Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre. Sarah Dustagheer and Gillian Woods, eds. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2019. xvi + 350 pp. £85

• Published in: Renaissance quarterly Vol. 74; no. 1; pp. 358 - 360
• Main Author: Connor, Francis X.
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
• Subjects: Authorship; Essays; Renaissance period; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Stage direction; Theater
• DOI: 10.1017/rqx.2020.401
• ISSN: 0034-4338

Using an example from the Folio text of The Tempest, they articulate how this brief bit of text exists as a bibliographic object (a word on paper), a theatrical event (dictating the ephemeral action of actors), an interpretive element (readers need to comprehend it), and an authorship problem (who writes this direction?). Essays by Martin White and Dustagheer (with Philip Bird) in section 4, “Space,” bring theatrical practice to bear upon stage directions, with White offering some instances where performance refined his understanding of some directions, and Dustagheer analyzing discovery scenes in revenge tragedies as embodiments of contemporary cultural anxieties about death. The collection encourages readers to take stage directions seriously, to treat them as text rather than mere metatext, as part of an author's work rather than an imposition upon it.