THEATRES OF THE AIR REPRESENTING AERIAL

During the early days of the professional English theatre, playwrights such as Dekker, Greene, Heywood, Jonson, Marlowe, Middleton, and Shakespeare wrote for playhouses that were open to the ambient air and the sky. This drama emphasized the relationship between the play and the space of the air, drawing attention to the theatrical atmospheres and aerial encounters. Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage explores how various theatrical effects and staging strategies foregrounded the relationship between early modern drama and the actual playhouse air, suggesting that playwrights and their companies developed a dramaturgical awareness that extended from the earth to encompass and make explicit the space of air.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 15 March 2022
Publisher: OXFORD HIGHER EDUCATION

During the early days of the professional English theatre, a group of talented dramatists, including Dekker, Greene, Heywood, Jonson, Marlowe, Middleton, and Shakespeare, crafted plays for playhouses that, while surrounded by walls, remained open to the surrounding air and the sky above. The drama written for these open-air venues not only captured the attention of audiences but also reflected on its own relationship to the space of the air. At a time when theories of the imagination emphasized the dramatic performance's reliance on and implication in the air from and through which its staged fictions were presented and received, plays written for open-air venues frequently drew attention to the nature and significance of that elemental relationship.

Aerial Environments on the Early Modern Stage is a groundbreaking book that delves into the various ways in which the air is brought into presence within early modern drama. Analyzing over a hundred works performed at the London open-air playhouses between 1576 and 1609, the book explores how theatrical effects and staging strategies foregrounded early modern drama's relationship to, and impact on, the actual playhouse air. By examining the pervasive and ongoing attention to aerial imagery, actions, and representational strategies in open-air drama, the book suggests that playwrights.

ISBN-13: 9780192843326