In 1 Henry IV, Falstaff enacts his histrionic mock deposition scene, only to be usurped by England’s true heir, Prince Hal. Irate at his actorly demotion, Falstaff praises his own performance skills, while suggesting that, if found lacking, he should receive a punishment befitting his knightly status. Likening Falstaff to small game hanging in a s…[Read more]

Informed Play presents a conceptual understanding of tone production based on extensive historical research on primary sources, modern literature and handbook reviews, physical and psychological perspectives as well as on technology. As the first volume in English to discuss and contextualise the topic of tone production on Early Modern lute…[Read more]

With the correct order of the preliminary leaves of Shakespeare’s First Folio unknown, the sequence of the first 18 pages has long puzzled scholars. Over the last 400 years, binders have assembled the first gathering differently, spawning a wide variety of order types. Using data from Anthony James West’s Census of First Folios (2003) and A Des…[Read more]

In this essay Queen Margaret’s curses in Richard III become part of a feminist ethics on the early modern stage. As a parrhesiast, in Foucault’s terms, Margaret speaks truth to power and claims a right of citizenship. That Margaret elicits universal revulsion from the other characters while also holding a unique, though not untroubled, pos…[Read more]

This is the Vol – 2, SPECIAL ISSUE 4: VOL – 2, MARCH 2020 issue.

How does a woman become a whore? What are the discursive dynamics making a woman a whore? And, more importantly, what are the discursive mechanics of unmaking? In Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal, Cristina León Alfar pursues these questions to tease out familiar cultural stories about female se…[Read more]

Shakespeare’s representations of history often have replaced history itself in the popular imagination: Julius Caesar, Margaret of Anjou, Henry V, Richard III — popular recollections of their lives and deaths are intimately linked with Shakespeare’s accounts of their stories, despite the playwright’s deviations from historical facts. In order t…[Read more]

Gendered night, or the nocturnal brightness of the early modern English stage
In French, critics speak of the night using feminine terms, but the term is grammatically neutral in English. Despite this neutrality, night may be gendered. In Romeo and Juliet, virgins hide their shame from their lovers by hiding in the dark. If night is consecrated…[Read more]