philosophy and theatre an introduction

they do so in the process of depicting something that happened: the defeat of the Persians at Salamis, the murder of Caesar. Thi ...

grounded. Instead, he says, although this reputation is probably deserved, if we were to treat actors with more respect, then pe ...

Finally, we must distinguish the history play from the counterfactual play. Suppose someone writes a play about the conspiracy a ...

In society, unless they are buffoons, Ifind them polished, caustic, and cold; proud, light of behaviour, spendthrifts, self-inte ...

We’ve already explored one problem with Aristotle’s claim about theatre: namely, that it’s difficult to say just which universal ...

So, for example, wefind Pinciano claiming that actors are necessary for the theatre and so, because we like theatre, we might as ...

history book; don’t watch plays. Defenders of this last view, if they are not mad, are not suggesting that there is no connectio ...

typically speaking, if the play is to be of any interest at all, there have to besomecharacters who are, to put it mildly, not t ...

It’s pretty clear that people can learn something about Rome from Julius Caesar–indeed, I doubt that anyone would really deny th ...

Deception and inauthenticity Once he’sfinished setting out the general reputation of the actor, Rousseau gives his view of what ...

commitments within this apparently harmonious ethical life: Creon is associated with man-made law (i.e. human rather than divine ...

accordance with this genuine centre or essence–who seems to be nothing other than he really, essentially is. This presents us wi ...

Rome: Caesar and Brutusarethe turbulent times in the history of Rome; historical events and historicalfigures are the central su ...

excesses of emotion that she wouldn’t leave her dressing room at all. In fact, the successful actress is precisely the one who d ...

he explicitly praises Shakespeare as better history (i.e. better at representing specific historical conflicts) than Schiller, e ...

claim. It alsofits with Diderot’s claim about actors studying us to learn about our emotional responses. If emotions were a matt ...

not just a question of having to‘inject the spirit of his period into the ancient world’, of the playwright explaining and makin ...

characters; if, at the end of the performance, the deception is all on the side of the audience and the actor is only weary as a ...

(historia), which means research or investigation, suggesting‘history’in the second of these two senses. This is the word that i ...

If this is a criticism of the acting profession, then it is a much milder one than those of Plato and Rousseau (as Diderot no do ...