“More things in heaven and earth”: Materiality and the Stage

This article provides an outline of some key recent developments in the study of the materiality of Shakespeare’s stage, taking that term to refer to writing sensitive to theatre as performance – as a located medium, anchored in a particular place and moment in time, employing the properties of bodies, gestures, things and spaces in relation to language. Three main areas are explored: the staging of objects, research into the materiality of stage space, and the influence of ideas of embodiment on our understanding of the holistic experience of plays as events produced by those on and off the stage. In the context of these three areas, issues of skill and lived theatrical experience are addressed, and questions of evidence and disciplinary collaboration are raised. The

essay ends with a brief discussion of the possibilities that materiality offers for intervention in the tensions between historicity and presentism in Shakespeare studies.