Reading in and of Shakespeare

Authors

Lois Potter University of Delaware

Abstract

Cluster: “Shakespeare Readings, Societies, and Forums.” Edited by Matt Kozusko, Christy Desmet, and Robert Sawyer.

Drawing on early modern to contemporary practices, this essay explores the dynamics of Shakespearean play readings. Dramatization of the reading of letters in early modern plays, for instance, suggests that the act of reading functions rhetorically to allow one person (the reader) to experience a situation from the perspective of another (the letter writer) or, in more devious ways, to falsify the voice and ethos of the letter writer. Historically, many readings have been amateur productions, aimed at improving and entertaining the readers. Readings by professional companies, by contrast, can be used to evaluate plays for future production or to present inexpensively unfamiliar plays that could not be produced as stage performances. In either case, the assumption of "voice" in the act of reading continues to attract participants, a sign that the unpredictability and power of this largely unexplored art form deserves further attention.

Author Biography

Lois Potter, University of Delaware

Lois Potter is Ned B. Allen Professor of English at the University of Delaware. Her major publications have been on Early Modern literature and theatrical history. She is author of A Preface to Milton (1971, rev. 1986), Secret Rites and Secret Writing (1989), and the volume on Othello in the University of Manchester Press's Shakespeare in Performance series. She also edited The Two Noble Kinsmen for the Arden Shakespeare, and is editor and co-editor of two collections of essays on Robin Hood. Her current project is a critical biography of Shakespeare for a Blackwell series. Her numerous articles include a personal account of her experience as organizer of play readings, published in Shakespeare Bulletin 22.1 (Spring 2004). She is also a frequent theater reviewer.