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“What's past is prologue”: Negotiating the authority of tense in reviewing Shakespeare
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Kirwan, P. D. |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | This paper, rooted in reviewing practice, engages with a little-discussed practical aspect of reviewing: the tense in which a theatre review is written. Noting that journalistic reviews use the present tense, whereas academic reviews use the past, this paper asks when a review moves into the past, and what implications the use of tense has for the review. The paper contends that the two tenses confer different kinds of authority on a review, which in turn have implications for positioning the object of review and the reviewer in relation to one another. Distinctions are made between reviewing a production or a single performance; between reviewing as a promise or as an archive; and between the omnipotent narrator and subjective spectator. The paper concludes that, in an age of increasingly cheap opinion, the past tense may be appropriated as a means for professional reviewers in all disciplines to consolidate the specificity of their reviewing authority. |
| Starting Page | 337 |
| Ending Page | 342 |
| Page Count | 6 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1080/17450918.2010.497856 |
| Volume Number | 6 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37575/1/Kirwan%20-%20What's%20Past%20is%20Prologue.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2010.497856 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
