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Keir Elam
Alma Mater Professor, University of Bologna
Keir Elam is Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna, where he has served as Head of the Department of Modern Languages, Deputy Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies and chief referee for the evaluation of research in the Humanities. His volumes include Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (Routledge), Shakespeare’s Universe of Discourse: Language-games in the Comedies (Cambridge University Press), the Arden Twelfth Night (3rd Series, 2008) and Shakespeare’s Pictures (2017, Arden Shakespeare). He has also published numerous articles on the theory of drama and performance, Shakespeare and early modern drama, Beckett, and contemporary British and European theatre. He is general editor of the bilingual Shakespeare series for Rizzoli, co-editor of the Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies series (Routledge), and is on the editorial board of several journals, including Shakespeare Bulletin and Revue Beckettiana.
The Dead Shadow: Portraiture, Murder and Female Agency in the Early Modern Dumb Show
The early modern dumb show was considered a mode of ‘portraiture’, i.e. a mixed-media event in which the iconographic dimension prevailed. It constituted a performative mode quite distinct from the ‘main’ play, being based on the language of gesture, posture and movement, and often including elaborate stage properties, usually symbolic but sometimes realistic. It called on special actorial skills, although we know little about the actual performance of the pantomime. Perhaps for this reason, the dumb show has received relatively little critical attention. Among the issues largely ignored in the critical literature is the question of women’s agency in the pantomime, despite the fact that female roles are often central in the genre. Dumb shows present opposing figurations of womanhood: on the one hand, a transgressive and often violent mode of agency, and on the other a more passive form of subordination, often involving inner suffering. Transgressive agency is associated with adultery, incest and above all murder, especially in the classical tragedies performed in private theatres — often before the Queen — such as Gorboduc (1561) and Jocasta (1565). A later play performed for Elizabeth, The Misfortunes of Arthur (1588), centred on adultery and familial warfare, includes a pantomime showing affective inwardness, where the suffering of women is expressed through the gesture of wringing hands.