Shakespeare's Double Plays: Dramatic Economy on the Early Modern Stage

In the first comprehensive study of how Shakespeare designed his plays to suit his playing company, Brett Gamboa demonstrates how Shakespeare turned his limitations to creative advantage, and how doubling roles suited his unique sense of the dramatic. By attending closely to their dramaturgical structures, Gamboa analyses casting requirements for the plays Shakespeare wrote for the company between 1594 and 1610, and describes how using the embedded casting patterns can enhance their thematic and theatrical potential. Drawing on historical records, dramatic theory, and contemporary performance this innovative work questions received ideas about early modern staging and provides scholars and contemporary theatre practitioners with a valuable guide to understanding how casting can help facilitate audience engagement. Supported by an appendix of speculative doubling charts for plays, illustrations, and online resources, this is a major contribution to the understanding of Shakespeare's dramatic craft.

Author: Brett Gamboa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 05/03/2018
Pages: 300
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.34lbs
Size: 9.19h x 6.32w x 0.72d
ISBN: 9781108417433

About the Author
Gamboa, Brett: - Brett Gamboa is Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, Massachusetts. His teaching and research focus on Shakespeare's plays in performance, although he teaches courses that explore a range of artistic media, from lyric poetry to contemporary television. His essays and reviews on Shakespeare and other dramatists appear in several journals and books, and he has published performance-oriented introductions and commentaries for the forty plays collected in The Norton Shakespeare. Gamboa's scholarship is informed by his work as a theatre director, having mounted productions for professional companies and on campuses, including ten plays by Shakespeare.