Stages of play

This book begins with two assumptions: first, that Shakespeare wrote scripts for actors and audiences, not texts for readers; and second, that we can best appreciate how Shakespeare's scripts create dramatic meaning by attempting to visualize their performances in the theatrical settings for which they were originally created, the Theatre and the Globe. The shape of the thrust stage, with its spectators arranged on three sides around it, created complex spectator reactions to the performance of the plays. The resulting "multiple perspectives" are often central to the performed meaning of particular scenes in ways that cannot be appreciated in modern proscenium theaters. Rather than arguing for a "unified response" among spectators, as many scholars do, the book argues that when the plays are performed on thrust stages, the audience's reactions are actually seminal to the plays' intended dramatic effects. The initial chapter defines Shakespeare's "theatrical energies" by scrutinizing the script of The Taming of the Shrew for clues to its performance and intended reactions. Arguing against feminist and new historicist criticism, which view the play as a social document, Shurgot insists that we examine it as what in fact it is - a play - and the author finds Petruchio's and Kate's theatrical energies leading to a robust and satisfying romantic finale. The remaining chapters, beginning with the final scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labor's Lost, examine Shakespeare's developing mastery of the relationship of stage and audience, multiple perspectives, and possibilities for complex dramatic meanings created by the architecture of the theater.