Shakespeare’s Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance

This timely study looks at the violation of bodies in Shakespeare’s tragedies, especially as revealed (or concealed) in performance on stage and screen. Pascale Aebischer discusses stage and screen performances of Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear with a view to showing how bodies which are virtually absent from both playtexts and critical discourse (due to silence, disability, marginalisation, racial otherness or death) can be prominent in performance, where their representation reflects the cultural and political climate of the production. Aebischer focuses on post-1980 Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre productions but also covers film adaptations and landmark productions from the nineteenth century onwards. Her book will interest scholars and students of Shakespeare, gender, performance and cultural studies.

• Up-to-date performance study of Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre and screen productions of Shakespeare’s tragedies • Incorporation of gender, race and performance theories • Based on extensive archival research going back to the mid-nineteenth century

Prologue: The Gravedigger’s daughter - a story of loss; Introduction: filling the empty space; 1. Titus Andronicus: spectacular obscenities; 2. ‘Not dead? not yet quite dead?’: Hamlet’s unruly corpses; 3. Murderous male moors: gazing at race in Titus Andronicus and Othello; 4. En-gendering violence and suffering in King Lear; Epilogue: Polly goes to Hollywood - a success story; Appendix: Table of main productions cited.

‘… an extremely useful resource to scholars of Shakespeare on both stage and screen.‘ Theatre Notebook

\'Methodologically... highly innovative, boldly fusing two critical schools usually seen as incompatible: textual and performance criticism. Aebischer demonstrates that the study of Shakespeare in performance cannot replace the close attention to the play texts, but may potentially enrich our understanding of them.\' Shakespeare Jahrbuch Band