Still Shakespeare and the Photography of Performance

Examines both theatrical and staged art photographs, demonstrating their role in fixing and unfixing Shakespearean authority.

Sally Barnden (Author)

9781108487931, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 December 2019

260 pages, 34 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.55 kg

'… Shakespeare and the Photography of Performance is a fascinating book for this photoshopping age … Still Shakespeare offers an enlightening and engaging introduction to the study of Shakespeare photography that should appeal to performance historians and theatre creators alike.' Daniel Yabut, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies

Still Shakespeare and the Photography of Performance examines the place of photography in the reception of the Shakespeare canon since the invention of the camera, looking at how photographic images have shaped perceptions of historicity, performance, and Shakespearean character, and how their dissemination has affected Shakespearean authority. Barnden reveals how photography has conditioned the reception of Shakespeare's works in two key ways. Firstly, as a form of performance documentation, photographs shape the way individual performances are remembered and their positioning in relation to traditional and iconoclastic interpretations of the text. Secondly, photographs are vehicles of Shakespearean iconography, encouraging certain compositions and interpretations. Exploring both theatrical and staged art photographs, Still Shakespeare demonstrates the role of photography as a contributor to the calcification of Shakespearean quotation, advertising, and iconography, and to the attrition of the relationship between image and text whereby images become attached to narratives far beyond their original context.

Introduction: leave not a rack behind
Part I. Photographing Performers: 1. Liveness, documentation, and the RSC's dreams, 1954–77
2. Photographing the past in the theatre of Charles Kean
3. Julia Margaret Cameron, sympathetic Shakespeare and photographic afterlives
Part II. Iconography, Photography, and Hamlet: 4. 'Too much of water': Ophelia, photography, dissolution
5. Poor Yorick: the photograph as memento mori
Epilogue
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Media studies [JFD], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Shakespeare plays [DDS], Theatre direction & production [ANF], Photography & photographs [AJ]