Performing Gods in Classical Antiquity and the Age of Shakespeare (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception)

"The gods have much to tell us about performance. When human actors portray deities onstage, such divine epiphanies reveal not only the complexities of mortals playing gods but also the nature of theatrical spectacle itself. The very impossibility of rendering the gods in all their divine splendor in a truly convincing way lies at the intersection of divine power and the power of the theater. This book pursues these dynamics on the stages of ancient Athens and Rome as well on those of Renaissance England to shed new light on theatrical performance. The authors reveal how gods appear onstage both to astound and to dramatize the very machinations by which theatrical performance operates. Offering an array of case studies featuring both canonical and lesser-studied texts, this volume discusses work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Plautus as well as Beaumont, Heywood, Jonson, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. This book uniquely brings together the joint perspectives of two experts on classical and Renaissance drama. This volume will appeal to students and enthusiasts of literature, classics, theater, and performance studies"-- Provided by publisher Cover page 1 Halftitle page 2 Series page 3 Title page 6 Copyright page 7 Contents 8 Illustrations 9 Acknowledgments 10 A Note on the Text 11 Introduction: The Gods Take Stage 12 Reception and Theatricality 15 Divinity and Performativity 18 The Scope of This Study 24 Overview of the chapters 25 1 Approaching Divinity 30 1. Gods Create (Dis)order Th rough Speech 31 2. Gods Feed Human Fantasies of Control 36 3. Gods Offer Humans the Fantasy of Control, Only to Take It Away 41 4. Gods Are Both Force and Counterforce 43 5. Gods Claim Their Realness by Demanding Disbelief 45 6. Gods Embody the Challenges of Dramatic Mimesis 46 7. Gods Reveal the Humans Behind the Supernatural Effects 50 8. Gods Embody the Potential for the Immortality of Art 54 2 Under the Actor’s Spell: Audiences in Euripides’ Helen and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus 58 Helen, Mimesis, and Divinity in Archaic and Early Classical Imaginations 60 Supernatural Spectacle in Euripides’ Helen 63 Helen on the Renaissance Stage 68 The Stage as a Space of Conjuration 71 Helen, from Euripides to Marlowe via Lucian 75 3 An Actor Ascends: Status and Identity in Plautus’ Amphitruo and the Court Masque 78 Becoming a Goddess 81 Acting as Artificial Life 85 Jupiter Made Flesh 88 Comic Conventions with Divine Force 94 Zeus on the Greek Stage 97 Shakespeare’s Jupiter and Social Transformation 100 4 Authoring Gods in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Shakespeare’s Hamlet 104 Deities as Dramatists, Dramatists as Deities 105 Orestes’ Divine Mandate 106 Performing Justice in the Agamemnon 108 The Disappearing Mother and the Epiphany of Athena 113 The Gods Losing Grip: Hamlet and the Waning Power of the Father 115 The Friend as Author and as Audience 121 Conclusion: Hamlet and Other Actors as Dramatic Machines 125 5 To Die Is Human, To Act Is Divine 128 Far From the Gods 129 Approaching Divinity 132 Of Masks and Mortals 135 Mortal Characters, Immortal Roles 137 Immortalized Dramatists 141 Afterword: Entertaining Gods in Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses 150 Notes 160 Bibliography 188 Index 206 Introduction: From Olympus to the theater -- 1. On masks and mortals -- 2. The spells actors cast -- 3. Deities giving direction: dramatists ex Machina -- 4. The twilight of the gods -- Conclusion: Gods in absentia -- Afterword: Contemporary resurrections