Kent Cartwright

Shakespeare's dextrous comedy of two twin masters and two twin servants continually mistaken for one another is both farce and more than farce. The Comedy of Errorsexamines the interplay between personal and commercial relationships, and the breakdown of social order that follows the disruption of identity. As well as detailed on-page commentary notes, this new edition has a long, illustrated introduction exploring the play's performance and crtitical history, as well as its place in the comic tradition from Classical to modern times.

The volume (536 pp.) contains 31 original essays by established and emerging scholars, with equal attention given to the early Tudor and the Elizabethan aspects of sixteenth-century literature.  The volume features contributions from several members of the department:  an essay by Theresa Coletti and Gail McMurray Gibson (Davidson College) on "The Tudor Origins of Medieval Drama"; an essay by Kimberly Anne Coles on "West of England:  The Irish Spectre in Tamburlaine"; and a Tudor chronology compiled by Kathleen Bossert. This volume presents students with a valuable historical and cultural context to the period. The Companion discusses key texts and representative subjects, and explores issues including international influences, religious change, travel and New World discoveries, women's writing, technological innovations, medievalism, print culture, and developments in music and in modes of seeing and reading.

Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double investigates the poetics of audience response. Approaching tragedy through the rhythms of spectatorial engagement and detachment ("aesthetic distance"), Kent Cartwright provides a performance-oriented and phenomenological perspective. Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double analyzes the development of the tragic audience as it oscillates between engagement—an immersion in narrative, character, and physical action—and detachment—a consciousness of its own comparative judgments, its doubts, and of acting and theatricality. Cartwright contends that the spectator emerges as a character implied and acted upon by the play. He supports his theory with close readings of individual plays from the perspective of a particular element of spectatorial response: the carnivalesque qualities of Romeo and Juliet; the rhythm of similitude, displacement, and wonder in the audience's relationships to Hamlet; aesthetic distance as scenic structure in Othello; the influence of secondary characters and ensemble acting on the Quarto King Lear; and spectatorship as action itself in Antony and Cleopatra.

English drama at the beginning of the sixteenth century was allegorical, didactic and moralistic; but by the end of the century theatre was censured as emotional and even immoral. How could such a change occur? Cartwright suggests that some theories of early Renaissance theatre - particularly the theory that Elizabethan plays are best seen in the tradition of morality drama - need to be reconsidered. He proposes instead that humanist drama of the sixteenth century is theatrically exciting - rather than literary, elitist and dull as it has often been seen - and socially significant, and he attempts to integrate popular and humanist values rather than setting them against each other. Taking as examples the plays of Marlowe, Heywood, Lyly and Greene, as well as many by lesser-known dramatists, the book demonstrates the contribution of humanist drama to the theatrical vitality of the sixteenth century.