Shakespeare and Character brings together leading scholars in theory, literary criticism, and performance studies in order to redress a serious gap in Shakespeare studies and to put character back at the centre of our understanding of Shakespeare's achievement as an artist and thinker.

PAUL YACHNIN is Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Chair of the English Department at McGill University, Canada, and Director of the Shakespeare and Performance Research Team and the Making Publics Project. His books are Stage-Wrights (1997); The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare's England (2001, with Anthony Dawson); and Shakespeare and the Cultures of Performance (2008, with Patricia Badir). He is an editor of Oxford Complete Works of Thomas Middleton. Work-in-progress includes an edition of Richard II and a book-length study, Shakespeare and the Social Thing: Making Publics in the Renaissance Theatre.
 
JESSICA SLIGHTS is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of English at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has published on and lectured about various aspects of early modern literature and culture, and her work has appeared in English Studies in Canada, Studies in Philology and Studies in English Literature. She is currently preparing an edition of Othello for ISE/Broadview Press.

 

Contents
Preface
Notes on Contributors
Introduction--P.Yachnin and J.Slights
PART I: THEORY
Confusing Shakespeare's Characters with Real People: Reflections on Reading in Four Questions--M.Bristol
The Reality of Fictive Cinematic Characters--T.Ponech
Character as Dynamic Identity: From Fictional Interaction Script to Performance--W.Dodd
PART II: HISTORY
Personnage: History, Philology, Performance--A.G.Bourassa
The Properties of Character in King Lear--J.Berg
Embodied Intersubjectivity and the Creation of Early Modern Character--L.Lieblein
PART III: PERFORMANCE
Metatheater and the Performance of Character in The Winter's Tale--P.Yachnin and M.W.Selkirk
Character, Agency and the Familiar Actor--A.J.Hartley
The Actor-Character in 'Secretly Open' Action: Doubly Encoded Personation on Shakespeare's Stage--R.Weimann
PART IV: THEATRICAL PERSONS
Is Timon a Character?--A.Dawson
When is a bastard not a bastard? Character in King John--C.Slights
Arming Cordelia: Character and Performance--S.Werner
Bibliography
Index