The Actor in the Script: Affective Strategies in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

Authors

William E. Gruber, Emory University

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

Irregular, contradictory, simultaneously individuals and ideal types, the characters of Renaissance drama have at last been made safe from the attacks of realist and formalist critics; but modern readers, for all that, still tend to overlook an essential distinction between Renaissance dramatic personae and their representations on stage. Many continue to write as if Tudor and Stuart actors vanished behind their roles, or as if the playwrights' illusions of character were always seamless.² The argument of this essay is that Renaissance modes of dramatic characterization-and hence the visual rhetoric of Renaissance drama-cannot fully be understood unless one sees that the whole notion of "character" may be complicated by the actors' presence.

Recommended Citation

Gruber, William E. (1985) "The Actor in the Script: Affective Strategies in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra," Comparative Drama: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol19/iss1/3