Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance [Hardcover]

How the idea of Shakespearean authority is still invested in the activities of directing, acting, and scholarship.This stimulating book asks how both text and performance are construed as vessels of authority, and finds that our understanding of Shakespearean performance retains a surprising sense of the possibility of being 'faithful' to Shakespearean texts, and so to 'Shakespeare'.After an opening theoretical chapter Worthen examines the relationship between text and performance in three activities: directing, acting, and scholarship. The book contributes to the scholarly study of acting and directing, and to the wider discourse of performance studies.This stimulating book asks how both text and performance are construed as vessels of authority, and finds that our understanding of Shakespearean performance retains a surprising sense of the possibility of being 'faithful' to Shakespearean texts, and so to 'Shakespeare'.After an opening theoretical chapter Worthen examines the relationship between text and performance in three activities: directing, acting, and scholarship. The book contributes to the scholarly study of acting and directing, and to the wider discourse of performance studies.This stimulating book asks how both text and performance are construed as vessels of authority, and finds that our understanding of Shakespearean performance retains a surprising sense of the possibility of being faithful to Shakespearean texts, and so to Shakespeare. After an opening theoretical chapter, Worthen examines the relationship between text and performance in three activities: directing, acting, and scholarship. The book contributes to the scholarly study of acting and directing, and to the wider discourse of performance studies.1. Authority and performance; 2. Shakespeare's auteurs: directing authority; 3. Shakespeare's body: acting and the designs of authority; 4. Shakespeare's page, Shakespeare's stage: performance criticism. Worthen offers an important book...lã$