| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥1,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥1,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In order to analyze the original staging of English Renaissance drama in general, about 150 plays were examined in British Library in London, and over 100 plays in the facsimile form in Japan, after careful checks of some databases and dictionaries of stage directions.
The present research focuses on the stage business of letter scenes and the uses of the stage posts, the trap door(s) and the balcony stage.
(1) In the letter scenes of Two Gentlemen of Verona , for instance, has many aspects in common with the same kind of scenes written by other writers such as Marlowe and Greene. The use of letters as properties was obviously encouraged by the contemporary fashion of letter writing, which were confirmed by my research on 16th-century manuals of letter writing and letter scenes of other Elizabethan dramatists in BL.
(2)Stage posts were occasionally used as signs for places and directions until 1600s; in 1610s, they provided the place where characters could hide themselves, or where instruments and people were fastened; later on, more elaborate, somewhat burlesque use of posts were invented, for example, as a partner for fencing practices.
(3) Trap doors have been usually associated with the hell, which is also the space below the stage. Indeed many examples are found where ghosts, devils or witches enter through trap doors, but the doors are as often used as the entrance to downstairs, sometimes to an underground cell without any connection to the hell. In comedies, especially, trap doors often refer to downstairs space physically. The signification of theatre spaces can be influenced by the genres of drama.
(4) Even when the use of the upper stage is instructed in the early edition of a play, given the particular theatres and halls the company could use for their performances, the upper stage could not been used in many cases.
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