Shakespearean Entrances [Hardcover]

Shakespearean Entrances offer a systematic study of entrances and exits on the Shakespearean stage. Elizabethan playwrights and players not only routinely handled these movements but they also used them to bring about various effects. Through analyzing the surviving play-texts, the author attempts to identify the unspoken but standard rules that lay behind the minimal and conventionalized stage directions 'Enter' and 'Exit'/'Exeunt'. The findings provide means by which to recover effects and meanings that the original audience would have appreciated.List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on Texts and Old Spelling System of Dating Editorial Abbreviations Studying Entrances and Exits Interrupted Exits and Their Implications Time Allowed for Exits Speeches Around Entrances and Exits Overlapping Exits and Entrances The Use of Stage Doors 'Passing over the Stage' The Central Opening Alternative Possibilities The Meaning of 'Enter' and 'Exit/Exeunt' Appendices Notes Bibliography IndexMARIKO ICHIKAWA is Professor at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, University of Tohoku, Japan. She has co-authored Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres with Andrew Gurr and authored several articles on Shakespearean entrances and exits.