's body, that other voice as though its owner were speaking. And as the absent voice materializes, it conjures a world of absent events and people, meetings of kings or street brawls among drunkards, mundane business transactions or chilling encounters with the supernatural"--
Other form:Print version: Syme, Holger Schott. Theatre and testimony in Shakespeare's England. Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012 9781107011854
Standard no.:9786613579577
Description
Physical Description:1 online resource (xiv, 283 pages) : illustrations
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781139206488
1139206486
9780511997204
0511997205
9781139204903
1139204904
9781107011854
110701185X
9781139203500