ABSTRACT
As Robert Weimann suggests, Shakespeare's plays helped to fashion an "nfixed, largely untested encounter of literature and theatre as two different institutions". In rescuing the notion of derivative performance from the author alleged misuse, though, David Schalkwyk reprises a familiar vision of theatre. In Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays, this notion of textual performativity sustains a superb collocation of the sonnets with the plays' scenic representation of the working of poetic language. Schalkwyk takes a different view of Austin's application to dramatic performance, arguing that Shakespeare's plays not only represent illocutionary acts but perform those acts, even without rendering them as utterance, placing them in the world of action, or lending them material agents. A concern for the purposes of Shakespeare performance studies is also traced out in Robert Weimann's bold effort to set the critique of Shakespeare and performance on a new and more productive course.
