In this selection of research articles Butterworth focuses on
investigation of the practical and technical means by which early
English theatre, from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century,
was performed. Matters of staging for both 'pageant vehicle' and
'theatre-in-the-round' are described and analysed to consider their
impact on playing by players, expositors, narrators and prompters. All
these operators also functioned to promote the closely aligned
disciplines of pyrotechnics and magic (legerdemain or sleight of hand)
which also influence the nature of the presented theatre.
The sixteen chapters form four clearly identified parts-staging,
playing, pyrotechnics and magic-and drawing on a wealth of primary
source material, Butterworth encourages the reader to rediscover and
reappreciate the actors, magicians, wainwrights and wheelwrights,
pyrotechnists, and (in modern terms) the special effects people and
event managers who brought these early texts to theatrical life on busy
city streets and across open arenas.
The chapters variously explore and analyse the important backwaters of
material culture that enabled, facilitated and shaped performance yet
have received scant scholarly attention. It is here, among the itemised
payments to carpenters and chemists, the noted requirements of mechanics
and wheelwrights, or tucked away among the marginalia of suppliers of
staging and ingenious devices that Butterworth has made his stamping
ground. This is a fascinating introduction to the very 'nuts and bolts'
of early theatre.
Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in
Early English Theatre is a closely argued celebration of stagecraft that
will appeal to academics and students of performance, theatre history
and medieval studies as well as history and literature more broadly. It
constitutes the eighth volume in the Routledge series Shifting
Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies and continues the valuable
work of that series (of which Butterworth is a general editor) in
bringing significant and expert research articles to a wider audience.
