Book Review: Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern, eds. Shakespeare’s Theatre and the Effects of Performance. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2012. xix + 296 pp. $85. ISBN: 978-1-40814-692-7.

"A new collection of essays on stage effects in the early modern theater, this is an important and at times indispensable work. Facsimile Renaissance playhouses including Shakespeare’s Globe and Virginia’s Blackfriars Playhouse have long approximated the experience of Elizabethan playgoing, but neither venue suggests true authenticity, a fact comprehensively emphasized in this new publication from Bloomsbury’s Arden imprint. Through a series of eleven essays from internationally renowned scholars, this collection explores the physical and material experience of performing in, writing for, and attending London’s early modern theaters. The collection is split into three distinct parts, with essays on the physical playhouse buildings (“The Fabric of Early Modern Theatres”), properties and movables (“Technologies of the Body”), and the role of human senses in playhouse contexts (“The Sensory Stage”)." - p728