Erika T. Lin, Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Many unspoken assumptions permeated the experience of performance in Shakespeare's theatre. Drawing on scientific treatises, murder pamphlets, travel narratives, dream manuals, religious sermons, festive sports, and other fascinating primary sources, Lin reconstructs playgoers' typica! l ways of g and demonstrates how these culturally-trained habits of mind shaped not only dramatic narratives but also the presentational dynamics of onstage action. Combining literary criticism, theatre history, and performance theory, this ground-breaking study explodes received ideas about mimesis, spectacle, and semiotics as it uncovers the ways in which early modern performance functioned as a material medium, revising and producing social attitudes and practices.

PART I. PERFORMANCE EFFECTS

INTRODUCTION. Materializing the Immaterial

CHAPTER 1. Theorizing Theatrical Privilege: Rethinking Weimann's Concepts of Locus and Platea

PART II. THEATRICAL WAYS OF KNOWING

CHAPTER 2. Staging Sight: Visual Paradigms and Perceptual Strategies in Love's Labor's Lost

CHAPTER 3. Imaginary Forces: Allegory, Mimesis, and Audience Interpretation in The Spanish Tragedy

PART III. EXPERIENCING EMBODIED SPECTACLE

CHAPTER 4. Dancing and Other Delights: Spectacle and Participation in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth

CHAPTER 5. Artful Sport: Violence, Dismemberment, and Games in Titus Andronicus, Cymbeline, and Doctor Faustus