'Celebrated executioner[s]' : Shakespearean oratory and space in mid-nineteenth century colonial Australia
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2012
Authors
Anae, N.
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AUSTRALASIAN DRAMA STUDIES, 2012; (60):81-101
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Examining Australian colonial re-readings of Shakespearean texts outside the formal realm of theatre productions offers a fascinating insight into the multiplicity of Victorian revisions and responses to Shakespeare as a literary form throughout the1850s and 1860s. The growth of dramatic readings in non-purpose built venues during the period represents an alteration of form significantly affecting colonial culture and the spaces and conditions in which alterations of form took place. Aside from purpose-built venues, other public spaces used for dramatic readings of Shakespearean texts included annexed rooms built on to, or adjacent to public houses and saloons, Town Halls, courthouses, showground buildings, schools, Masonic halls, and occasionally, albeit rarely, churches. This paper has two aims: to explore the variety of the non-purpose built social spaces in which re-readings of Shakespearean texts occurred during the mid-nineteenth-century; and, to examine the social and cultural shifts in attitudes to both the space, and Shakespearean texts, such re-readings motivated.
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Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, Theatre & Drama Program