Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama

Review
"[T]he collection makes a valuable contribution to the study of early modern drama and to an understanding of the uses and variety of materialist methodologies. Not only are the methodologies set out clearly, but their use in specific instances provides helpful models for those who are pursuing similar lines of research." M.G. Aune, North Dakota State University, Sixteenth Century Journal

"An outstanding anthology which achieves a newly energized convergence between cultural materialism and theater/performance history. [...] The book's rich essays develop a range of possible materialist engagements with the materiality of stage properties." Studies in English Literature

Book Description
This collection of essays explores the economic and dramatic implications of stage properties in early modern English drama. Written by a team of distinguished scholars, the essays explore the forms of production, circulation and exchange that brought sacred garments, household furnishings, pawned objects and even false beards onto the stage.


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In a series of provocative essays, the volume's contributors offer valuable evidence and insight into the modes of production, circulation and exchange that brought such diverse properties as sacred garments, household furnishings, pawned objects and even false beards onto the stage. Departing from previous scholarship, which has focused solely on the symbolic or iconographic aspects of props, these essays explore their material dimensions, and in particular, their status as a special form of property. In the process, the volume reflects upon what the material history of stage props may tell us about the changing demographics, modes of production and consumption, and notions of property that contributed to the rise of the commercial theater in London.


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