The Absence of America on the Early Modern Stage
[electronic resource].
Description
- Language(s)
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English
- Published
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2008.
- Summary
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invoked by a play and the world outside that play. America emerges most often at these points of intersection between stage and audience, between playing-company and playgoer: in plays which feature Christian Europeans disguising themselves as Indians, in plays which are set in London or on unnamed, unknown islands, and even in plays whose plots seem to have little to do with America.
accounts, overseas trading company documents, and maps and other cartographic/geographical records. This interdisciplinary approach reveals that, although drama did not represent America directly, it appropriated and circulated rumours about what was occurring in the transatlantic colonies, much to the chagrin of their promoters, and by so doing it disseminated mockery and concern about English activity in the New World. Renaissance Drama perpetuated the idea that Atlantic trade was unwise or the purview of the corrupt; it associated colonists and investors with excessive wealth, materialism, lust, corruption, and greed; it branded the project of converting the natives as a failure and a folly. That America was articulated indirectly did not lessen its impact. Renaissance drama's active engagement of its audience's imagination meant that what might now be considered at the periphery was the point of contact between the world
Renaissance drama’s response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration. No play performed before the closure of the theatres in 1642 is set in the Americas. A handful represents Native American characters. Few plays treat colonization as central to the plot. Nevertheless, advocates of colonialism bemoaned how the stage treated transatlantic enterprise, and proclaimed London’s playing companies to be its enemies. In order to understand the nature of the criticisms made by colonialist supporters, as well as the attitudes of players, playwrights, and playgoers towards English expansionism in the New World, this study juxtaposes a number of sites of cultural performance: playhouse drama, court masques, civic pageants, propaganda tracts and sermons, travel
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