Drama

W. B. Worthen is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of The Idea of the Actor (1984), Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater (1992), Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (1997), Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (2003), and Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama (2006). He is also the editor of several volumes, including A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance (with Barbara Hodgdon, Wiley-Blackwell 2005), and the Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, 5th edition (2006).

• Acknowledgments ixPreface: Drama, Poetry, and Performance xiIntroduction: Between Poetry and Performance 1i. Shakespeare 3.0 2ii. Images of Writing/Metaphors of Performance 8The score 8The blueprint 12Information/software 13Dramatic tools, performance technologies 20iii. Agencies of Drama: Burke, Poetry, and Performance 22Writing as agency: “Antony in Behalf of the Play” 291 From Poetry to Performance 35i. Dramatic Performance and its Discontents: The New Criticism 39Drama, poetry, and “interpretation” 39“An arrangement of words” 45Acts of speech 50Heresy, responsibility, and performance 56ii. Dramatic Writing and its Discontents: Performance Studies, Drama Studies 64Antigone’s bones 64The “theater of acting” 69Rethinking writing 772 Performing Writing: Hamlet 94i. Hamlet’s Book 97Playing the book 97The law of writ 101Speaking by the card 106ii. Corrupt Stuff; or, Doing Things with (Old) Words 112The crux of performance 113Enseamed beds 118iii. “OK, we can skip to the book”: The Wooster Group Hamlet 123Theatrofilm by Electronovision 127(Re)playing Burton, performing Hamlet 1303 Embodying Writing: Ibsen and Parks 139i. Can We Act What We Say?: Rosmersholm 142Inscribing character 147Acting the role 150Confession, disclosure, detour 152Doing (unspeakable) things with words 158ii. Footnoting Performance: The America Play and Venus 161A wink to Mr. Lincolns pasteboard cutout 172Diggidy-diggidy-diggidy-dawg 1784 Writing Space: Beckett and Brecht 192i. Quad: Euclidean Dramaturgies 196ii. By Accepting This License 205iii. What Where: Brechtian Technologies 211Notes 216Works Cited 239Further Reading 258Index 261