Thomas Postlewait

The Criteria for Periodization in Theatre History

The concept of periodization, in its normative if somewhat misleading usage, delineates one aspect of history, the condition of stability (or identity), in relation to another aspect, the process of change (or difference). These two aspects of human events, though dynamically interrelated and mutually defining, are separated in historical study for descriptive and analytical purposes. The continuous flow of time is organized into heuristic categories, episodes of our creation. As such, periods are interpretative ideas of order that regulate meaning.

The idea of the “political” in our histories of theatre: Texts, contexts, periods, and problems

The idea of the “political” provides one way to construct the context of a dramatic text and a theatrical event. By this means, theatre scholars identify the conditions within a period that supposedly shape or control texts and events. Yet despite general agreement that political factors influence theatrical events, our models of analysis are often inadequate. An examination of current scholarship on the English Renaissance theatre reveals some of the methods and problems facing theatre scholars today.

The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. By Marvin Carlson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002; pp. 216.

The tradition of Western drama has its ghosts, from the spectral characters of Darius in The Persians and Clytemnestra in The Eumenides to the attending ghost in The Spanish Tragedy and the ghostly voice in the “all grey” room of Beckett’s Ghost Trio . In turn, some non-Western traditions of theatre, such as Japanese noh , insist upon the primacy of ghosts, whose stories are recounted on stage. Perhaps, from the perspective of our modern world, such characters are anomalous devices of the theatre. Yet Marvin Carlson insists in The Haunted Stage that we understand them as emblematic signs of how all drama and theatre are organized and experienced.