The Stage Life of PropsIn The Stage Life of Props, Andrew Sofer aims to restore to certain props the performance dimensions that literary critics are trained not to see, then to show that these props are not just accessories, but time machines of the theater. Using case studies that explore the Eucharistic wafer on the medieval stage, the bloody handkerchief on the Elizabethan stage, the skull on the Jacobean stage, the fan on the Restoration and early eighteenth-century stage, and the gun on the modern stage, Andrew Sofer reveals how stage props repeatedly thwart dramatic convention and reinvigorate theatrical practice. While the focus is on specific objects, Sofer also gives us a sweeping history of half a millennium of stage history as seen through the device of the prop, revealing that as material ghosts, stage props are a way for playwrights to animate stage action, question theatrical practice, and revitalize dramatic form. Andrew Sofer is Assistant Professor of English, Boston College. He was previously a stage director. |
Contents
The Prop as Temporal Contract on the Medieval Stage | 31 |
The Bloody Handkerchief on the Elizabethan Stage | 61 |
The Skull on the Jacobean Stage | 89 |
Sexual Semaphore on the Restoration and EarlyEighteenthCentury Stage | 117 |
Guns and the Play of Predictability on the Modern Stage | 167 |
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action actor actress audience Beckett becomes Bel-imperia Bevington Bisarre blood bloody handkerchief body bread Brownie Cambridge University Press century Chicago Christ's church Cleora cloth Comedy consecrated Corpus Christi Corpus Christi plays critics Croxton Play Culture Dorimant Dorimant's Duretete Early Modern Elizabethan Eucharist fan lesson fan's Fefu Fefu's female fetishized Fornes's function gesture Gloriana Greenblatt Hamlet Harriet Hedda Gabler Hieronimo Hippolito Horatio Host Ibid Ibsen Jacobean John Julia kill Kyd's Lady liturgical liturgical drama London Lövborg Loveit male Maria Irene Fornes Mass material meaning Medieval Drama Medieval Theatre memento mori metonymic Mode oble Othello Oxford performance pistols play's playhouse playwrights Prague School prop prop's real presence Reformation Renaissance Restoration Restoration Comedy Revenger's Tragedy role sacrament sacred scarf scene semiotic sexual Shakespeare signified Spanish Tragedy spectator stage objects Stage Properties Stallybrass suicide symbol temporal theater theatrical tion Visitatio visual wafer Winnie Winnie's women Yorick's skull York