Overview

Janet Hill offers new insights into techniques of addressing playgoers from the stage and how they might have operated under particular staging conditions. Hill calls this dialogue ""open address,"" a term that takes in a range of speeches often called ""asides,"" ""monologues,"" and ""soliloquies."" She argues that open address is a strategy that challenges playgoers, asking for answers that lie outside the stage in the playgoer/playhouse world. The tradition of direct address has little to do with the frequently touted notion of the ""fluidity of the Renaissance stage"": the point is not that stage characters can talk to the audience but that they actually do reach out to the playgoers and in so doing import aspects of the audience world to the stage. These exchanges appear frequently in late-medieval drama and continue to be crucial stage strategies for Shakespeare, in whose work they grow and change. By examining a native dramatic tradition not fully explored before, Hill proposes new ways to imagine historical and contemporary performances. Stages and Playgoers will be invaluable for students of cultural studies, medieval and Renaissance studies, theatre history, and stagecraft.

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Reviews

Hill's discussion of the evolution of staging systems and the aims of theatrical representation is admirably detailed, cogent, and persuasive. The framing of larger issues and the placement of these topics in their appropriate theoretical context is handled with exceptional intelligence. Michael Bristol, Department of English, McGill University A stimulating contribution to scholarship. Anne Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto

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