Interruptions In Early Modern English Drama

"From the Ghost's appearance in Hamlet to Celia's frightful speech in Volpone, interruptions are an overlooked linguistic and dramatic form that delineates the balance of power with a scene.This book analyses interruptions as a specific form in dramatic literature, arguing how these everyday occurrences when transformed into aesthetic phenomena reveal the connections among characters, between actor and audience, and between text and reader. To interrupt, both on stage and off, is to wrest power. Some vie for that power from a place of little authority, asserting their importance, while others assert self-assured prerogatives. While sociologists and linguists have studied interruptions in quotidian occurrences, literary and performance scholars have overlooked their aesthetic uses. Focusing on the works of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Fletcher, Michael Wagoner considers early modern drama as an exemplary, influential moment of dramatic output. This study examines interruptions that occur through the use of punctuation and stage directions, as well as through larger forms such as conventions and dramaturgy. Studying interruptions may indicate aspects of authorial style, emphasizing a playwright's use and control of a text and its implications and expectations. Exploring relative power dynamics pushes readers and audiences to reconsider key plays and characters, providing new considerations of the relationships between Othello and Iago or Macbeth and the Ghost of Banquo. Interruptions, as a form on the stage, codify and expose these balances and imbalances of power."--