This book discusses the styles of performance developed in different European countries in response to prevailing conditions, drawing attention to the complex relationship between scripted text and improvisation.
Introduction Part I: Literary Tradition and the Theatre 1. Sooner than Shakespeare: Inwardness and Lexicon in the Drama of Gil Vicente and António Prestes 2. The Auto da Festa and the (Well-stocked) Workshop of Gil Vicente 3. The Auto de la huida a Egipto: Italian and Other Connections 4. Who is Júlio? Plot and Identity in António Ferreira’s Comedies 5. The Reinvention of Classical Comedy and Tragedy in Portugal: Defining Drama in the Work of Sá de Miranda, António Ferreira and Diogo de Teive 6. The Recovery of Terence in Renaissance Italy: From Alberti to Machiavelli 7. Palimpsestuous Phaedra: William Gager's Additions to Seneca's Tragedy for his 1592 Production at Christ Church, Oxford 8. The Power of Transformation in Guillén de Castro’s El caballero bobo (1595-1605) and La fuerza de la costumbre (1610-15): Translation and Performance Part II: Theatre and Performance 9. Amateurs Meet Professionals: Theatrical Activities in Late Sixteenth-Century Italian Academies 10. Competing with Continentals: The Case of William Kemp 11. Gil Vicente, a Source for a Heritage Made of Scraps Part III: Theatre and Society 12. Plautus and Terence in Tudor England 13. Diffusing Drama: Manuscript and Print in the Transmission of Camões’s Plays 14. From the Catholic Mystery Play to Calvinist Tragedy, or the Reinvention of French Religious Drama 15. The Renaissance Meets the Reformation: The Dramatist Thomas Naogeorg (1508-1563)
