Embracing Disruption: Clowning, Improvisation, and the Unscripted in Early Shakespearean Performance [Hardcover]

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Thriving Beyond Authorial Control
Chapter 1: The Man Who Could Please All Dick Tarltons World and Playground
Chapter 2: Enter Will Kemp Revivifying the Clown Peter in Romeo and Juliet
Chapter 3: A Good Wit Will Make Use of Anything Kemps Playful Clowning in Serious History
Chapter 4: Clown Prince Hamlet - Exposing the Fictions of Decorum.
Chapter 5: The Worst Returns to Laughter, Transformation through Collaboration, Robert Armin as Lears Fool

Index

This volume celebrates the centrality of clowning to Shakespeares conception of theatre and how he purposefully invites the clowns anarchic energy into the heart of his dramaturgy.

''Embracing Disruption?brilliantly?fuses?historical reconstruction and clown practice to?demonstrate?how Shakespeare?preserved and?exploited?the disruptive nature of the clown?in the face of growing?constraints on clowning and improvisation. An essential?text for?advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in?Shakespeare.''

Professor Robert Knopf, Professor Emeritus, Department of Theatre nad Dance, University at Buffalo

Stephen Wisker is an Assistant Professor of Theatre in The School of Media, Arts, and Culture at Wesleyan College.

This volume celebrates the centrality of clowning in Shakespeares conception of theatre and explores how he purposefully invited the clowns anarchic energy into the heart of his dramaturgy.

Clowning was a potent but divisive force in the theater of Shakespeares time, challenging the emerging tyranny of decorum and the developing notion of the authorial voice. As such, the figure of the clown is key to understanding the pervasivel1