Like Furnace: Sighing on the Shakespearean Stage
Edited book (chapter)
Chapter Title | Like Furnace: Sighing on the Shakespearean Stage |
---|---|
Book Chapter Category | Edited book (chapter) |
ERA Publisher ID | 2865 |
Book Title | Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance |
Authors | |
Author | Chalk, Darryl |
Editors | Kenny, Amy and Peterson, Kaara L. |
Page Range | 31-50 |
Series | Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine |
Chapter Number | 3 |
Number of Pages | 20 |
Year | 2021 |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Place of Publication | Switzerland |
ISBN | 9783030776176 |
9783030776183 | |
ISSN | 2634-6435 |
2634-6443 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77618-3_3 |
Web Address (URL) | https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-77618-3_3 |
Abstract | Sighs, sometimes accompanied by tears and groans, are everywhere in Shakespeare’s plays and yet have received almost no attention in scholarship on the passions and early modern theatre. References to sighing are often taken as a commonplace rather than as potential cues to embodied action or clues to a character’s emotional state and, yet, sighing had anatomical, humoral, spiritual, and pathological significances in early modern culture. Constant sighing was viewed as a key external symptom of melancholic afflictions like lovesickness. With such ideas in mind, Chalk explores the representation of sighing on the Shakespearean stage in relation to medical and philosophical writings on this respiratory phenomenon. Visceral, vital, non-verbal, and affective, sighing was more than merely metaphorical: its use in Shakespeare often signifies the physicality and theatricality of the passions as necessarily performative phenomena. |
Keywords | Shakespeare, sighing, humoralism, early modern actor, wellbeing, illness, lovesickness, history of emotions, melancholy, Renaissance drama, early modern theatre, Shakespearean stage |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 470504. British and Irish literature |
360403. Drama, theatre and performance studies | |
Public Notes | Files associated with this item cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions. |
Byline Affiliations | School of Creative Arts |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q6xw5/like-furnace-sighing-on-the-shakespearean-stage
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