M.J. Kidnie: “Crafting Theatrical (and Editorial) Effect in Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness”

Event date: Friday, March 22, 2013, at 4:00 PM

Location: 170 St. George St., Room 100a

The Forty-Eighth Season of the TORONTO RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION COLLOQUIUM.Founded by Natalie Zemon Davis and James K. McConica in 1964.

Margaret Jane Kidnie
(Department of English, University of Western Ontario)

Crafting Theatrical (and Editorial) Effect in Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness

Presented in partnership with the Department of English

“Was Thomas Heywood a hack writer for the Red Bull Theatre? That criticism has discouraged editors from explaining the staging peculiarities of crucial passages of A Woman Killed with Kindness: the “card game” in Scene 8 and Frankford’s passage through his house when Scene 13 opens. M.J. Kidnie brings a fresh perspective to the play by looking both at Heywood’s stagecraft in other scenes, and at the solutions of professional productions since 1971. By reconstructing the earliest staging it’s possible to suggest a solution to at least one editorial problem.

Margaret Jane Kidnie is Professor of English at Western University. She is author of Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation, and has recently edited The Humorous Magistrate for the Malone Society. She is currently completing an edition of A Woman Killed with Kindness for Arden.”