Real Places in Imaginary Spaces: Architecture, Theatre and the World of Jonson and Shakespeare
Stephen Orgel
Inigo Jones, Design for a Knight's Costume at a Masque
The architect Inigo Jones’s settings for the fantastic masques he designed for the Stuart court often have a specific, recognizable topography, anchoring what Bacon called toys, Shakespeare called vanities, Samuel Daniel called punctilos of dreams, in a very solid social and architectural reality. Increasingly, moreover, the masque façades are buildings designed by Jones himself.
This lecture, illustrated with slides of Jones’s architectural and stage designs, discusses the intersection of theatre and architecture at a critical moment in the development of the Renaissance stage.
Stephen Orgel is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. He has published widely on the political and historical aspects of Renaissance literature, theatre, and art history.
His most recent books are Spectacular Performances (Manchester/ Palgrave, 2011), Imagining Shakespeare (Palgrave, 2003), and The Authentic Shakespeare (Routledge, 2002).
He has edited Ben Jonson’s masques, Christopher Marlowe’s poems and translations, the Oxford Authors John Milton, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale in The Oxford Shakespeare, and several novels by Trollope and Edith Wharton in the Oxford World’s Classics. He is the general editor of the New Pelican Shakespeare.
Date: Wednesday, 11 September 2013, 6.30pm
Venue: Public Lecture Theatre, Old Arts Building, The University of Melbourne
Free but registration required – follow this link to register