PUBLIC LECTURE: Shakespeare, Women and Tears
|
|
| Shakespeare, Women and Tears : "Accompanied in our tears": Women, Shakespeare and sentiment in the eighteenth-century theatre |
Other events...
|
Abstract: This talk will examine the development of a sentimental response to theatre in the eighteenth century, particularly amongst women and particularly with regard to the staging of Shakespeare. Letter and diary accounts by female audience members frequently attest to them crying in the playhouse as they watched actors renowned for their emotional acting style (such as David Garrick) perform in adaptations of Shakespeare plays designed to augment the affective impact of the text. I will argue that the emphasis in these accounts on the shared nature of this emotional response with others in the audience enabled sentimental playgoing to function as an important form of affective community. The tears shed by female playgoers as they watched Shakespeare on stage therefore allowed women audience members to play a crucial role in the eighteenth-century cultural phenomena of sensibility and sociability.
| Speaker(s) |
Fiona Ritchie is an Early Career International Visiting Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. She is Associate Professor of Drama and Theatre in the Department of English at McGill University, Montreal. Her recent monograph Women and Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press) examines the part played by women in eighteenth-century bardolatry, examining the ways in which actresses, critics and playgoers responded to and shaped Shakespeare. She has also edited, with Peter Sabor, a collection of essays entitled Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (also published by Cambridge University Press). Her next project, funded by a five-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is a study of women and regional theatre in the long eighteenth century, which will investigate the working lives of actresses outside London, as well as women performing off-stage labour (for example as theatre managers). She is currently an Early Career International Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Emotions where she is exploring ideas of audience contagion and the gendering of emotion on the eighteenth-century stage.
|
| Location |
Webb Lecture Theatre, G21, Geology and Geography Building
|
|
| Contact |
Pam Bond
<[email protected]>
: 64883858
|
| URL |
http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/accompanied-in-our-tears-women,-shakespeare-and-sentiment-in-the-eighteenth-century-theatre.aspx?date=2014-11
|
| Start |
Wed, 19 Nov 2014 18:00
|
| End |
Wed, 19 Nov 2014 19:00
|
| Submitted by |
Pam Bond <[email protected]>
|
| Last Updated |
Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:50
|
| Included in the following Calendars: |
|
|
- Locations of venues on the Crawley and Nedlands campuses are
available via the Campus Maps website.
- Download this event as:
Text |
iCalendar
-
Mail this event:
|
