Shakespeare’s Dramatic Transactions

This study uses the conventions of performance criticism - staging and theatrical presentation - to analyze seven major Shakespearean tragedies: Hamlet , Othello , King Lear , Macbeth , Antony and Cleopatra , Richard II and Richard III . As scholars and readers increasingly question the theoretical models used to describe the concepts of mimesis and representation, this book describes how the actor’s stage presentation affects the actor’s representational role and the ways in which viewers experience Shakespearean tragedy. The text draws on the work of East German critic Robert Weimann and his concept of figurenposition - the correlation between an actor’s stage location and the speech, action and stylization associated with that position - to understand the actor/stage location relationship in Shakespeare’s plays. In his examination of the original staging of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the author looks at the traditional interplay between a downstage place and upstage location to describe the differences between non-illusionistic action (often staged near the audience) and the illusionistic, localized action that characterizes mimetic art.