https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=131 Sous la direction de Pascale Drouet Date de publication électronique : 8 octobre 2008 Informations sur cette image Crédits : Édouard Lekston Français Quelle est l’économie du spectaculaire dans le théâtre de Shakespeare et de ses contemporains, et quels sont les modalités et les enjeux de cette économie portée à la scène de nos jours ? English Is there an economy of the spectacular in Shakespeare’s plays—or those of his contemporaries? Nowadays, how do directors, both stage and film, manage to trigger the emotions and reactions of spectators living in a society saturated with special effects and shock pictures? Shakespeare en devenir https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=3265 fr jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:25:59 +0100 sam., 07 févr. 2026 22:18:24 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=131 0 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=132 jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:28:58 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=132 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=133 jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:29:29 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=133 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=134 Cet article présente l’argument que Timon of Athens déploie et aborde le spectaculaire en plaine connaissance de cause pour exposer la superficialité de la société athénienne, sinon de la nature humaine. Le protagoniste lui-même lutte contre cette superficialité sans succès, car il finit dans une tombe solitaire quelconque, alors qu’Alcibiades prend possession de la cité de façon ostentatoire. Cet aspect de la tragédie est lié à la technique épisodique et symbolique des «romances», mais sans offrir les possibilités infinies des dernières pièces shakespeariennes, ce qui revient à une redéfinition du genre tragique. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:30:39 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=134 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=136 The article discusses at first how the condensing and focussing principle, founding the spectacular economy, works hand in hand with two devices of quasi-constant use: re-semantizing on the one hand and channel-untwining on the other, both proving activators to the energizing glass of ostension. It then turns to illustrating some effects caused by another major spectacular trend which, inherited from the medieval stage, endures to the end of the Renaissance: the doubling up of what is actually seen by the suggestion of an unseen: this assists the budding forth of two spectacular phenomena likely to acquire tropological force: the theatre diaphora and its “junior” form: the syllepsis. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:31:05 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=136 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=138 Renaissance science tended to be characterized by its taste for spectacular shows. Although they differed from their continental counterparts in many ways, English scientists were no exception to this rule, as can be gauged from the examples of Drebbel’s submarine or Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. It is no surprise, therefore, that in both The Tempest and Doctor Faustus science primarily takes the form of a series of varied spectacles. In this paper, I will argue that science is the means by which Prospero produces spectacular illusions which enable him to control and manipulate the minds and senses of his enemies. But scientific illusion is a sword that cuts both ways and the triviality of Faustus’s puppet shows suggests that Prospero’s science, too, may not be as « potent » as he claims. At the end of the play, science, this powerful instrument of Prospero’s domination, is eventually discarded as a mere dream. Both plays therefore convey an ambivalent image of science. They suggest that the scientist’s reliance on illusion is both a strength and a weakness. While providing him with a way to hold his audience under sway, it also lends a transitory and « insubstantial » quality to his scientific activity. Not everybody agreed with such a pessimistic vision of science, though: for Francis Bacon, although the scientist should also be able to create illusions of all sorts, his prime aim is to control nature so as to produce enduring, permanent and very real effects for the benefit of mankind. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:31:36 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=138 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=140 Shakespeare’s first use of extended storm effects on the stage occurred in Julius Caesar. Although often dismissed in editorial footnotes as a slight, anticlimactic noise (usually with a citation of Jonson’s dismissive recollection of the “roul’d bullet heard”) the special effects of the storm in the playhouses would have been nothing short of spectacular. Julius Caesar was almost certainly the first play produced at the Globe theatre. This paper will argue that the storm in the play is a grand gesture to show off the capabilities of the new playhouse. With a close reading of the text in its chronological context, it will be seen that this tragedy marks a change of emphasis in Shakespeare’s work. An exploration of the drums, cannon and fireworks used to recreate the storm will inform a reading of the text which highlights its propensity towards the spectacular. It will also be seen through an examination of the trumpet calls that the play is a promotional tool to advertise the amphitheatre itself and not simply the playwright or acting company. Only after this exhausting and exhaustive showcase, and the audience it attracts, can the subtle poetry of the storm reach the nuanced symbolism it finds in the later, xmature plays King Lear, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. Weather interpretation of the Elizabethan era will also be considered, showing that the effects in the play are neatly contemporary as well as spectacular. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:34:02 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=140 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=142  “Shakespearean Virtuosity in The Winter’s Tale and the Mannerist tour de force” When Henry Peacham mentions one of the most representative artists of Northern Mannerism, Hendrick Goltzius, he also gives some indications of style: “For a bold touch, variety of posture, curious and true shadow, imitate Goltzius, his prints are commonly to be had in Popes-head-alley”. Shakespeare’s contemporary, Henry Peacham–known to be the author of the only drawing made of one of the representations of Titus Andronicus–clearly was familiar with the exuberant and spectacular engravings of the Dutch Mannerist. The mannerist context of emulation between the arts and artists, made possible by the medium of print, and the ambivalent relation to nature, which the artist is called upon to surpass, mark the peculiar way in which Northern Mannerists represented artistic achievements, or figures from the past, and the frame of mind manifest in their recreations sheds an interesting light on Shakespeare’s rewriting of a play by an old rival, The Winter’s Tale. Indeed the playwright may have created a theatrical labyrinth of incongruities in which he facetiously stages the versatility of his own art, leading the spectators to the spectacular climax of the breath-taking statue of the queen carved by the mannerist artist Giulio Romano. Yet, it is Shakespeare himself who is shown to leave this “nature’s ape” lagging behind in the third dimension, whereas the playwright, able to cut breath–“What fine chisel / Could ever yet cut breath?” (V.3.78)–by means of the actors representing his plays, triumphs over time, the fourth dimension. Thus, no doubt with an ironical smile, Shakespeare made true the wish of his old rival Robert Greene when he wrote Pandosto, The Triumph of Time. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:34:30 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=142 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=144 «The staging of power through myths in The Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth (1575) by George Gascoigne» The Princely Pleasure of Kenilworth (1575) are often mentioned as one of the most magnificent and spectacular celebrations of the Elizabethan era. They were the opportunity for the Earl of Leicester to welcome and impress Queen Elizabeth I. Commissioned by the Earl, George Gascoigne devised The Princely Pleasures, a series of entertainments which combined odes, compliments and surprises to punctuate the queen’s stay. Mythological figures – whether they were from classical or popular origins – served the staging of power and aimed at praising the Queen who was placed in the centre of the representation. They were used as a means of political propaganda and strengthened the cult of the Queen by reasserting her power publicly. Beyond the entertaining quality of the celebration and its political target, more private messages can also be deciphered, especially the mythological figures. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:35:01 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=144 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=146 There have been many film versions of Shakespeare plays, but almost none of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries – until, that is, three independent film directors at the turn of the twenty-first century created versions of non-Shakespearean Jacobean tragedies: Marcus Thompson's Middleton's Changeling (1998), Mike Figgis's Hotel (2002) and Alex Cox's Revengers Tragedy (2003). I argue that these films embody a conscious turn away from the governing aesthetic of Shakespeare films in the late twentieth century – attacked by a character in Hotel as “the Merchant Ivory version: sweet, pungent smell of rose meadows, Earl Grey, and a wet saddle on the back of a horse, that sort of thing” – offering an alternative version of spectacle – postmodern, tasteless, excessive – which nonetheless, despite the self-consciously radical stance adopted by the directors, paradoxically re-entrenches the polarised understanding of the differences between Shakespeare and Jacobean drama established in early twentieth-century criticism and reinscribes a longstanding misrepresentation of the Jacobean as “decadent”. jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:35:48 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=146 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=148 jeu., 28 janv. 2010 15:36:22 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=148 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=434 Julia Pascal’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, which openedat the Arcola Theatre in London in 2007, tackles the problematic place of the spectacle in this play more subtly than other playwrights and directors, who have cut, corrected, bowdlerized, framed or thoroughly rewritten the play without managing to de-familiarize their audiences from the rapt and mindless fascination generated by knife-wielding Jew in the trial scene.Pascal’s adaptation therefore represents an important point of departure from late twentieth-century stage traditions, which are not only ineffective but positively detrimental when it comes to tackling the spectacular image of the knife-wielding Jew at the heart of the trial scene. ven., 17 sept. 2010 12:34:03 +0200 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=434 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=445 mar., 28 sept. 2010 15:24:19 +0200 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=445 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=3265 jeu., 29 janv. 2026 01:00:16 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=3265