Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion
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17th century
A01=Professor William N. West
A01=William N. West
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audiences
Author_Professor William N. West
Author_William N. West
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSG
Category=HBJD1
Category=HBLH
Category=NHD
collaboration
collaborative works
comparative literature
consumption
COP=United States
crowd
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drama
early modern
elizabethan england
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exchange
figurative players
historical studies
history
Language_English
PA=Available
participatory entertainment
performers
physical occupations
playgoers
playhouse
plays
playwrights
Price_€20 to €50
production
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softlaunch
theater
verbal shape
william shakespeare
Product details
- ISBN 9780226809038
- Weight: 426g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Nov 2021
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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A new account of playgoing in Elizabethan England, in which audiences participated as much as performers.
What if going to a play in Elizabethan England was more like attending a football match than a Broadway show—or playing in one? In Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion, William N. West proposes a new account of the kind of participatory entertainment expected by the actors and the audience during the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. West finds surprising descriptions of these theatrical experiences in the figurative language of early modern players and playgoers—including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting. Such words and ways of speaking are still in use today, but their earlier meanings, like that of theater itself, are subtly, importantly different from our own. Playing was not confined to the actors on the stage but filled the playhouse, embracing audiences and performers in collaborative experiences that did not belong to any one alone but to the assembled, various crowd. What emerged in playing was a kind of thinking and feeling distributed across persons and times that were otherwise distinct. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears—these and more gave verbal shape to the physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption.
What if going to a play in Elizabethan England was more like attending a football match than a Broadway show—or playing in one? In Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion, William N. West proposes a new account of the kind of participatory entertainment expected by the actors and the audience during the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. West finds surprising descriptions of these theatrical experiences in the figurative language of early modern players and playgoers—including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting. Such words and ways of speaking are still in use today, but their earlier meanings, like that of theater itself, are subtly, importantly different from our own. Playing was not confined to the actors on the stage but filled the playhouse, embracing audiences and performers in collaborative experiences that did not belong to any one alone but to the assembled, various crowd. What emerged in playing was a kind of thinking and feeling distributed across persons and times that were otherwise distinct. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears—these and more gave verbal shape to the physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption.
William N. West is professor of English, comparative literary studies, and classics at Northwestern University. He is the author of As If: Essays in “As You Like It” and Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe. He also edits the journal Renaissance Drama.
