Renaissance Drama, an annual and interdisciplinary publication, is
devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance
culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional canons of drama,
the significance of performance (broadly construed) to early modern
culture, and the impact of new forms of interpretation on the study of
Renaissance plays, theatre, and performance.
This special issue of Renaissance Drama Embodiment and Environment in
Early Modern Drama and Performance is guest-edited by Mary Floyd-Wilson
and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr. Anatomized, fragmented, and embarrassed,
the body has long been fruitful ground for scholars of early modern
literature and culture. The contributors suggest, however, that period
conceptions of embodiment cannot be understood without attending to
transactional relations between body and environment. The volume
explores the environmentally situated nature of early modern psychology
and physiology, both as depicted in dramatic texts and as a condition of
theatrical performance. Individual essays shed new light on the ways
that travel and climatic conditions were understood to shape and reshape
class status, gender, ethnicity, national identity, and subjectivity;
they focus on theatrical ecologies, identifying the playhouse as a
special environment or its own ecosystem, where performances have
material, formative effects on the bodies of actors and audience
members; and they consider transactions between theatrical, political,
and cosmological environments. For the contributors to this volume, the
early modern body is examined primarily through its engagements with and
operations in specific environments that it both shapes and is shaped
by. Embodiment, these essays show, is without borders.
