Theatres of Revenge, 1580-1642: Dramatist, Player, Spectator, and the Early Modern Dramatic Revolution Convenors: Michael Cordner and Richard Rowland The construction of the first permanent playhouses in London in the 1570s revolutionized theatre in England. Their existence transformed the circumstances of performance for both actor and spectator and enormously enhanced the scope and range of the kinds of performance possible. They also brought into being a new breed of English craftsman and artist, the professional playwright. Over the next half century the collaborations between several generations of extraordinary dramatists and players generated a sequence of dramatic experiments, which would make English theatre the most innovatory in Europe. This MA course seeks to map the dynamics of these collaborations via a detailed exploration of one dramatic mode - revenge tragedy - to which all the period's most remarkable writers made incisive contributions. Detailed attention will be paid both to crucial moments of innovation and reinvention within the revenge tradition and to the ways in which some key works - Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy , for instance, and Shakespeare's Hamlet - exercised a formative power over their successors' work in this fertile tragic mode. | |
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