Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre - Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies

In this selection of research articles Butterworth focuses on investigation of the practical and technical means by which early English theatre, from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, was performed. Matters of staging for both ''pageant vehicle'' and ''theatre-in-the-round'' are described and analysed to consider their impact on playing by players, expositors, narrators and prompters. All these operators also functioned to promote the closely aligned disciplines of pyrotechnics and magic (legerdemain or sleight of hand) which also influence the nature of the presented theatre.

The sixteen chapters form four clearly identified parts-staging, playing, pyrotechnics and magic-and drawing on a wealth of primary source material, Butterworth encourages the reader to rediscover and reappreciate the actors, magicians, wainwrights and wheelwrights, pyrotechnists, and (in modern terms) the special effects people and event managers who brought these early texts to theatrica