***Listed in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION's Weekly Book List,
March 28, 2011*** The role of the audience takes on new importance
when performance is reconceived as a dialectical activity. The essays in
this collection examine the relationship between dramatic performance
and audience in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.That
relationship is complicated by multiple conceptions of the audience:
playwrights imagine their audiences; actors address them; the audience
actually attending the play is yet another entity. The authors combine
theatre history and cultural analysis with examinations of plays and
productions to explore how those involved in early modern productions
conceived of their audience, how audiences shaped the dramas they
watched, and even how the roles of actor and audience member sometimes
merged.