The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance

The Oxford Handbooks to Shakespeare are designed to record past and present investigations and renewed and revised judgments by both familiar and younger Shakespeare specialists. Each of these volumes is edited by one or more internationally distinguished Shakespeareans; together, they comprehensively survey the entire field.

Shakespearean performance criticism has firmly established itself as a discipline accessible to scholars and general readers alike. And just as performances of the plays expand audiences’ understanding of how Shakespeare speaks to them, so performance criticism is continually shifting the contours of the discipline. The 36 contributions in this volume represent the most current approaches to Shakespeare in performance. They are divided into four parts. Part I explores how experimental modes of performance ensure Shakespeare’s contemporaneity. Part II tackles the burgeoning field of reception: how and why audiences respond to performances as they do. Part III addresses the ways in which technology has revolutionized our access to Shakespeare, both through the mediums of film and sound recording and through digitalization. Part IV grapples with ’global’ Shakespeare, considering matters of cultural appropriation in productions played for international audiences. Together, these ground-breaking essays attest to the richness and diversity of Shakespearean performance criticism as it is practiced today

James C. Bulman, Henry B. and Patricia Bush Tippie Professor of English, Allegheny College

Edited by James C. Bulman, Henry B. and Patricia Bush Tippie Professor of English, Allegheny College

James C. Bulman holds the Henry B. and Patricia Bush Tippie Chair in English at Allegheny College. General editor, with Carol Rutter, of the Shakespeare in Performance Series for Manchester University Press, he has written a performance history of The Merchant of Venice (1991) and edited anthologies on Shakespeare on Television (with H. R. Coursen, 1988), Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance (1996), and Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance (2008). His other books include The Heroic Idiom of Shakespearean Tragedy (1985), Comedy from Shakespeare to Sheridan (with A. R. Braunmuller, 1986), and, most recently, an edition of King Henry IV, Part Two for The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (2016). He is a former president of the Shakespeare Association of America.