Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare

Description

The gods have much to tell us about performance. When human actors portray deities onstage, such divine epiphanies reveal not only the complexities of mortals playing gods but also the nature of theatrical spectacle itself. The very impossibility of rendering the gods in all their divine splendor in a truly convincing way lies at the intersection of divine power and the power of the theater. This book pursues these dynamics on the stages of ancient Athens and Rome as well on those of Renaissance England to shed new light on theatrical performance. The authors reveal how gods appear onstage both to astound and to dramatize the very machinations by which theatrical performance operates. Offering an array of case studies featuring both canonical and lesser-studied texts, this volume discusses work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Plautus as well as Beaumont, Heywood, Jonson, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. This book uniquely brings together the joint perspectives of two experts on classical and Renaissance drama. This volume will appeal to students and enthusiasts of literature, classics, theater, and performance studies. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments A Note on the Text Introduction: The Gods Take Stage Reception and Theatricality Divinity and Performativity The Scope of This Study Overview of the chapters 1 Approaching Divinity 1. Gods Create (Dis)order Th rough Speech 2. Gods Feed Human Fantasies of Control 3. Gods Offer Humans the Fantasy of Control, Only to Take It Away 4. Gods Are Both Force and Counterforce 5. Gods Claim Their Realness by Demanding Disbelief 6. Gods Embody the Challenges of Dramatic Mimesis 7. Gods Reveal the Humans Behind the Supernatural Effects 8. Gods Embody the Potential for the Immortality of Art 2 Under the Actor’s Spell: Audiences in Euripides’ Helen and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus Helen, Mimesis, and Divinity in Archaic and Early Classical Imaginations Supernatural Spectacle in Euripides’ Helen Helen on the Renaissance Stage The Stage as a Space of Conjuration Helen, from Euripides to Marlowe via Lucian 3 An Actor Ascends: Status and Identity in Plautus’ Amphitruo and the Court Masque Becoming a Goddess Acting as Artificial Life Jupiter Made Flesh Comic Conventions with Divine Force Zeus on the Greek Stage Shakespeare’s Jupiter and Social Transformation 4 Authoring Gods in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Shakespeare’s Hamlet Deities as Dramatists, Dramatists as Deities Orestes’ Divine Mandate Performing Justice in the Agamemnon The Disappearing Mother and the Epiphany of Athena The Gods Losing Grip: Hamlet and the Waning Power of the Father The Friend as Author and as Audience Conclusion: Hamlet and Other Actors as Dramatic Machines 5 To Die Is Human, To Act Is Divine Far From the Gods Approaching Divinity Of Masks and Mortals Mortal Characters, Immortal Roles Immortalized Dramatists Afterword: Entertaining Gods in Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses Notes Bibliography Index