Preliminaries; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; CHAPTER 1 "As it was acted to great applause": Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences and the physicality of response; CHAPTER 2 Meat, magic, and metamorphosis: on puns and wordplay; CHAPTER 3 Managing the aside; CHAPTER 4 Exposition, redundancy, action; CHAPTER 5 Disorder and convention; CHAPTER 6 Drama of disappointment: character and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy; CHAPTER 7 Laughter and narrative in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy; CHAPTER 8 Epilogue: Jonson and Shakespeare; Plays and editions cited
Summary
In this comprehensive survey of the diverse, theatrically vital formal conventions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Lopez proposes that understanding the potential for theatrical failure - the way playwrights anticipated it and audiences responded to it - is crucial for understanding how the drama succeeded on the stage
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-233) and index
