Whereas previous studies of poverty and early modern theatre have concentrated on England and the criminal rogue; Poverty and Charity in Early Modern Theatre and Performance takes a transnational approach; which reveals a greater range of attitudes and charitable practices regarding the poor than state poor laws and rogue books suggest. Close study of German and Latin beggar catalogues; popular songs performed in Italian piazzas; the Paduan actor-playwright Ruzante; the commedia dellrsquo;arte in both Italy and France; and Shakespeare demonstrate how early modern theatre and performance could reveal the gap between official policy and actual practices regarding the poor.The actor-based theatre and performance traditions examined in this study; which persistently explore felt connections between the itinerant actor and the vagabond beggar; evoke the poor through complex and variegated forms of imagination; thought; and feeling. Early modern theatre does not simply reflect the social ills of hunger; poverty; and degradation; but works them through the forms of poverty; involving displacement; condensation; exaggeration; projection; fictionalization; and marginalization. As the critical mass of medieval charity was put into question; the beggar-almsgiver encounter became more like a performance. But it was not a performance whose script was prewritten as the inevitable exposure of the dissembling beggar. Just as peoplersquo;s attitudes toward the poor could rapidly change from skepticism to sympathy during famines and times of acute need; fictions of performance such as Edgarrsquo;s dazzling impersonation of a mad beggar in Shakespearersquo;s King Lear could prompt responses of sympathy and even radical calls for economic redistribution.
#2635617 in eBooks 2015-08-31 2015-08-31File Name: B014KS6N7G
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