Overview

Throughout his plays, Shakespeare placed an extraordinary emphasis on the power of the face to reveal or conceal moral character and emotion, repeatedly inviting the audience to attend carefully to facial features and expressions. The essays collected here disclose that an attention to the power of the face in Shakespeare’s England helps explain moments when Shakespeare’s language of the self becomes intertwined with his language of the face. As the range of these essays demonstrates, an attention to Shakespeare’s treatment of faces has implications for our understanding of the historical and cultural context in which he wrote, as well as the significance of the face for the ongoing interpretation and production of the plays. Engaging with a variety of critical strands that have emerged from the so-called turn to the body, the contributors to this volume argue that Shakespeare’s invitation to look to the face for clues to inner character is not an invitation to seek a static text beneath an external image, but rather to experience the power of the face to initiate reflection, judgment, and action. The evidence of the plays suggests that Shakespeare understood that this experience was extremely complex and mysterious. By turning attention to the face, the collection offers important new analyses of a key feature of Shakespeare’s dramatic attention to the part of the body that garnered the most commentary in early modern England. By bringing together critics interested in material culture studies with those focused on philosophies of self and other and historians and theorists of performance, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face constitutes a significant contribution to our growing understanding of attitudes towards embodiment in Shakespeare’s England.

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9781472415790

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Reviews

'At once matter and metaphor, inside and outside, nature and art, self and other, the face is a crossroads; in their own facial theory and practice, the early moderns left us a window to their souls and a map of their world. With remarkable depth and methodological range, these essays chart that terrain, revealing the early modern face as a focal point of ideological negotiation, ethical encounter, and theatrical exchange. As unique, rich, and varied as its object of study, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face opens new avenues of thought and research that have been staring, so to speak, right at us.' Richard Preiss, author of Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre The collection, complemented by an extensive bibliography, is structured to appeal to both early modern scholars and students in many fields including theatre, literature, and cultural studies. - Brid Phillips, The University of Western Australia

'At once matter and metaphor, inside and outside, nature and art, self and other, the face is a crossroads; in their own facial theory and practice, the early moderns left us a window to their souls and a map of their world. With remarkable depth and methodological range, these essays chart that terrain, revealing the early modern face as a focal point of ideological negotiation, ethical encounter, and theatrical exchange. As unique, rich, and varied as its object of study, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face opens new avenues of thought and research that have been staring, so to speak, right at us.' Richard Preiss, author of Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre The collection, complemented by an extensive bibliography, is structured to appeal to both early modern scholars and students in many fields including theatre, literature, and cultural studies. - Brid Phillips, The University of Western Australia

'At once matter and metaphor, inside and outside, nature and art, self and other, the face is a crossroads; in their own facial theory and practice, the early moderns left us a window to their souls and a map of their world. With remarkable depth and methodological range, these essays chart that terrain, revealing the early modern face as a focal point of ideological negotiation, ethical encounter, and theatrical exchange. As unique, rich, and varied as its object of study, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face opens new avenues of thought and research that have been staring, so to speak, right at us.' Richard Preiss, author of Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre

Author Information

James A. Knapp is Associate Professor and Edward Surtz, S.J. Professor of English, Loyola University Chicago. He is also author of Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England and Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser.

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