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This essay attends to the formal atmospherics of early modern drama—the ways in which the felt, affective conditions of playing could help to make one play seem like or unlike others. Specifically, it traces the development and function of a distinctive formal pattern used in the multisensory representation of battle. Commotion (literally, "continuous or recurring motion") is punctuated in these plays by moments of stillness, which are signaled through the language of breath and breathing: characters, players, and playgoers "pause" and "take breath" together. Turning to the early histories and to Shakespeare's collaboratively written Henry VI plays in particular, this essay argues that this structuring pattern of commotion and stillness, noise and quiet, shapes the plays of the first tetralogy in ways that help to organize attention and underscore the experience of dramatic time. A.D
Allison K. Deutermann (Fri,) studied this question.