Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: conjunctures and concepts -- 1 Performance and authority in Hamlet (1603) -- 2 A new agenda for authority -- The ''low and ignorant'' crust of corruption -- Towards a circulation of authority in the theatre -- Players, printers, preachers: distraction in authority -- 3 Pen and voice: versions of doubleness -- ''Frivolous jestures'' vs. matter of ''worthiness'' (Tamburlaine) -- Bifold authority in Troilus and Cressida -- ''Unworthy scaffold'' for ''so great an object'' (Henry V) -- 4 Playing with a difference -- To ''disfigure, or to present'' (A Midsummer Night's Dream) -- To ''descant'' on difference and deformity (Richard III) -- The ''self-resembled show'' -- Presentation, or the performant function -- 5 Histories in Elizabethan performance -- Disparity in mid-Elizabethan theatre history -- Reforming ''a whole theatre of others'' (Hamlet) -- From common player to excellent actor -- Differentiation, exclusion, withdrawal -- 6 Hamlet and the purposes of playing -- Renaissance writing and common playing -- Unworthy antics in the glass of fashion -- ''When in one line two crafts directly meet'' -- (Word)play and the mirror of representation -- 7 Space (in)dividable: locus and platea revisited -- Space as symbolic form: the locus -- The open space: provenance and function -- Locus and platea in Macbeth -- Banqueting in Timon of Athens -- 8 Shakespeare's endings: commodious thresholds -- Epilogues vs. closure -- Ends of postponement: holiday into workaday -- Thresholds to memory and commodity -- Liminality: cultural authority 'betwixt-and-between' -- Afterword: thresholds forever after -- Notes -- INTRODUCTION: CONJUNCTURES AND CONCEPTS -- 1 PERFORMANCE AND AUTHORITY IN HAMLET (1603) -- 2 A NEW AGENDA FOR AUTHORITY.

3 PEN AND VOICE: VERSIONS OF DOUBLENESS -- 4 PLAYING WITH A DIFFERENCE -- 5 HISTORIES IN ELIZABETHAN PERFORMANCE -- 6 HAMLET AND THE PURPOSES OF PLAYING -- 7 SPACE (IN)DIVIDABLE: LOCUS AND PLATEA REVISITED -- 8 SHAKESPEARE'S ENDINGS: COMMODIOUS THRESHOLDS -- AFTERWORD -- Works cited -- PRIMARY LITERATURE -- SECONDARY LITERATURE -- Index.