Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger

Joanne Rochester, Assistant Professor of English, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

• Contents: Introduction; 'What do wee acte to day?': plays within the play: The Roman Actor; 'For your sport / You shall see a masterpiece': masques-within in The Picture, The Guardian and The City Madam; 'Speculations / On cheating pictures': visual art as dramatic inset: The Picture; Conclusion: 'Make your howse the stage on which weel act / Our comick sceane': trials and paradramatic scenes; Bibliography; Index.

'... a valuable work. Rochester has read widely in studies both of the period and of the plays, and she supplements her analyses of Massinger's works with useful and interesting discussions of - for example - the significance of the masque, or of paintings and other kinds of visual art, in Caroline culture.' Review of English Studies ’... hugely engaging [...] and advances welcome new ideas about Massinger’s embeddedness within Caroline cultural practices.’ Comparative Drama 'This [is a] well-researched book... [Rochester] meets her objective with elegance and eloquence, and has done her subject good service. Each of her chapters treats a distinct form of inset art, while her conclusion offers an assessment of the variations in Massinger’s embedded, inserted, or attached playlets, paradramas, and trial scenes.' Renaissance Quarterly 'This is a stimulating book...' Notes and Queries