This collection of essays examines the works of the most famous writer
of plays in the English language within the most culturally pervasive
genre in which they are performed. Though Realist productions of
Shakespeare are central to the ways in which his work is produced and
consumed in the 21st century-and has been for the last 100
years-scholars are divided on the socio-political, historical, and
ethical effects of this marriage of content and style. The book is
divided into two sections, the first of which focuses on how Realist
performance style influences our understanding of Shakespeare's
characters. These chapters engage in close readings of multiple
performances, interrogating the ways in which actors' specific
characterizations contribute to extremely varied interpretations of a
single character. The second section then considers audiences'
experiences of Shakespearean texts in Realist performance. The essays in
this section-all written by theatre directors-imagine out what might
constitute Realism. Each chapter focuses on a particular production, or
set of productions by a single company, and considers how the
practitioners utilized critically informed notions of what constitutes
"the real" to reframe what Realism looks like on stage. This is a book
of arguments by both theatre practitioners and scholars. Rather than
presenting a unified critical position, this collection seeks to
stimulate the debate around Realist Shakespeare performance, and to
attend to the political consequences of particular aesthetic choices for
the audience, as well as for Shakespeare critics and theatre artists.
