General Overview
Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare Observed: Studies In Performance On Stage
and Screen. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. While his book is not
a comprehensive history, it is a methodological model. Crowl is perhaps
the only performance-oriented critics to take seriously the influence of
now-classic films of Shakespearean plays on the process of modern production
and on the experience of audience members.
Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy
in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Levine's
second chapter, "William Shakespeare in America," is a remarkable
account of a shift in the cultural status of Shakespeare from Eighteenth
to nineteenth century America.
Odell, George C. D. Shakespeare From Betterton To Irving. 2 Volumes.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. (Reprinted New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1966.) This is an astonishingly useful resource that covers in detail
stage history from the Restoration to 1920, mostly in England- my starting
point for anything not covered by individual editions of the plays.
Shattuck, Charles H. "Shakespeare's Plays in Performance From 1660
to the Present." Pages 1799-1825 in The Riverside Shakespeare.
Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. A fine introduction
to the subject by a noted scholar.
Shattuck, Charles H. Shakespeare on The American Stage. 2 vols. Washington:
Folger Books, 1976 and 1987. Most Shakespearean stage history privileges,
unsurprisingly, British over American or European productions. Shattuck's
books on American Shakespeare do much to fight that tendency.
Speaight, Robert. Shakespeare on the Stage. Boston: Little Brown,
1973. A basic introduction, with many illustrations.
Trewin, J. C. Shakespeare on The English Stage 1900-1964. London:
Barrie and Rockliff, 1964.
Wells, Stanley ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies.
Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1986. Several essays on both pre- and post-1660
stage history.
Winter, William. Shakespeare On The Stage. 3 vols. New York: Moffat,
Yard & Co., 1915. Known to some theater historians as "Weeping
Willy Winter" for the sometimes bizarre tone of his reviews. A New
York critic who spent a lot of time in London. The volumes contain extended
essays on the histories of individual plays. These chapters should be read,
but with a salt shaker handy.
A. Restoration Shakespeare
Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare,
Adaptation and Authorship, 1660-1769. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1992.
A brilliant recent look at Restoration and post-Restoration revision of
Shakespeare.
Spencer, Christopher, ed. Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965. The only modern editions of
many of these plays. Expensively priced, but useful. (See Section II.B.
for a modern edition of Davenant's Macbeth, not contained in this volume).
Spencer, Hazelton. Shakespeare Improved: The Restoration Versions in
Quarto and on the Stage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927.
The first-and for many years the only-account of the Restoration revisions
of Shakespeare. Notoriously bardolatrous, but still containing a lot of
information. See Dobson for a more recent, theoretically savvy, update.
back to table of contents