performance criticism
performance criticism,in Shakespeare studies, a term for the kind of analysis of Shakespeare's plays which considers them as scripts only fully realized in performance, rather than solely as literary works to be read on the page.
Despite the anti-theatrical perspective of many 18th-century editors, and the dominant Romantic and 19th-century view of Shakespeare as a poet whose works only happened to take the form of plays, this has always been a strong element in Shakespeare criticism (exemplified, for example, by Hazlitt, and by professional theatre reviewers from Leigh Hunt onwards), but it has been newly prominent since the mid-20th century, as the academic study of Shakespearian drama has extended from the library and the classroom and into the theatre. The amount of space which major editions of the plays such as the Arden devote to considerations of performance (both in Shakespeare's time and since) has increased immensely since the 1970s, for...
[The entire page is 319 words long]