Book review: The Works of John Webster: An Old-Spelling Critical Edition, vol. 4, ‘Sir Thomas Wyatt’, ‘Westward Ho, Northward Ho’, ‘The Fair Maid of the Inn’ by David Gunby, David Carnegie, and MacDonald P. Jackson

Abstract

ence responses to the staged sonnets. In the final chapters of this collection, Linda McJannet considers specifically ‘physical theater’ (p. 545) and its changeful relations with dance narrative. Concentrating on adaptations of the late plays in the Shakespearean corpus, she looks in particular at John Farmanesh-Bocca’s Pericles Redux and Crystal Pite’s The Tempest Replica and showcases the sophistication and challenges of Shakespearean dance adaptation by contemporary companies. Shelia T. Cavanagh’s discussion closes the collection and remains in clear conversation with McJannet. Here, Synetic Theater’s Hamlet: The Rest is Silence (2002) works within the company’s conventions of offering wordless Shakespearean adaptation (in contrast to its non-Shakespearean productions) and Cavanagh carefully details the shocks which contemporary dance interpretations may constitute for audiences, critics, and the Fox Channel. This account of an American company with roots in ‘the Soviet theatrical tradition’ (p. 576) offers a dynamic conclusion to a collection that continues to showcase the diversity and provocative questioning that dance maintains when it has Shakespeare in its sights.