Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

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Book SynopsisIn 1919 Rudolf Steiner spoke about the future physical incarnation of the being of Ahriman. This would take place before 'a part' of the third millennium had passed, and was inevitable - but it was also necessary that people were aware of this event and recognized it, for earthly culture would be destroyed if the world were to fall completely to Ahriman. The situation we find ourselves in today shows Ahriman's unmistakable signature: the rapid destruction of nature, zoonotic diseases and pandemics, huge social inequalities, and the overall dominance of high finance. In this short book Peter Selg presents a timely overview of the challenges we face, beginning with a pithy and concise survey of Steiner's commentary on Ahriman's incarnation and the conditions that would characterize it. This is followed by a study of Ahriman's depiction in the mystery drama The Souls' Awakening. Steiner's remarkable personification of Ahriman on stage - portraying his strategies and activities - provides vital instruction for humanity. Selg concludes with an evaluation of 'the Battle for Human Intelligence' taking place in contemporary culture through materialistic ideas such as transhumanism. In their recent book Covid-19: The Great Reset, for example, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret propose wholesale economic, geopolitical, environmental and technological revisions to society - ideas that need to be understood and confronted in human thought and consciousness. The Future of Ahriman is a crucial aid to comprehending our times.Table of ContentsForeword - 1. 'The Incarnation of Ahriman', Rudolf Steiner's lectures from October to December 1919 - 2. 'The Awakening of Souls', Ahriman in the Mystery Dramas, 1910-1913 - 3. The Battle for Human Intelligence, The Leading Thoughts of 1924/25, and the present - Notes

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Book SynopsisGwyn Thomas was born, the last of twelve children, into a Rhondda mining family in 1913. After a childhood marked by the strikes of the 1920s, he went off to study Spanish at Oxford University and in Madrid, where he met the poet Federico Garcia Lorca and witnessed the turmoil which would lead to the Spanish Civil War. On his return, amidst the economic mire of the 1930s and his own burgeoning teaching career in Barry in the 1940s, he picked up his pen and began to write. For more than forty years, until his death in 1981, as novelist, screenwriter, master of the short story, and prizewinning playwright, Gwyn Thomas delivered compelling and comedic portraits of his world of South Wales. His creative genius earned enduring fame on both sides of the Atlantic and on both sides of the European Cold War divide. As a provocative and insightful broadcaster, he embraced the possibilities of radio and television, whilst leaving his hosts and guests alike in fits of knowing laughter. This landmark biography, enriched with unrivalled access to private papers and international archives, tells the remarkable story of one of modern Wales's greatest literary voices.Trade Review'This punchy portrait of a real Welsh literary heavyweight hits home with the brutal realism of Thomas' jabbing prose and mordant wit.' - Jon Gower, Nation.Cymru; 'Leeworthy knows his subject intimately, sympathises with him entirely, and locates him globally in such a way as to leave the reader with no doubt as to his importance as a writer' - Bethan Jenkins, Wales Arts Review

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Book SynopsisThis Play Guide is specifically written for A Level students who are studying Antigone as part of the AQA A Level Drama & Theatre specification. It provides structured support for Component 1: Section A - Drama and theatre. / This book is divided into three sections: How to explore a text for A level Drama and Theatre, with vocabulary-building sections on acting, directing and design; An extended exploration of the play to enrich students' understanding and response to the text; Targeted examination preparation to improve writing and test-taking skills. / Fully supports the written examination and helps students develop their key knowledge and understanding of key A Level drama & theatre skills. / Knowledge and understanding of the play are developed with a synopsis, character and scene studies, contextual and practical exploration. / Includes a wide range of practical drama tasks, activities, and research and revision exercises. / Advice on how to interpret and prepare for exam questions with examples of effective responses.

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Book SynopsisDespite the reshifting of values that has affected every aspect of life in the 21st century, William Shakespeare still stands as the greatest writer the English language has ever produced. Even so, many people have never read him. If you have never read the Bard-or if you''ve tried and given up in frustration-you need SHAKESPEARE FOR BEGINNERS.Author Brandon Toropov opens with the observation that Shakespeare''s genius is not in his (or England''s) history, it''s in his words, most notably, his plays-in his brilliant stories, unforgettable characters, and the impossible beauty of his language. So SHAKESPEARE FOR BEGINNERS skips the historical foreplay and goes straight to Shakespeare''s plays. The book offers clear, concise descriptions and plot summaries of each play; it lists key phrases and important themes, explains the main ideas behind each work and features excerpt of important passages (with explanatory notes on tough words.) And it is the only ''entry level'' book available outside Great Britain that covers all of Shakespeare''s plays.

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first comprehensive account of global Shakespeare commemoration in the period between 1916 and 2016. Combining historical analysis with insights into current practice, Memorialising Shakespeare covers Shakespeare commemoration in China, Ukraine, Egypt, and France, as well as Great Britain and the United States. Chapter authors discuss a broad range of commemorative activities—from pageants, dance, dramatic performances, and sculpture, to conferences, exhibitions, and more private acts of engagement, such as reading and diary writing. Themes covered include Shakespeare’s role in the formation of cultural memory and national and global identities, as well as Shakespeare’s relationship to decolonisation and race. A significant feature of the book is the inclusion of chapters from organisers of recent Shakespeare commemoration events, reflecting on their own practice. Together, the chapters in Memorialising Shakespeare show what has been at stake when communities, identity groups, and institutions have come together to commemorate Shakespeare.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Memorialising Shakespeare, Memorialising Ourselves; Monika Smialkowska and Edmund G. C. King.- 2. From Common Reader to Canon: Memorialising the Shakespeare-Reading Soldier during the First World War; Edmund G. C. King.- 3. A Greenwich Night’s Dream: Shakespeare, Empire, and the Royal Navy in Post-Armistice Britain; Kurt Schreyer.- 4. Culture and Colonialism: The 1916 Tercentenary in Egypt; Karma Sami and Monika Smialkowska.- 5. Divergence and Convergence: The ‘Universal’ versus the National Bard; Irena R. Makaryk.- 6. French Shakespeare: From Victor Hugo to Patrice Chéreau; Dominique Goy-Blanquet.- 7. Canonising Cleopatra? Shakespeare400 and the Library, Lovers, and Saints of Alexandria; Katherine Hennessey.- 8. Citizen of the world, or citizen of nowhere? Shakespeare Lives in China in 2016; Duncan Lees.- 9. Commemorating Shakespeare through Dance and Music, 1964–2016; Elizabeth Klett.- 10. Curating Shakespeare in the North; Adam Hansen.- 11. ‘The Conceit of This Inconstant Stay’: Exhibiting Shakespeares in Eugene, Oregon; Lara Bovilsky.- 12. Afterword; Ton Hoenselaars.

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Book SynopsisIn Arab circles in the Dutch East Indies in the 1930s, plays were staged not only to entertain but also to educate and to further the emancipation of the traditionally oriented Arab minority. Some plays were well received, others evoked protests. Fatimah was one of the plays which stirred up commotion, inciting riots throughout Java. The play and accompanying events make clear which kind of norms and values governed relations within the community and what kind of frustrations and aspirations members of the minority experienced. Original text of the play included.

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Book SynopsisCharacters of Shakespeare's Plays is a collection of essays written by the English literary critic and essayist, William Hazlitt. The book is a critical analysis of the characters in the plays of William Shakespeare, one of the most celebrated playwrights of all time. In the book, Hazlitt explores the psychology and motivations of Shakespeare's characters, examining their personalities, strengths, and flaws. He delves into the complexities of the relationships between characters, and the ways in which their interactions drive the action of the plays. Throughout the book, Hazlitt also grapples with the question of what makes Shakespeare's characters enduringly compelling and relevant to modern audiences. Overall, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays is a masterful work of literary criticism that offers readers a profound understanding of Shakespeare's characters, as well as the enduring power of his works to capture the human experience.

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Book SynopsisThe renowned author Andy Adams' fascinating Western book Wells Brothers: The Young Cattle Kings is set in the Old West. This engrossing story chronicles the exploits of the Wells brothers, an adventurous pair who set out on a spectacular voyage across the wild and rocky American frontier. The Wells brothers, the young cattle monarchs, manage herds, deal with competing ranchers and outlaws, and other obstacles unique to the cattle business. The brothers try to establish their empire and stake out their territory in the Wild West with their unyielding resolve, inventiveness, and indomitable spirit. With his colorful paintings of huge open plains, perilous cattle drives, and the clash of personalities in this turbulent age, Andy Adams deftly brings the Western environment to life. Readers are taken back in time to a period when the American West was supported by the cattle sector and strong family and loyalties were valued via his brilliant writing. The immersive reading experience provided by Wells Brothers: The Young Cattle Kings combines aspects of adventure, drama, and the eternal themes of family, honor, and pursuing one's aspirations. This book will enthrall Western aficionados and take readers to a bygone period of cowboys and cattle drives with its rich characterization, exciting plotlines, and realistic Old West representation.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1832, Shakespeare’s Heroines is a unique hybrid of Shakespeare criticism, women’s rights activism, and conduct literature. Jameson’s collection of readings of female characters includes praise for unexpected role models as varied as Portia, Cleopatra, and Lady Macbeth; her interpretations of these and other characters portray intellect, passion, political ambition, and eroticism as acceptable aspects of women’s behaviour. This inventive work of literary criticism addresses the problems of women’s education and participation in public life while also providing insightful, original, and entertaining readings of Shakespeare’s women.This Broadview Edition includes a critical introduction that places Shakespeare’s Heroines in the context of Jameson’s literary career and political life. Appendices include personal correspondence and other literary and political writings by Jameson, examples of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shakespeare criticism, and selections from Victorian conduct books.Trade Review“This edition of Anna Jameson’s Shakespeare’s Heroines fills an important gap in available resources of this significant writer in an intelligent, well-informed manner. Adept as a researcher, a literary critic, and a writer, Professor Larsen Hoeckley brings to the task at hand an admirable ability to make connections where others before have failed to see them. Broadview Press deserves commendation for putting an important literary ‘foremother’ back in the public eye with the publication of Shakespeare’s Heroines, now properly situated in its historical and critical context.” ― Carol Hanbery MacKay, University of Texas at AustinTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionAnna Murphy Jameson: A Brief ChronologyA Note on the TextShakespeare’s HeroinesAppendix A: Jameson’s Writing on Women, Work, and Acting From Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, Abroad and at Home (1855) From The Communion of Labour (1856) “Mrs. Siddons” in Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad (1834) Appendix B: Jameson’s Correspondence Bessie Rayner Parkes, 1856-59 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1856 Frances Anne Kemble, 1831-32 Ottilie von Goethe, 1836 Appendix C: Contemporary Reviews of Characteristics of Women The Monthly Review (1832) The Literary Gazette (1832) Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1833) Appendix D: Conduct Books From Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England:Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits (1939) From John Ruskin, “Of Queen’s Gardens” in Sesame and Lilies (1865) Appendix E: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Shakespeare Criticism From William Richardson, “On Shakespeare’s Imitation of Female Characters” in Essays on Shakespeare’s Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff and on his Imitation of Female Characters (1789) From William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (1817) From Frances Anne Kemble, “Notes on Macbeth No. II.” in Notes upon Some of Shakespeare’s Plays (1882) Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisBest known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and highly successful dramatist. Among his most popular plays was The Tragedy of Tragedies: Or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb, one of the most extraordinary parodies in English theater. The print version of the play incorporates, in an elaborate structure of annotations, a remarkable satire of heroic drama and of the pretensions and excesses of “false scholarship.”This edition includes the text of the play itself and the text of the extraordinary notes (by Fielding’s pseudonym “H. Scriblerus Secundus”), appearing in facing page layout; extensive explanatory notes for the modern reader appear at the bottom of the page. Also included are a substantial introduction and a wide range of background materials that set the work in the context of its time. These contextual materials include contemporary reviews, excerpts from the plays that Fielding’s parody most frequently targeted, and selections from works that provided inspiration for The Tragedy of Tragedies—from contemporary versions of the “Tom Thumb” folktale to satirical writing by authors such as Alexander Pope, John Gay, and George Villiers.Trade Review“Featuring an excellent introduction, extensive notes and a generous sampling of contextual materials, this splendid new classroom edition of Henry Fielding’s The Tragedy of Tragedies makes one of the most popular plays of the eighteenth century come alive for today’s students. It will be useful to teachers of eighteenth-century British literature as well as of drama or theatre surveys.” — Albert J. Rivero, Marquette University“Fielding’s Tragedy of Tragedies provides a master comedian’s compact compendium of the heterogeneous sources of laughter and comic insight: farcical action and burlesque situations; literary parody; satire of bombast and pedantry; physical and verbal incongruities (a miniature hero and giant queen, diction that regularly plummets from lofty to low); mind-bending philosophical puzzles (a ghost threatened with death by sword); temporal inversions (footnotes asserting that lines from earlier plays have been cribbed from this one); reductions of poetic form (“Oh, Huncamunca, Huncamunca, oh”); and the bathos of compression and acceleration (seven stabbing deaths within ten lines at the play’s close).The Broadview edition makes the play’s full array of comic techniques readily accessible to any reader: effectively edited and cleverly formatted as a facing-page edition, with Fielding’s mock-scholarly footnotes filling right-hand pages, the edition would serve equally well as the basis for uproariously funny stage productions and for study as a revealing print artifact from the Augustan Age. I recommend this edition as required reading for courses on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama, The Age of Swift and Pope, theater history, eighteenth-century literature, book history, and literary theory—and as pleasure reading for anyone interested in drama, the novel, or a good laugh. ” — Jill Campbell, Yale UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionThe Tragedy of Tragedies: or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb theGreatA Note on the TextThe Tragedy of Tragedies: or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the GreatIn Context Sources and Satiric Models from The Famous History of Tom Thumb (1750)from George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, The Rehearsal (1672)from William Wagstaffe, A Comment Upon the History of Tom Thumb (1711)from John Gay, The What D’Ye Call It: A Tragi-Comi-Pastoral Farce (1715)from Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)from Alexander Pope, Peri Bathous: or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728)from Alexander Pope, The Dunciad Variorum (1729)from James Ralph, The Touch-Stone: or, Historical, Critical, Political, Philosophical, and Theological Essays on the Reigning Diversions of the Town (1728)from Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb. A Tragedy.… Written by Scriblerus Secundus (1730) “Acting Play” to “Reading Play”: Performance, Print, Parody from John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards and “Of Heroic Plays: An Essay” (1672)from John Dryden, All for Love: or, The World Well Lost (1678)from Thesaurus Dramaticus. Containing all the Celebrated Passages, Soliloquies, Similes, Descriptions, and Other Poetical Beauties in the Body of English Plays, Ancient and Modern, Digested Under Proper Topics, 2 vols. (1724)from James Thomson, The Tragedy of Sophonisba (1730) Reception from Advertisements in Contemporary Periodicals (1731) from London Evening Post (18–20 March 1731)from Daily Post (19 March 1731)from Daily Post (22 March 1731)from Daily Post (28 April 1731) from The Universal Spectator (10 April 1731)from The Grub-Street Journal (18 November 1731)from William Hatchett and Eliza Haywood, The Opera of Operas; or,Tom Thumb the Great. Altered from The Life and Death of TomThumb the Great. And Set to Musick after the Italian Manner(1733)from Observations on the Present Taste for Poetry (1739)from Giles Jacob, The Mirrour: or, Satyrical, Panegyrical, Serious, andHumorous on the Present Times (1733)from Samuel Foote, Taste. A Comedy of Two Acts (1752)from David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica: or, A Companion tothe Playhouse (1764)from William Hazlitt, “Of the Comic Writers of the Last Century”(1819)

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Book SynopsisThe Alchemist has long been admired as one of Ben Jonson's best dramas-Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously deemed it one of the most 'perfect' plots in literature. Its satiric cleverness and metatheatricality have delighted audiences from its first performance to the present day; readers and play-goers are swept up in the schemes of a fake alchemist and other determined fraudsters whose scams appear to offer easy wealth and immortality to their morally compromised victims. While no characters emerge unscathed by Jonson's satire, and while alchemy itself is revealed as most likely a sham, the play is nonetheless a tribute to the transformative - indeed, the alchemical-powers of the theater.This edition includes a helpful introduction to the play, including discussion of its performance history and background information on alchemy. Thorough annotations to the text are also provided, as are contextual materials, including a selection of Jonson's sources, further materials on alchemy, and an example of the 'rogue' or 'coney-catching' literature that informs Jonson's portrayal of the grifters in the play.Trade ReviewIntroducing students to this witty, farcical play will be so much easier with the new Broadview edition. The joy of this play is its topical satire, and to access it students need a thorough grounding in alchemy and in the contemporary culture of early modern London, both of which this edition provides."—Margaret J. Oakes, Furman UniversityThe new Broadview edition of The Alchemist, edited by John Greenwood, is a delight. The play’s annotations are clear and complete. The edition includes extensive contextual materials, including coney-catching pamphlets, an alchemist’s guide, and some of Jonson’s own commonplace book’s entries. I am looking forward to teaching the play with this exciting new text."—Rebecca Ann Bach, University of Alabama at Birmingham"John Greenwood’s edition of Ben Jonson’s riotous early modern comedy, The Alchemist, captures the play’s essentials for student and more advanced scholar alike with its concise and informative introduction, helpful notes, and judiciously chosen appendix material. The edition will be a delight to use in the classroom."—Mathew Martin, Brock UniversityTable of Contents Introduction The Alchemist In Context On Alchemy: from Geoffrey Chaucer, 'The Canon's Yeoman's Tale,' from The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) Desiderius Erasmus, 'The Alchemist' (1524) from Martin Ruland, A Lexicon of Alchemy (1612) On Criminals and 'Coney-Catching': from Robert Greene, A Disputation Between a He Cony-Catcher and a She Cony-Catcher (1592) Image: from Thomas Harman, A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors vulgarly called Vagabonds (1566; revised 1567/68) On Playwriting: from Aristotle, Poetics from Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries made upon men and matter as they have flowed out of his daily Readings, or had their reflux to his peculiar Notion of the Times (1641)

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Book SynopsisFew medieval plays in English have attracted as much twenty-first-century interest as the Digby Mary Magdalene, an early-fifteenth-century drama that, as Chester Scoville puts it, is “probably the most spectacular of the late medieval English plays.” This new edition presents a modernized text of the play, with extensive annotation (both marginal glosses and explanatory footnotes), an insightful introduction, and a helpful selection of background contextual materials.Trade Review“This new Broadview edition makes medieval England’s most extraordinary play accessible to a broader audience. With modernized spelling throughout, brief yet informative notes and glosses, and an introduction that highlights the play’s extravagant dramatic complexity, Scoville’s edition welcomes students into the fascinating world of this text. Material from biblical and hagiographical sources that would have been familiar to both the playwright and his late medieval audience provide further context for understanding the female character at its center, while reproductions of two of the sole surviving manuscript’s pages offer a glimpse of the process by which the script was preserved for future generations. This is an important addition to the Broadview library.” — Joanne Findon, Trent University“Scoville’s Digby Play of Mary Magdalene offers an accessible and expertly-glossed text in modernized spelling. Its introduction discusses the play’s poetic and thematic features, along with its manuscript history, and provides production information. The explanatory and textual notes and the biblical sources enable undergraduate students to access the greatness and complexity of this play and to join the scholarly conversation about it.” — Frank Napolitano, Radford University“[The Broadview Mary Magdalene] is a text that reads well, is clear and easy to follow, and reduces the language barrier that many undergraduates find difficult to overcome. Perhaps the most pedagogically valuable part of Scoville’s edition is the ‘In Context’ section, [which]… provides some source material associated with the story of Mary Magdalene, alongside photographic facsimiles and transcriptions of two folios from the Digby manuscript. … Scoville’s edition is valuable and well suited to introducing first-year undergraduates to the play of Mary Magdalene; accessible, affordable, and with basic contextual information, it invites students to engage with this remarkable play without feeling overwhelmed by its strangeness and cultural difference.” — Speculum“I have seen enough book covers that bear little resemblance to the inside contents to appreciate one that does! But more importantly, the editing of the text is excellent and the apparatus ideal for a student or general audience. … those who choose to read or teach this text will find this edition to be a valuable tool.” — Jenny Rytting, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance TeachingTable of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction The Digby Play of Mary Magdalene In Context Source Material from the Douay-Rheims Bible from Mark 16 from Luke 7 from John 11 from John 20 from Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea(The Golden Legend ) The Manuscript Folio 95r Folio 116r

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Book SynopsisIt''s chaotic -- a bit of love, a bit of lust and there you are. We don''t ask for life, we have it thrust upon us. Written by Shelagh Delaney when she was 19, A Taste of Honey is one of the great defining and taboo-breaking plays of the 1950s. When her mother, Helen, runs off with a car salesman, feisty teenager Jo takes up with a black sailor who promises to marry her before he heads for the seas, leaving her pregnant and alone. Art student Geoff moves in and assumes the role of surrogate parent until misguidedly, he sends for Helen and their unconventional setup unravels. A Taste of Honey offers an explosive celebration of the vulnerabilities and strengths of the female spirit in a deprived world. Bursting with energy, this exhilarating and angry depiction of harsh, working-class life in post-war Salford is shot through with love and humour, and infused with jazz. The play was first presented by Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford, London, on 27Trade ReviewA tough, tenacious play with an emotional bite that proves it is more than raucous comedy * Michael Billington, The Guardian *Miss Delaney brings real people on to her stage, joking and flaring and scuffling and eventually, out of the zest for life she gives them, surviving * Kenneth Tynan, 1958 *Tough, humorous ... exhilarating * The Times, 1958 *A work of complete, exhilarating originality … a real escape from the middlebrow, middle-class vacuum of the West End * Lindsay Anderson, Encore, 1958 *Table of ContentsForeword by Celia Brayfield The Play

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Book SynopsisA wry, funny and touching meditation on loneliness, that private shame of the singleton in the era of the dating app and of fraudulent boasting on social media written with a real depth of insight, humour, compassion and a keen sense of the ridiculous... The IndependentIt's the early hours of the morning in the aftermath of Laura's housewarming party. Danny, 42, divorced and living with his mother, is the last remaining guest. The flat is in a mess and so are they. One more drink?This sharp and astute two-hander takes an intimate look in real-time at the first fragile moments of risking your heart and taking a chance. Both comedic and tender, it asks questions about mutual loneliness and human connections. Beginning premiered at the National Theatre, London in October 2017. This new Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Sarah Grochala.Trade ReviewEldridge combines a hugely sympathetic sensibility with rare dramatic power, and one leaves this exceptional play rejoicing in his talent and impatient for his next. * Telegraph *What Eldridge captures well is the way people's emotions and desires are rarely in perfect synch... * Guardian *David Eldridge's gorgeous new play is a wry, funny and touching meditation on loneliness, that private shame of the singleton in the era of the dating app and of fraudulent boasting on social media. Written with a real depth of insight, humour, compassion and a keen sense of the ridiculous... * Independent *

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Book SynopsisBrecht Yearbook 48 features a section on Brecht's and Heiner Müller's engagement with modern living, a group of essays on "Brecht Post-2020," and additional new Brecht research on various topics. The Brecht Yearbook, published on behalf of the International Brecht Society, is the central scholarly forum for the study of Brecht's life and work and of topics relevant to him. Volume 48 opens with an article on the research that informed the 2022 exhibition Brecht's Paper War. The next section examines Brecht's and Heiner Müller's engagement with modern living: from the housing question in the 1920s to the dramaturgical function of furniture to dialectical stage-auditorium configurations in the early GDR. The following section on "Brecht Post-2020" explores dramaturgical approaches to the learning play under pandemic conditions as well as the "spectrological" aspects of Drums in the Night. Additional new research includes essays on the critical edition of Brecht's notebooks, his reception in fascist Italy, the ambivalence of the heroic in his work, the prioritization of political parable over avant-garde aesthetics in Round Heads and Pointed Heads, boxing as inspiration for epic theater, Hegelian aspects of Refugee Conversations and The Measures Taken, and the working alliance of Brecht and Kurt Weill. Edited by Markus Wessendorf. Contributors: Fanti Baum, Luke Beller, Manuel Clancett, Daniel Cuonz, Fritz Hennenberg, Matthew Hines, Alba Knijff, Sophie König, Grischa Meyer, Marie Millutat, Zafiris Nikitas, Cornelia Ortlieb, Matthias Rothe, Kumars Salehi, Francesco Sani, Stephan Strunz, Lara Tarbuk, Raffaella Di Tizio, Julia Weber, Marten Weise, Noah Willumsen, Claus Zittel.Table of ContentsEditorial List of Abbreviations Research for an Exhibition Grischa Meyer (Berlin) Bertolt Brecht's Paper War - Reading Newspapers during Wartime Working with Brecht and Müller: "Dwelling in the Empty Center" Noah Willumsen (Berlin), Sophie König (Berlin), and Marten Weise (Frankfurt am Main) introduction: Leben im Falschen: Wohnen bei Brecht und Müller Stephan Strunz (Dresden) Wider die Deskription: Brecht und der Diskurs des Wohnungselends Lara Tarbuk (Berlin) "Man muss versuchen, sich einzurichten in Deutschland!": Zur Bedeutung der Möbel in Trommeln in der Nacht und Die Hochzeit Marie Millutat (Berlin) Einrichten und Einkleben: Brechts Collagewerkstatt im Exil Cornelia Ortlieb (Berlin) interlude i: Wohnen im Schreiben oder Kein Schreibtisch nirgends Julia Weber (Berlin) interlude ii: "Wohnen in der leeren Mitte": Zu einem Topos aus Heiner Müllers Medeamaterial Luke Beller (Baltimore) "I Can Go Hungry Everywhere": Brecht, Mr. Keuner, and Cosmopolitanism Matthew Hines (Cambridge, UK) Models of Socialist Drama in the Early GDR: The Dialectical Audience and the Spatial Metaphor in The Correction by Inge and Heiner Müller Fanti Baum (Frankfurt am Main) literary essay: Das Einnehmen der Mitte für ihre Freiräumung-eine Wohnfibel gegen das bürgerliche Leben Brecht Post-2020: Part 2-Pandemic Learning Plays and the Logic of the Specter Francesco Sani (Leicester) The Lehrstück as a Digital Space for Dialectics: Robinson Crusoe on His Deserted Island (2021) Zafiris Nikitas (Thessaloniki) Brechtian Future(s): Life of Galileo as a Pandemic Lehrstück Alba Knijff (Barcelona) Structural Undecidability and the Logic of the Specter in Bertolt Brecht's Drums in the Night New Brecht Research Claus Zittel (Stuttgart) Im Dickicht der Texte: Brechts Nachlass im Lichte der neuen kritischen Edition seiner Notizbücher Raffaella Di Tizio (Rome) Brecht's Reception in Italy at the Time of Fascism Daniel Cuonz (St. Gallen) Unglücklich der Held, dessen Land ihn nötig hat: Zur Ambivalenz des Heroischen bei Bertolt Brecht und zu ihrer Aktualität Matthias Rothe (Minneapolis) Round Heads and Pointed Heads and the End of Avantgarde Manuel Clancett (Lüneburg) Feine Raufereien. Brecht und die Evidenz des Boxens Kumars Salehi (Canton, NY) Too Dialectical by Half: Brecht as a Reader of Hegel Fritz Hennenberg (Leipzig) Hier Brecht-dort Weill: Bedeutung und Deutung eines Arbeitsbunds Book Reviews Patrick Eiden-Offe (Berlin) Georg Lukács. Texte zum Theater. Hrsg. von Jakob Hayner und Erik Zielke Anja Hartl (Innsbruck) Susanne Schmieden. Paradoxa über Politik und Theater: Zur Bedeutung der Gegenmeinung bei Denis Diderot und Bertolt Brecht Fadi Skeiker (Philadelphia) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers (eds.). The Theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual Joseph Prestwich (Cambridge, UK) Anja Hartl. Brecht and Post-1990s British Drama: Dialectical Theatre Today Ramona Mosse (Zurich) Martin Revermann. Brecht and Tragedy: Radicalism, Traditionalism, Eristics Notes on the Contributors

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Book SynopsisIn London in 1770 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) remarked, ‘What a work could be written on Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick! There is something similar in the genius of all three.’ Two-and-a-half centuries on, Robin Simon’s highly original and illuminating book takes up the challenge.William Hogarth (1697–1764) and David Garrick (1717–1779) closely associated themselves with Shakespeare, embodying a relationship between plays, painting and performance that had been understood since Antiquity and which shaped the rules for history painting drawn up by the Académie royale in Paris in the seventeenth century.History painting was considered the highest form of art: a picture illustrating a moment drawn from just a few lines in a revered text. Hogarth’s David Garrick as Richard III (1745) transformed those ideas because, although it looked like a history painting, it was also a portrait of an actor in performance. With it, Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture, a new and distinctively British kind ofhistory painting.This book offers a fresh examination of theatrical portraits through close analysis of the pictures and of the texts used in performance. It also examines the central role of the theatre in British culture, while highlighting the significance of Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick in the European Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism. In this context another trio of genius features prominently: Lichtenberg, GottholdEphraim Lessing and Denis Diderot.Familiar paintings and performances are seen in an entirely new light, while unfamiliar pictures are also introduced, including major paintings and drawings that have never been published.The final chapter shows that the inter-relationship between plays, painting and performance survived into the age of cinema, revealing the pictorial sources of Laurence Olivier’s legendary film Richard III.

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Book SynopsisMacbeth may well be the most terrifying play in the English language, but it hasn’t always been seen that way. It has divided critics more deeply than any other Shakespearian tragedy – and the argument, in essence, has been about just how terrifying the play really is and about how we should react, or do react, to Macbeth himself. No Shakespearian tragedy gives as much attention to its hero as Macbeth. With the exception of Lady Macbeth, there is much less emphasis on the figures round the hero than there is in Hamlet or Othello. Unlike King Lear, with its parallel story of Gloucester and his sons, Macbeth has no sub-plot. And its imagery of sharp contrasts – of day and night, light and dark, innocent life and murder – adds to the almost claustrophobic intensity of this most intense of plays. So why are critics so divided about Macbeth? Why is it so disturbing? Why do we feel compelled to admire its hero even as we condemn him? How reassuring is the last scene, when Macbeth is killed and Malcolm becomes king? Do we see this as the intervention of a divine providence, a restoration of goodness after all the evil? Or do we see instead signs that the whole cycle of violence and murder could be about to begin all over again? And what does the play really tell us about good and evil? In this book Graham Bradshaw answers these questions, and shows how it is only in recent years that the extent of Shakespeare’s achievement in Macbeth, and the nature of his vision in the play, has really been grasped.

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Book SynopsisTwelfth Night has seldom been off the stage since Shakespeare’s day. It has been performed for its romantic high comedy and its boisterous low comedy; with an emphasis on farce or on autumnal melancholy; as straightforward celebration of heterosexual love and marriage or as exploration of the complexity of gender. David Carnegie and Mark Houlahan’s introduction to the play provides a lively discussion of the play’s performance history and encourages readers to think about stagecraft and the play as a performance text, while the historical appendices provide materials that illuminate different thematic elements of the play. Extended notes interleaved throughout the play present relevant illustrations and expand on mythological, historical, and religious references in the play. The accompanying online text will offer additional commentary on staging alternatives and more extensive visual materials.A collaboration between Broadview Press and the Internet Shakespeare Editions project at the University of Victoria, the editions developed for this series have been comprehensively annotated and draw on the authoritative texts newly edited for the ISE. This innovative series allows readers to access extensive and reliable online resources linked to the print edition.Trade Review“Here is a text of Twelfth Night with a ‘broad view’ in more than name. There is, it seems, something for everyone in this edition, from the performer to the prosodist, and the pedant to the pupil. The edition is lavishly supplemented by other texts—some familiar, some surprising. Those appendices allow the reader to trace Twelfth Night’s narrative and intellectual affiliations, enabling the reader to track not just the play’s debts but its contribution to Renaissance preoccupations with music, friends, gender, and more. The text itself is amply illustrated, coherently lineated, and admirably glossed. In the notes, the reader will discover editors with a nuanced touch for performance. These are seasoned theatrical veterans with a deft ear for verse and a fine eye for staging possibilities. Used in synch with the internet Shakespeare’s on-line resources, this edition both takes and offers a broad view of Twelfth Night.” — Paul Menzer, Mary Baldwin CollegeTable of ContentsFOREWORDACKNOWLEDGEMENTSINTRODUCTIONSHAKESPEARE’S LIFESHAKESPEARE’S THEATREWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A BRIEF CHRONOLOGYA NOTE ON THE TEXTA NOTE ON THE MUSIC AND SONGSABBREVIATIONSTWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILLAppendix A : SOURCES From Barnabe Riche, “Of Apollonius and Silla” (1581) From Gl’Ingannati—the Deceived (1531) Appendix B: RENAISSANCE SHIPWRECKS From Heliodorus, An Aethiopian History, trans. Thomas Underdowne (1587) From Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593) Appendix C: TWINS AND AFFINITY From Plautus, Menaechmi, trans. William Warner (1595) From William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (c. 1593) From George Puttenham, “Hendiadys, or The Figure of Twins” (1589) From Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship,” trans. John Florio (1603) From Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentleman (1633) APPENDIX D: GENDER AND DISGUISE From Plato, The Symposium (c. 380 BCE) From John Lyly, Galatea (1592) William Shakespeare, Sonnet 20 (1609) From Stephen Gosson, Plays Confuted in Five Actions (1582) From Hic Mulier: Or, The Man-Woman (1620) APPENDIX E: MANNERS AND CODES From Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby (1561) From Giles Rose, A Perfect School of Instructions … (1682) From Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals, or Matrimonial Contracts (1686) APPENDIX F: FOOLS, FESTIVITY, AND MISRULE From Robert Armin, Fool upon Fool (1600) From Robert Armin, Quips upon Questions (1600) From Philip Stubbes, The Anatomy of Abuses (1583) From Thomas Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1600) From Revels Office Documents on the Lord of Misrule (1551) From the Records of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1566) From Shropshire Parish Documents (1556-1635) From Sir John Harington, “On the entertainment for the King of Denmark” (1606) From “King James, Declaration to the Bishop of Chester, 24 May 1618” From Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, Le Prince d’Amour: Or, The Prince of Love (1660) APPENDIX G: PURITANISM From The Pilgrimage to Parnassus (c. 1598-1602) From Thomas Nashe, The Return of the Renowned Cavaliero Pasquil of England (1589) From Thomas Nashe, Martin’s Month’s Mind (1589) From Thomas Nashe, A Countercuff Given to Martin Junior (1589) APPENDIX H: MUSIC From Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium (1474) From Cicero, On the Commonwealth and on the Laws (c. 50 BCE) From Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in General (1604) WORKS CITED AND BIBLIOGRAPHYFILMOGRAPHY

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Book SynopsisNewsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling.Barber Shop Chronicles, which was partly inspired by verbatim recordings, is a heart-warming, hilarious and insightful play that leaps from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day.It was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and is here publishedas a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Oladipo Agboluaje.Trade ReviewIsn’t this what all playwrights would wish for? To come across in their daily lives a dramatic arena. To find it both immediate and far-reaching. To put on stage lives that have not been seen there before ... [The] chronicles are set in Lagos, Johannesburg, Harare, Accra, Kampala – and south London. They include confessionals, politics, feuding, tales of men away from their homes, men cut off from fathers, men in search of companionship. Common threads – a plot about father and son, a joke about a fly in a drink, a big Barcelona-Chelsea match – weave these episodes together. But it is the stretch of the talk and material that is remarkable: anecdotal and argumentative. -- Susannah Clapp * Observer *Throbs with energy and heat. Full of sadness and great joy. * Daily Telegraph *Rich and exhilarating. A fascinating peek into the barber shop. * The Stage *Life-affirming * Independent *Table of ContentsCHRONOLOGY COMMENTARY PLAYWRIGHT CONTEXT Black British drama (including work of practitioners such as Roy Williams, debbie tucker green and Mojisola Adebayo) THEMES Masculinity (including sport and sexuality) and how it shapes characters and subverts universal and specifically black and African notions of masculinity GENRE Verbatim theatre (use of transcripts to create a work of fiction); comparing to other verbatim plays such as London Road and The Permanent Way SETTING Barbershop as a 'safe space' for black men Diasporic movements - how the play's transnational locations construct a 'black' identity PLAY TEXT FURTHER READING

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Book SynopsisWhen Falstaff calls upon the sky to rain potatoes in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he is highlighting the late sixteenth-century belief that the exotic vegetable, recently introduced to England from the Americas, was an aphrodisiac. In Romeo and Juliet, Lady Capulet calls for quinces to make pies for the marriage feast of her daughter. This fruit was traditionally connected with weddings and fertility, as echoed by John Gerard in his herbal where he also explained that eating quinces would ‘bring forth wise children, and of good understanding’. Taking fifty quotations centring on flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables, Margaret Willes gives these botanical references their social context to provide an intriguing and original focus on daily life in Tudor and Jacobean England, looking in particular at medicine, cookery, gardening and folklore traditions. Exquisitely illustrated with unique hand-painted engravings from the Bodleian Library’s copy of John Gerard’s herbal of 1597, this book marries the beauty of Shakespeare’s lines with charming contemporary renderings of the plants he described so vividly.Trade Review‘An engaging addition to Shakespeare studies … this book is a treasure, compact, readable and beautifully presented.’ * Irish Examiner *

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Book SynopsisNow in a second edition, Theatre Studies: The Basics is a fully updated guide to the wonderful world of theatre. The practical and theoretical dimensions of theatre â from acting to audience â are woven together throughout to provide an integrated introduction to the study of drama, theatre and performance. Topics covered include: dramatic genres, from tragedy to political documentary theories of performance the history of the theatre in the West acting, directing and scenography With a glossary, chapter summaries and suggestions for further reading throughout, Theatre Studies: the Basics remains the ideal starting point for anyone new to the subject.Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: Performance Chapter 2: The TextChapter 3: Dramatic Form Chapter 4: Theatre and History Chapter 5: Acting Chapter 6: Directing Chapter 7: Scenography Chapter 8: The audience GlossaryIndexBibliography

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Book SynopsisChristopher Marlowe (1564-93) was an English playwright and poet, who through his establishment of blank verse as a medium for drama did much to free the Elizabethan theatre from the constraints of the medieval and Tudor dramatic tradition. His first play Tamburlaine the Great, was performed that same year, probably by the Admiral's Men with Edward Alleyn in the lead. With its swaggering power-hungry title character and gorgeous verse the play proved to be enormously popular; Marlowe quickly wrote a second part, which may have been produced later that year. Marlowe's most famous play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the medieval German legend of the scholar who sold his soul to the devil, was probably written and produced by 1590, although it was not published until 1604. Historically the play is important for utilizing the soliloquy as an aid to character analysis and development. The Jew of Malta (c. 1590) has another unscrupulous aspiring

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Book SynopsisA thoughtful and deeply personal book by a master theatre-maker. In Tip of the Tongue, Peter Brook takes a charming, playful and wise look at topics such as the subtle, telling differences between French and English, and the many levels on which we can appreciate the works of Shakespeare. Brook also revisits his seminal concept of the 'empty space', considering how theatre – and the world – have changed over the span of his long and distinguished career. Threaded throughout with intimate and revealing stories from Brook's own life, Tip of the Tongue is a short but sparkling gift from one of the greatest artists of recent times.Trade Review'Engaging and thought-provoking… Brook is constantly enthralled but never daunted by contemplation of the art he serves, as this short work shows with grace and eloquence' * Shakespeare Survey *'A gem… like sitting down with Brook after a meal… this simple and accessible book contains insights and lessons from someone who has lived and breathed theatre for over seventy years' * Drama Magazine *'Full of aphoristic wisdom' * Guardian *'Short, sweet and brimming with wise saws and modern instances' * The Stage *'Peter Brook's exploration of words, theatre and everything attached is loving and heartfelt, taking his readers on a journey through his experiences and giving meaning to what he's seen and done' * Broadway World *'Filled with wisdom… devotees will be enchanted by the great director’s latest ruminations on language and the theatre' * British Theatre Guide *

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Book SynopsisThis new edition of Much Ado about Nothing is supplemented by an updated introduction which analyses recent stage, television, film and critical interpretations of the play, and considers the play's special interest in language, bodies and gender.Table of ContentsIntroduction; The play; Supplementary notes; Textual analysis; Appendixes: 1. The time-scheme of Much Ado about Nothing, 2. Lewis Carroll's letter to Ellen Terry, 3. Benedick's song, 5.2.18-22; Reading list.

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Book SynopsisSmart and scintillating. Red deftly conjures what most plays about artists don''t: The exhilaration of the act. The New YorkerUnder the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting.A moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing.Nominated for 7 Olivier Awards (2009) and winner of 6 Tony Awards (2010) including Best New Play, Red is published in Methuen Drama''s Modern Classics series, featuring a new introduction by Michael Grandage.Trade ReviewA fresh, exciting portrait of a brilliant mind. * Ben Brantley, The New York Times *Smart and scintillating. Red deftly conjures what most plays about artists don't: The exhilaration of the act. * The New Yorker *Plays about painters are fraught with difficulty. Either the hero preaches about art without practicing it, or the Bohemian lifestyle supersedes the work. But John Logan's play about Mark Rothko overcomes these obstacles with finesse... It's a measure of the play's success that it makes you want to rush out and renew acquaintance with Rothko's work.' * Michael Billington, The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisIn Migdalia Cruz'sMacbeth, the Witches run the world.TheMacbeths live out a dark cautionary tale of love,greed,and power,falling from glory into calamityas the Witches spin their fate.Translating Shakespeare's languagefora modernaudience, Nuyorican playwright Migdalia CruzrewritesMacbethwith all the passion of the Bronx.This translation ofMacbethwaspresented in 2018as part ofthe Play On!Shakespeareproject,an ambitious undertakingfromthe Oregon Shakespeare Festivalthat commissioned new translations of 39 Shakespeare plays.These translations present the Bard's work in language accessible to modern audienceswhile never losing the beauty of Shakespeare's verse.Enlisting thetalentsofa diverse group ofcontemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds,this projectreenvisionsShakespeare for thetwenty-firstcentury.These volumes make these works available for the first time in printanewFirst Folio fora new era.

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Book SynopsisStudies alternative concepts to received theories and practices of poetry in early modern England

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Book SynopsisThis edition of Arthur Miller''s classic tragedy brings the play alive for students whether in the classroom or drama studio. With activities that target exactly the right level plus in-depth biographical and contextual information to deepen students'' understanding of the play, this edition provides comprehensive, relevant and engaging support for 14-16 students. The brand new design ensures that the text and supporting materials are the clearest and most accessible available. Set during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, The Crucible exposes the tensions caused by gossip and rumour within a tight-knit community, where eventually no one is safe from accusation and vengeance. Seen as a parallel to McCarthyism and the fear of communism in 1950s America, the play''s themes of truth, justice, honour, mass hysteria and individuality still resonate with audiences around the world today.

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Book SynopsisExam Board: AQALevel: GCSE Grade 9-1Subject: English LiteratureSuitable for the 2024 examsEverything you need to revise for your GCSE 9-1 set text in a snap guideEverything you need to score top marks on your GCSE Grade 9-1 English Literature exam is right at your fingertips! Revise The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare in a snap with this new GCSE Grade 9-1 Snap Revision Text Guide from Collins. Refresh your knowledge of the plot, context, characters and themes and pick up top tips along the way to ace your AQA exam. Each topic is explained in an easy-to-read format so you can get straight to the point. Then, put your skills to the test with plenty of practice questions included in every section. The Snap Text Guides are packed with every quote and extract you need. We've even included examples of how to plan and write your essay responses! For more revision on Shakespeare, check out our Snap Revision Text Guides on Macbeth (9780008247089) and Romeo and Juliet (9780008247072).

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Book SynopsisA reticent personnel manager living with his mother, Mr Newman shares the prejudices of his times and of his neighbours - and neither a Hispanic woman abused outside his window nor the persecution of the Jewish store owner he buys his paper from are any of his business. Until Newman begins wearing glasses, and others begin to mistake him for a Jew.Arthur Miller''s chilling novel displays the same searing moral precision and emotional intensity of his plays, as the intensity of anti-Semitism in 1945 New York mounts, and the prejudices Newman shares begin to turn threateningly against him.

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Book SynopsisNo Hamlets is the first critical account of the role of Shakespeare in the intellectual tradition of the political right in Germany from the founding of the Empire in 1871 to the ''Bonn Republic'' of the Cold War era. In this sustained study, Andreas Höfele begins with Friedrich Nietzsche and follows the rightist engagement with Shakespeare to the poet Stefan George and his circle, including Ernst Kantorowicz, and the literary efforts of the young Joseph Goebbels during the Weimar Republic, continuing with the Shakespeare debate in the Third Reich and its aftermath in the controversy over ''inner emigration'' and concluding with Carl Schmitt''s Shakespeare writings of the 1950s. Central to this enquiry is the identification of Germany and, more specifically, German intellectuals with Hamlet. The special relationship of Germany with Shakespeare found highly personal and at the same time highIy political expression in this recurring identification, and in its denial. But Hamlet is not the only Shakespearean character with strong appeal: Carl Schmitt''s largely still unpublished diaries of the 1920s reveal an obsessive engagement with Othello which has never before been examined. Interest in German philosophy and political thought has increased in recent Shakespeare studies. No Hamlets brings historical depth to this international discussion. Illuminating the constellations that shaped and were shaped by specific appropriations of Shakespeare, Höfele shows how individual engagements with Shakespeare and a whole strand of Shakespeare reception were embedded in German history from the 1870s to the 1950s and eventually 1989, the year of German reunification.Trade ReviewIn taking this long view, Höfele rectifies any misconceptions we might have that 'right-wing Shakespeare' is purely a phenomenon of the Second World War, and in doing so he sheds fascinating light on less familiar aspects of German history in relation to right-wing politics and ideals and Shakespeare's role within these ... The position of Shakespeare comes full circle, from serving anti-democratic, racist, and fundamentalist causes, only to re-emerge as a powerful force in the midst of liberating and forward-thinking voices. Shakespeare, Hamlet, and to some extent Othello, thus become the keys to understanding German history, psyche, and identity in this powerful study. Höfele's work has all the potential to become an instant classic, a standard work for academics and teachers alike. * Alessandra Bassey, Modern Language Review *I cannot remember reading so compelling, important, and revelatory a Shakespeare book as this one ... This is a wonderfully, indeed movingly well-written book but the quality which particularly singles out No Hamlets is its intellectual and moral honesty. * Shakespeare Jahrbuch *Höfele tells a remarkable story about the way Shakespeare provides imaginative resources for some of the most challenging and troubling thought of the modern era ... also very much engaged with current conversations in early modern studies. * Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Texts and Translations Introduction 1: Highest Formula: Nietzsche's Shakespeare 2: Shakespeare in the Master's Circle: Stefan George and the 'Secret Germany' 3: In the Master's Circle (II): Ernst Kantorowicz 4: Millions of Ghosts: Weimar Hamlets and the Sorrows of Young Goebbels 5: Little Otto: Carl Schmitt and the Moor of Venice 6: Third Reich Shakespeare 7: 'But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue': Hamlet in Inner Emigration 8: Hamlet in Plettenberg: Carl Schmitt and the Intrusion of the Time 9: Epilogue: Welcome to the Machine. Berlin 1989 Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMacbeth before Shakespeare is a history of the medieval King Macbeth and his legend that was the basis for William Shakespeare's Tragedie of Macbeth. It traces the life of the real man and his important innovations, while showing how different legends were created in subsequent eras.Trade ReviewBenjamin Hudson's Macbeth before Shakespeare is a very entertaining and educating read. It succeeds very well in bringing out the man behind the myth, as well as explaining how the man became the myth. Hudson is a master of all the materials and languages required for the job, and he knows the history of Ireland and Britain around the year 1000 intimately. * Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, National University of Ireland, Galway *Here at last we have a solid and detailed account of the historical Macbeth. Ben Hudson is the historian of Celtic Scotland in the central Middle Ages, and he provides us with a readable narrative of the origins of the kingdom of the Scots and Macbeth's role as one of its most energetic and effective kings prior to Scotland's vassalage to their Anglo-Norman neighbor to the south. We see here the process by which Shakespeare inherited the history and legends surrounding Macbeth and the 'three weird sisters,' how Scots were generally perceived in Tudor England, and whether or not there could have been surviving children of Macbeth and his Lady. This is a meticulously constructed history of Scots, Viking, and English relations in the tumultuous eleventh century and a fascinating glimpse into how this particular Scottish monarch—called by one contemporary poet 'the red king'—made his way onto the Elizabethan stage. * Christopher A. Snyder, author of The Britons *This fascinating examination is an important contribution to medieval and early modern Scottish and British history, literature, folklore, and drama. Combining an unrivalled mastery of a complex array of sources with expert use of multiple methodologies, Benjamin Hudson deftly unveils the story of one of Scotland's most enigmatic figures across half a millennium as he explores the evolution of Macbeth from an historical, eleventh-century ruler of Scotland to the infamous Shakespearean literary villain of five-and-a-half centuries later. * R. Andrew McDonald, Brock University *Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *Table of ContentsNote on Methodology List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: A Man and a Legend Chapter 1: Macbeth: Place and Past Chapter 2: Macbeth Emerges Chapter 3: King of All the Scots Chapter 4: Fame and Defamation Chapter 5: Not the Beginning of the Legend Chapter 6: Weird Sisters and the Prior of Loch Leven Chapter 7: Macbeth and Renaissance Scotland Chapter 8: The Scot in Tudor England Chapter 9: Macbeth before Shakespeare Conclusion Appendix 1: Children of Macbeth Appendix 2: Andrew of Wyntoun's Macbeth Episode: A Translation Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThis is a book about Greek culture. It explains why Greek comedy picked out food in particular as a cultural marker. Hundreds of comic fragments are quoted in translation. The development of comedy is explored together with comic creativity as poets sought to represent 'reality' (figs or cooking-pots) on the stage.Trade ReviewThis is a fascinating and original book, spiced with liberal quotations (all translated) from comic fragments alongside discussion of the plays of Aristophanes and Menander * Greece & Rome *Offers a more multi-sided approach to ancient cooking and its practitioners than any other available * Simon Goldhill, Times Literary Supplement *A scholarly book * Simon Goldhill, Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisThe Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms expands the scope of modernism beyond its traditional focus to explore the contributions of artists from regions like Spain, the Balkans, China, Japan, India, Vietnam, and Nigeria. Together, these essays offer the most comprehensive worldwide examination of modernist studies available. Topics covered include: Richard Wright and photographic modernism; poetry of the Caribbean; Chinese modernism and Lu Xun''s Ah Q-The Real Story; Ben Okri and magical realism; aesthetic autonomy in Paris, Italy, Russia; Cuba''s avant-gardes; geography of Hebrew and Yiddish modernism in Europe; Japanese modernism in works by Kitagawa Fuyuhiko and Yokomitsu Riichi; and South African cinema.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Mark Wollaeger ; Part I : Opening Places, Opening Methods ; 1. The Balkans Uncovered: Towards Historie Croisee of Modernism ; Sanja Bahun ; 2 . Caribbean Modernism: Plantation to Planetary ; Mary Lou Emery ; Part II : Temporality ; 3. Berber Poetry and the Issue of Derivation: Alternate Symbolist ; Trajectories ; Edwige Tamalet Talbayev ; 4. The Temporalities of Modernity in Spanish American Modernismo : ; Dario's Bourgeois King ; Gerard Aching ; 5. Nation Time: Richard Wright, Black Power, and Photographic ; Modernism ; Sara Blair ; 6. Chinese Modernism, Mimetic Desire, and European Time ; Eric Hayot ; Part III : Whose Modernism? ; 7. The Will to Allegory and the Origin of Chinese Modernism: ; Rereading Lu Xun's Ah Q-Th e Real Story ; Xudong Zhang ; 8. Neither Mirror nor Mimic: Transnational Reading and Indian ; Narratives in English ; Jessica Berman ; 9. Modernism and African Literature ; Neil Lazarus ; Part IV: Forms and Modes ; 10. " Petro-Magic Realism": Ben Okri's Infl ationary Modernism ; Sarah L. Lincoln ; 11. Little Magazines, World Form ; Eric Bulson ; 12. Poetry, Modernity, Globalization ; Jahan Ramazani ; Part V: Comparative Avant-Gardes ; 13. Futurist Geographies: Uneven Modernities and the Struggle for ; Aesthetic Autonomy: Paris, Italy, Russia, 1909-1914 ; Harsha Ram ; 14. Modernity's Labors in Latin America: Th e Cultural Work of Cuba's ; Avant-Gardes ; Vicky Unruh ; 15. Queer Internationalism and Modern Vietnamese Aesthetics ; Ben Tran ; Part VI: Forms of Sociality ; 16. Cosmopolitanism and Modernism ; Janet Lyon ; 17. Jean Rhys: Left Bank Modernist as Postcolonial Intellectual ; Peter Kalliney ; 18. The Urban Literary Cafe and the Geography of Hebrew and Yiddish ; Modernism in Europe ; Shachar Pinsker ; Part VII : Locating the Transnational ; 19. Th e Circulation of Interwar Anglophone and Hispanic ; Modernisms ; Gayle Rogers ; 20. Scandinavian Modernism: Stories of the Transnational ; and the Discontinuous ; Anna Westerstahl Stenport ; 21. World Modernisms, World Literature, and Comparativity ; Susan Stanford Friedman ; Part VIII : Translation Zones: Culture, Language, Media ; 22. Modernism Disfi gured: Turkish Literature and the "Other West" ; Nergis Erturk ; 23. Modernism's Translations ; Rebecca Beasley ; 24. Japanese Modernism and "Cine-Text": Fragments and Flows at ; Empire's Edge in Kitagawa Fuyuhiko and Yokomitsu Riichi ; William O. Gardner ; Part IX : Film as Vernacular Modernism ; 25. T racking Cinema on a Global Scale ; Miriam Bratu Hansen ; 26. Visions of Modernity in Colonial India: Cinema,Women, and the City ; Manishita Dass ; 27. Vernacular Modernism and South African Cinema: Capitalism, ; Crime, and Styles of Desire ; Rosalind C. Morris ; Part X : Afterword ; 28. Modernist Studies and Inter-Imperiality in the Longue Duree ; Laura Doyle ; Notes on Contributors ; Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume contains the four plays by Thomas Middleton which have most impressed the modern world: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is the most complex amd effective of the city comedies; Women Beware Women and The Changeling (with William Rowley) are two of the most powerful Jacobean tragedies outside of Shakespeare -- studies in lust, power, violence, and self-delusive psychology; A Game at Chess was the single most popular play of the whole Shakespearean era, a satirical exposé of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which played tp pacifist houses at the Globe until King James and his ministers banned it. The best-value collection available with the most officially up-to-date introduction; all the play texts are newly edited with richly informative annotation. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most aTrade ReviewDutton presents an accessible and balanced assessment of the particular difficulties which Middleton poses for a modern audience (and critics) * Years Work in English Studies *Table of ContentsA Chaste Maid in Cheapside ; Women Beware Women ; The Changeling ; A Game at Chess

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Book SynopsisThomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a writer of great versatility, and his career as a London dramatist spans the most productive, innovative, and exciting period of theatrical activity in the history of English drama. Best known for his tragedies, he also wrote many successful comedies of city life. This volume brings together the greatest among them: A Mad World, My Masters, Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and No Wit, No Help Like a Woman''s. The first three plays, written between 1604 and 1606, are witty and rambunctious satires on the predatory life of the aspiring London citizen. Sex and money are the characters'' obsessions; their caustic exposure Middleton''s. In the later play, No Wit (1612), satire shades into romance, prose into verse. Together the four plays reveal the range and exuberance of Middleton''s writing for the comic stage. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the plays have been newly edited and are presented witTable of ContentsA Mad World, My Masters ; Michaelmas Term ; A Trick to Catch the Old One ; No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's

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Book SynopsisThis work explores Shakespeare's deep fascination with dangerous and disorderly forms of speaking - especially rumour, slander, insult, vituperation and curse - and through them offers a vision of the work of words in his plays.

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Book SynopsisThrough dreams and shadows and strangeness, through blinding charms and eye-opening counter-charms, through moments of mortification and laughterthus Stuart M. Tave traces the journey of the lovers, clowns, and fairies who populate comedies from A Midsummer Night's Dream to Waiting for Godot. Tave avoids the pitfalls of theory, taking instead a close look at particular works to give us a sense of the relations between certain dramas and novels that are called comedies. The result is a wonderfully readable book that renews our delight in the enchanting possibilities of literature. A Midsummer Night's Dream, in its perfection, is Tave's point of departure. Its characters fall neatly into the three groups of Tave's title and fulfill to perfection their functions of desire, foolishness, and power. From the magical concord of Shakespeare's resolution, Tave moves to works whose character face ever greater difficulties in reaching a happy conclusion. From Jonson and Austen to Chekhov and Beck

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Book SynopsisJoseph Westlund brings recent developments in psychoanalytic thought to his elegant and sensitive readings of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure. Westlund departs from the usual preoccupation in psychoanalytic criticism with conflict and guilt to rely instead on Melanie Klein's theory of reparation, which emphasizes the impulse in life to resolve and transcend conflict. Through interpretations that are new and convincing, Westlund views the interactions of characters in the six comedies as attempts to work through anger and guilt to effect reparations for themselves and for us.

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Book SynopsisA timely book that identifies the practice of '(syn)aesthetics' in artistic style and audience response, which helps to articulate the power of experiential practice in the arts. This exciting new approach includes interviews with leading practitioners in of theatre, dance, site-specific work, live art and technological performance practice.Trade Review'The diversity of voices [in part 2 of the book] is a real strength...[and] provides a rich array of primary source material for all readers from undergraduates to professors...' - Patrick Duggan, New Theatre QuarterlyTable of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Interview Contributors Introduction: Redefining Visceral Performance PART I Defining (Syn)aesthetics Connecting Theories (Syn)aesthetics in Practice PART II Introduction – A (Syn)aesthetic Exchange Felix Barrett& Maxine Doyle of Punchdrunk: In the P rae-sens of Body and Space - the (syn)aesthetics of Site-sympathetic Work Lizzie Clachan& David Rosenberg of Shunt Theatre Collective: A Door into Another World - The Audience and Hybridity Akram Khan: The Mathematics of Sensation - The Body as Site/Sight/Cite and Source Marisa Carnesky: Trapping the Audience in the Fantasy – Instinct, the Body& the Magic of the Experiential Naomi Wallace& Kwame Kwei-Armah: Desire, the Body and Transgressive Acts of Playwriting – on Writing and Directing Things of Dry Hours Linda Bassett: Bypassing the Logical – Performing Churchill's Far Away Jo McInnes: A Text That Demands to be Played With – Performing Kane's 4.48 Psychosis Graeae's Jenny Sealey& Playwright Glyn Cannon: Seeing Words and (Dis)comfort Zones – the Fusion of Bodies, Text and Technology in On Blindness Sara Giddens& Simon Jones of Bodies In Flight: The In-betweens, Where Flesh Utters and Words Move – On Flesh, Text, Space and Technologies Leslie Hill& Helen Paris of Curious: Embodied Intimacies - On (the) Scent, Memory and the Visceral-Virtual Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSIR JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as 'the best modern book on Shakespeare.' In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'. ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in

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