Theatre of the Book is an account of the entangled histories of print and the theatre in Europe between the Renaissance and the late nineteenth century: a history of European dramatic publication (providing comparative and historical perspective to the growing field of textual studies); an examination of the creation of the modern notion of text and performance; and a comparative genealogy of ideas about theatrical and textual reception. It shows that, far from being marginal to Renaissance dramatists, the printing press had an essential role to play in the birth of the modern theatre, crucially shaping the normative conception of 'theatre' as a distinct aesthetic medium and of drama as a distinct narrative form, helping to forge a theatricalist aesthetics in opposition to 'the book'. Treating playtexts, engravings, actor portraits, notation systems, and theatrical ephemera at once as material objects and expressions of complex cultural formations, Theatre of the Book examines the European theatre's continual refashioning of itself in the world of print.
Introduction I. Printing the drama 1: Experimenting on the page, 1480-1630 2: Drama as institution, 1630-1760 3: Illustrations, promptbooks, stage texts, 1760-1880 II. Theatre imprimatur 4: Reinventing 'theatre' via the printing press 5: Critical law, theatrical licence 6: Accurate texts, authoritative editions III. The senses of media 7: The sense of the senses: sounds, gesture and the body on stage 8: Narrative form and theatrical illusions 9: Framing space: time, perspective, and motion in the image IV. The commerce of letters 10: Dramatists, poets, and other scribblers 11: Who owns the play? Pirate, plagiarist, imitator, thief 12: Making it public V. Theatrical impressions 13: Scenic pictures 14: Actor/author 15: A theatre too much with us Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index
Reviews for Theatre of the Book 1480-1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe
... a wide-ranging, ambitious, and intellectually-impressive volume ... One cannot but admire the ambition of this study ... well-informed and impressively scholarly ... The Theatre of the Book teaches us much about publishing and drama in Europe over the course of four centuries and helps us to understand their intertwined relationship. It is a formidable piece of work. Early Modern Literary Studies ... remarkable and wide-ranging. Peter Holland, Times Literary Supplement
- Winner of The American Comparative Literature Association's Harry Levin prize for the best book in comparative literary history published between 1999-2002.
