Play and the Thing

Matthew D. Wagner is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the Guildford School of Acting, University of Surrey. He has written widely on Theatre and Temporality and on Shakespearean dramaturgy and performance practices. Previous publications include co-editing a special edition of the journal Shakespeare on Experiencing Time in Shakespearean Theatre (2019), co-editing the book collection Performance Phenomenology: To the Thing Itself (2019), co-authoring The Dramaturgy of the Door (2019, with Stuart Andrews) and Shakespeare, Theatre and Time (2012).

• List of FiguresAcknowledgements1. Of Plays and Things - A Phenomenology of Shakespearean Theatre2. Of Shakespearean BodiesCoda I. The Winter’s Tale: Making Statues Move3. Of Shakespearean ObjectsCoda II. The Winter’s Tale – ‘This seal’d up Oracle’4. Of Shakespearean SpacesCoda III. The Winter’s Tale – The Coast of Bohemia5. Of a Few Other ThingsReferencesNotesIndex

The Play and the Thing is an exuberant and exacting phenomenological reading of Shakespearean theatre. At every turn, Matthew Wagner urges readers to think with renewed wonder and openness about how we encounter and experience the ‘things’ of Shakespeare’s plays. The book's phenomenological approach to bodies, spaces and objects invites us to see how they appear on their own terms as ‘wondrous strange’, like the Ghost in Hamlet and Hermione's statue in The Winter’s Tale. An absorbing, original book on Shakespeare and an exciting addition to the field of phenomenology and theatre.