Inventions of the Skin - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture) by Andrea Stevens (Hardcover)

About the Book

Recovering a crucial grammar of theatrical representation, this book argues that the onstage embodiment of characters--not just the words written for them to speak--forms an important and overlooked aspect of stage representation.

Book Synopsis

Recovering a crucial grammar of theatrical representation, this book argues that the onstage embodiment of characters-not just the words written for them to speak-forms an important and overlooked aspect of stage representation.

From the Back Cover

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture Series Editor: Lorna Hutson These original interpretations of Renaissance culture focus on literary texts in English and in a range of vernacular languages. They also deal with the reception and transformation of the Greco-Roman literary, political and intellectual heritage. 'For anyone interested in the early modern theatrical representation of the body, its multiple transformations and the way paint enabled acting companies and dramatists to effect these transformations, Stevens' book is essential reading.' Farah Karim-Cooper, Head of Courses and Research, Shakespeare's Globe, London 'Stevens's sensitivity to the pervasiveness of cosmetics as a theatrical technology and a source of theatrical consciousness allows her to expose unthought of layers in familiar and unfamiliar plays alike. This book offers readers new and profound ways of thinking about theatricality itself as a source of identity.' Jeremy Lopez, University of Toronto Examines the painted body of the actor on the early modern stage Inventions of the Skin illuminates a history of the stage technology of body paint from its use within medieval cycle drama to its deployment as a special effect in the popular plays and court masques of the late 1630s. Organised as a series of studies, the four chapters of this book examine goldface and divinity in York's Corpus Christi play, with special attention to the pageant representing The Transfiguration of Christ; bloodiness in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including blood's unexpected role as a device for disguise in plays such as Look About You (Anon) and Shakespeare's Coriolanus; racial masquerade within seventeenth-century court performances and popular plays, from Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness to William Berkeley's The Lost Lady; and finally whiteface, death and 'stoniness' in Thomas Middleton's The Second Maiden's Tragedy and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Recovering a crucial grammar of theatrical representation, this book argues that the onstage embodiment of characters - not just the words written for them to speak - forms an important and overlooked aspect of stage representation. Andrea Stevens is Assistant Professor of English, Theatre, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Review Quotes

For anyone interested in the early modern theatrical representation of the body, its multiple transformations and the way paint enabled acting companies and dramatists to effect these transformations, Stevens' book is essential reading.-- "Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, Head of Courses and Research, Shakespeare's Globe, London"

Stevens's sensitivity to the pervasiveness of cosmetics as a theatrical technology and a source of theatrical consciousness allows her to expose unthought of layers in familiar and unfamiliar plays alike. This book offers readers new and profound ways of thinking about theatricality itself as a source of identity.-- "Professor Jeremy Lopez, University of Toronto"

About the Author

Andrea Stevens is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.