Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion : Playhouses and Playgoers in Elizabethan England

__**A new account of playgoing in Elizabethan England, in which audiences participated as much as performers.**__ What if going to a play in Elizabethan England was more like attending a football match than a Broadway show—or playing in one? In __Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion__, William N. West proposes a new account of the kind of participatory entertainment expected by the actors and the audience during the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. West finds surprising descriptions of these theatrical experiences in the figurative language of early modern players and playgoers—including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting. Such words and ways of speaking are still in use today, but their earlier meanings, like that of theater itself, are subtly, importantly different from our own. Playing was not confined to the actors on the stage but filled the playhouse, embracing audiences and performers in collaborative experiences that did not belong to any one alone but to the assembled, various crowd. What emerged in playing was a kind of thinking and feeling distributed across persons and times that were otherwise distinct. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears—these and more gave verbal shape to the physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption. "What if at night at the theaters in Elizabethan England more closely resembled attending a rugby match than sitting in a dark, silent audience, passively witnessing the action on the stage, or closer to going to a rock concert than sitting in front of a large or small screen, quietly and distantly absorbing a film or television drama? In this book, West proposes a new account of what happened in the playhouses of Shakespeare's time, and the kind of participatory entertainment expected by both the actors and the audience. Combining the precision of a philologist and the imagination of a philosopher, West performs careful readings of premodern figures of speech--including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting--still in use today, but whose meanings for Elizabethan players, playgoers, and writers have diverged in subtle ways in our era. Playing itself was not restricted to the confines of the actors on the stage but pertained just as much to the audience in a collaborative rather than individualized theater experience, more corporeal, tactile, and active, rather than purely receptive and visual. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears--these and more contributed to both the verbal and physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption,all within the confines of the playhouse. West's account of the experience of the playhouse shows more affinity--and continuity--with more raucous, unruly medieval drama than previous literary critics have allowed. It will be of interest to a wide audience, actors, directors, and scholars included"-- Provided by publisher "What if going to a play in Elizabethan England was more like attending a football match than a Broadway show—or playing in one? In Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion, William N. West proposes a new account of the kind of participatory entertainment expected by the actors and the audience during the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. West finds surprising descriptions of these theatrical experiences in the figurative language of early modern players and playgoers—including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting. Such words and ways of speaking are still in use today, but their earlier meanings, like that of theater itself, are subtly, importantly different from our own. Playing was not confined to the actors on the stage but filled the playhouse, embracing audiences and performers in collaborative experiences that did not belong to any one alone but to the assembled, various crowd. What emerged in playing was a kind of thinking and feeling distributed across persons and times that were otherwise distinct. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears—these and more gave verbal shape to the physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption"--Publisher