Shakespeare and His Theatre Author:Gerald Eades Bentley Shakespeare as a practical man of the theatre holds center stage in these cogent and readable essays on the character and personnel of Shakespeare's acting company, the houses (the Globe and the Blackfriars) in which his plays were performed, Elizabethan stage practices and audiences, and other influential elements in the historical and prof... more »essional environment in which his genius operated.
It is Mr. Bentley's contention that "the popular tendency to concentrate on Shakespeare the poet, preparing his plays with constant consideration for the reader in the study, is misguided, an implies contradiction of all that we have been able to discover about his life and the texts of his plays." The author argues his thesis in cold common sense and with a wealth of fascinating - and convincing - detail.« less