New College Professor Myhill Examines Shakespeare’s Audiences in New Book

April 18, 2011 — New College of Florida Associate Professor of English Nova Myhill has recently published the book Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558-1642 with co-editor Jennifer A. Low. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between dramatic performance and audience in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Imagining the Audience was published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Imagining the Audience combines theater history and cultural analysis with examinations of plays and productions to explore how those involved in early modern productions conceived of their audience, how audiences shaped the dramas they watched and how the roles of actor and audience sometimes merged. The essays challenge the conventional roles of the playwrights, actors and viewers of plays, blurring the lines of writer and performer, consumer and producer. In the process, the authors bridge the many views of the audience, creating one of the most complete studies of theatrical reception in recent years.

“‘Audience’ is a complex and paradoxical term, even more difficult to comprehend when we encounter it in the flesh, as a living, breathing entity,” said Steven Mullaney, associate professor of English at the University of Michigan. “This is an exemplary collection of essays, offering complex and multi-faceted views of early modern audiences.”

Myhill teaches Medieval and Renaissance British Literature at New College of Florida. She also teaches drama and dramatic theory with a focus on theories of audience and genre in 16th- and 17th-century English drama.

For more information, contact the Office of Public Affairs at 941-487-4153 or [email protected].