Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse » (New Edition)

Focusing on the clown Will Kemp, this book shows how Shakespeare and other dramatists wrote specific roles as vehicles for him.

List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; Note;

1. The Vice: from Mankind to Merchant of Venice;
2. Tarlton: the first 'clown';
3. Kemp: a biography;
4. Kemp's jigs;
5. 'The clown' in playhouse terminology;
6. The roles of Kemp 'the clown';
7. The genesis of the text: two explorations;
8. The conventions governing Kemp's scripted roles;
9. Falstaff;
10. Robert Armin;
11. William Kemp and Harry Hunks: play as game, actor as sign - a theoretical conclusion; Appendix; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index.