Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisOntroerend Goed is a Belgian, Ghent-based theatre performance group of international renown. The group is made of young creators who explore the space between theatre and performance, writing their own texts from a strong basic concept and adapting familiar formats from various media. From sensorial experiences with blindfolded, individual audience members, over anarchistic teenage performances up to shows that profoundly explore what it means to be a theatre-goer, the group continues to create work that is equally challenging and treacherously shallow. A lot of contemporary plays cannot be experienced unless you’ve attended them and many of those performances are hard to transcribe on paper, because of their visual and physical nature. Of course, it’s always possible to make a video recording, but watching that is a diminished experi­ence. Although Ontroerend Goed embrace the ‘nowness’ of theatre and its visual and physical possibilities, the group wanted to take an extra step to share its work. In this book, Ontroerend Goed explore different forms to convey a theatrical experience on paper. Each performance has its own way of approaching the audience, so each text has its own way to address the reader. This book is not made to turn the page and docu­ment the performances as a past experience, but for people to use it as a tool. A tool to play, adapt, oppose, relive, challenge and inspire.Trade ReviewCovers similar territory to Tim Crouch's The Author in its examination of the role and responsibilities of the audience - undoubted power - fascinating and slippery. * Guardian on The Audience *This isn't a lecture, it doesn't have a message: and yet it looks very like the networked future of political theatre: cool, determined and inside the nerve centre of political thought. * Exeunt Magazine on All That Is Wrong *

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Book Synopsis'Brilliant' Sunday TimesHow does a truly disastrous leader – a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant – come to power? How, and why, does a tyrant hold on to power? And what goes on in the hidden recesses of the tyrant's soul?For help in understanding our most urgent contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no peer.'Brilliant, timely' Margaret Atwood, on Twitter'A scintillating book, uncannily illuminating about current politics, as perceptive about the victims of tyranny as it is about the tyrants themselves' Nicholas HytnerTrade ReviewIn this brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable study of Shakespeare’s tyrants and their tyrannies—their dreadful narcissistic follies, their usurpations and their craziness and their cruelties, their arrogant incompetence, their paranoid viciousness, their falsehoods and their flattery hunger—Stephen Greenblatt manages to elucidate obliquely our own desperate (in Shakespeare’s words) “general woe”. -- PHILIP ROTHBrilliant, timely -- MARGARET ATWOOD, on TwitterA scintillating book, uncannily illuminating about current politics, as perceptive about the victims of tyranny as it is about the tyrants themselves. -- Nicholas Hytner, former Artistic Director of the Royal National TheatreBrisk and highly readable -- Jonathan Bate * New Statesman *Brilliant -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times *

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Actor, producer and director Ben Crystal revisits his acclaimed book on Shakespeare for the 400th anniversary of his death, updating and adding three new chapters. Shakespeare on Toast knocks the stuffing from the staid old myth of the Bard, revealing the man and his plays for what they really are: modern, thrilling, uplifting drama.The bright words and colourful characters of the greatest hack writer are brought brilliantly to life, sweeping cobwebs from the Bard - his language, his life, his world, his sounds, his craft. Crystal reveals man and work as relevant, accessible and alive - and, astonishingly, finds Shakespeare's own voice amid the poetry.Whether you're studying Shakespeare for the first time or you've never set foot near one of his plays but have always wanted to, this book smashes down the walls that have been built up around this untouchable literary figure.Told in five fascinating Acts, this is quick, easy and good for you. Just like beans on toast.

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Book SynopsisRenowned for his endlessly quotable pronouncements, Oscar Wilde cut a dashing figure in late Victorian London … until his tragic downfall resulting from an ill-judged libel action. We remember him not only for his famous trial and imprisonment, but also for a “devil’s dictionary” of timeless aphorisms and for the enduring brilliance of plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde's life resembles his early short story, "The Remarkable Rocket", which, rising from nowhere in a shower of sparks, explodes and falls to earth, exclaiming as it goes out, "I knew I should create a great sensation." Merlin Holland expertly traces the arc of his illustrious ancestor's life, from his birth in Dublin in 1854 as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, to a brilliant career at Oxford University where his reputation for dandyish wit was first honed, through to his conquest of the drawing rooms and theatres of fashionable London, culminating in disgrace and imprisonment at the hands of the Marquess of Queensberry in the most notorious libel trial in English history. Wilde died in penury and obscurity in 1900, yet his reputation today has never been greater. This engaging and innovative short book features a concise biographical essay on Wilde's meteoric career, followed by a Q&A interview based on Wilde's own words and Merlin Holland's unrivalled knowledge of his grandfather's life, work and puckish observations. This sparkling biography does full justice to Oscar Wilde's writerly genius and irrepressible humanity. It offers readers a renewed appreciation for a man who at times scandalised his era as much as he delights our own.

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Book SynopsisTwo queens. One in power. One in prison. It's all in the execution. Schiller's political tragedy takes us behind the scenes of British history's famous rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Written in verse and based on historical sources, Schiller's play imagines the queens' lives - one in court, the other in prison - surrounded by staff and servants. Their imagined meeting, before Mary's execution, is passionate and enthralling. Robert Icke's lean version condenses the action, cutting the cast to twelve, whilst retaining the play's symmetrical structure and tense atmosphere. In an exciting twist, the first production had two actors learn the roles of both queens, and their roles were decided at each performance by the toss of a coin. Adding a further duality to the play, this also allowed the first word of the evening to anticipate its ending:'Heads'.

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Book SynopsisAngela Thirlwell explores the fictitious life and the many after-lives of Rosalind, Shakespeare's progressive new heroine, and her perennial influence on drama, fiction and art. The book ranges widely across Tudor history, theatre history, sexual politics, autobiography, art history and filmography. This highly original 'biography' of Rosalind - Shakespeare's greatest female creation - contains exclusive new interviews with Juliet Rylance, Sally Scott, Janet Suzman, Juliet Stevenson, Michelle Terry, award-winning director Blanche McIntyre, as well as insights from Michael Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Greg Doran, Rebecca Hall, Adrian Lester, Pippa Nixon, Vanessa Redgrave and Fiona Shaw.

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Book SynopsisLeopold Bloom’s odyssey is a pandemonium of live music, puppets, dancing, clowning, bowler hats and kazoos. It’s Ulysses as you’ve never imagined it before, a superbly theatrical homage to Joyce’s chronicle of Dublin life and the greatest novel of all time. With his wife Molly waiting in bed for the nefarious Blazes Boylan, Leopold Bloom traverses Dublin, conversing in pubs, graveyards and brothels, enduring ridicule and prejudice as he steadfastly clings to his principles and subtly slays his dragons while drawing ever closer to his fateful encounter with the young Stephen Dedalus.

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Book Synopsis"I go half way round the world and back thinking I’d made some sort of discovery and come back to find the same damn lies, the same white lies, the same black lies." Alvin and Errol can’t picture much of a future for themselves. They’re young, Black and living in England in the 1980s, with an entire country and political system set against them. Instead they focus firmly on their past – the sunny Caribbean and heroic father they left behind when their mother brought them to England twenty years ago. But when Alvin returns home from his grandfather’s funeral a new version of their past emerges, and the two brothers are caught in a desperate struggle to unearth the truth about their existence. Powerful and compelling, Strange Fruit by Caryl Phillips (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) is the story of a family caught between two cultures, and the uncrossable no man’s land that can come between parents and their children.

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Book SynopsisThis Is A Play About The Future (And Climate Change. Not Insomnia.) A woman walks onto the stage. She says she is from the future. She says that we have stopped dreaming. She says we can change everything. She says that she can help end all our dystopian nightmares. But we know plays don’t change the world. Right? Land Without Dreams is a hopeful, funny and courageous new show by experimental Copenhagen-based theatre company Fix&Foxy. Their previous works include radical versions of Pretty Woman, Twin Peaks, and Friends.

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Book SynopsisThe Libation Bearers (Choephori) of Aeschylus is the central tragedy of his Oresteia, the only Greek trilogy that survives in full and one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Greek literature. The play enacts and explores in profound detail the unsettling myth of Orestes, the young hero who was obliged to avenge the murder of his father Agamemnon by killing his mother Clytemnestra. The standard commentary, by A. F. Garvie, is intended for advanced students and professional scholars and makes few concessions to the less experienced. This edition, while taking full account of the latest advances in scholarship and criticism, seeks to make the play accessible to a much wider range of readers. Besides an introduction and bibliography it includes a newly constituted Greek text (with critical apparatus), a facing translation closely matched to this, and a commentary keyed to the translation. The commentary seeks to interpret the play at all levels, not avoiding detailed issues of textual criticism and the meaning of individual words but also exploring the play’s imagery, questions of stagecraft and dramatic effect, the poet’s use of existing mythical and poetic material, and the wider significance of the play in relation to the rest of the trilogy.Trade ReviewReviews 'Any student who has occasion to be involved with Libation Bearers will be well served by this edition; textual problems (perhaps the most puzzling to the neophyte) in this sadly corrupt play are handled with notable skill .... strongly recommended.' Colin Leach, Classics for All'Stimulating and even, at times, provocative, the Aris & Phillips Libation Bearers by Andrew Brown is a commentary no serious reader of the Oresteia will want to be without. Far from confining himself to general observations, Brown engages repeatedly with the latest currents of textual and interpretive work on both the play itself and on Aeschylean tragedy more broadly.' Marcel Andrew Widzisz, The Classical Journal'A helpful volume for both students and scholars [...] The presentation of the volume is excellent, as expected in this series, with no puzzling typographical errors. All this, combined with a very reasonable price, leads me to recommend the purchase of this edition, alongside the author’s earlier (1987), equally commendable edition of Sophocles’ Antigone in the same series.' Thalia Papadopoulou, Journal of Hellenic Studies'The overall impression is one of great care: B.'s explanations are always accessible and thorough, whether the topic is staging or the possible deletion of a particle, and suggestions are often tempered with cautionary reminders of our limited evidence [...] The up-to-date bibliography and B.'s frequent citations of other scholars will be invaluable to students undertaking research on the play. This is a rich and lucid commentary, which makes not only a difficult play, but the scholarship surrounding it much more accessible to students of Aeschylus.' Isabella Reinhardt, The Classical Review‘The presentation of the volume is excellent, as expected in this series, with no puzzling typographical errors.’ Thalia Papadopoulou, The Journal of Hellenic Studies

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Book SynopsisPart comedy, part thriller, part social critique, The Granny and the Heist (La estanquera de Vallecas) is the play with which José Luis Alonso de Santos reinvigorated the Spanish stage during a period of uncertainty upon the death of Francisco Franco and the end of theatre censorship. Premiered in 1981, it established Alonso de Santos as the most important playwright in Spain at a time when the country was emerging from decades of relative isolation from the rest of Europe.Set in a working class area of Madrid, the play tells the story of Leandro and Tocho, two out of work builders whose plan to rob a tobacconists goes awry due to the refusal of its owner, feisty grandmother Justa, to hand over the money. Barricading themselves in the shop as the forces of order arrive, the men take Justa and her granddaughter Ángeles hostage. In the stand-off that ensues, Alonso de Santos deftly interweaves tense excitement, comic banter and moments of great tenderness, eliciting our sympathy for the residents of the Vallecas neighbourhood, equally ignored by Spain’s nascent democracy as they had been under the dictatorship.This edition features Stuart Green’s facing page translation, as well as a critical introduction that provides readers with knowledge of the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and performed. The edition also includes an extensive collection of classroom activities especially designed by Lucy Meyer and Stuart Green to enable secondary school and university teachers to use the play, its translation and other authentic materials to teach a variety of linguistic and grammatical features of Spanish in all four skills areas in language learning.Table of ContentsIntroduction There’s no-one quite like Grandma 1 Vallecas: from village to neighbourhood and on stage 2 Plot summary 5 Alonso de Santos and the theatre of his time: playwriting and politics 7 La estanquera de Vallecas: a blend of sainete and the picaresque 13 Characters 20 Premiere(s): critical and commercial reaction 28 Notes on the translation 32 Acknowledgements 35 Translator's Note 35 Bibliography 36 La estanquera de Vallecas / The Granny and the Heist 39 Teaching Resources Introduction 138 Addressing any concerns 139 Teaching and learning objectives 140 Skills activities 142 Speaking 142 Listening 151 Reading 153 Writing 155 Research project 159 Performance 160 Lesson sequence 163 Entrevista con Beatriz Bergamín / Interview with Beatriz Bergamín 166 Transcriptions of videoclips 172 Photographs from the 1985 stage production 176 Sample student work 178 Answers to questions 189

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Book SynopsisPart comedy, part thriller, part social critique, The Granny and the Heist (La estanquera de Vallecas) is the play with which José Luis Alonso de Santos reinvigorated the Spanish stage during a period of uncertainty upon the death of Francisco Franco and the end of theatre censorship. Premiered in 1981, it established Alonso de Santos as the most important playwright in Spain at a time when the country was emerging from decades of relative isolation from the rest of Europe.Set in a working class area of Madrid, the play tells the story of Leandro and Tocho, two out of work builders whose plan to rob a tobacconists goes awry due to the refusal of its owner, feisty grandmother Justa, to hand over the money. Barricading themselves in the shop as the forces of order arrive, the men take Justa and her granddaughter Ángeles hostage. In the stand-off that ensues, Alonso de Santos deftly interweaves tense excitement, comic banter and moments of great tenderness, eliciting our sympathy for the residents of the Vallecas neighbourhood, equally ignored by Spain’s nascent democracy as they had been under the dictatorship.This edition features Stuart Green’s facing page translation, as well as a critical introduction that provides readers with knowledge of the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and performed. The edition also includes an extensive collection of classroom activities especially designed by Lucy Meyer and Stuart Green to enable secondary school and university teachers to use the play, its translation and other authentic materials to teach a variety of linguistic and grammatical features of Spanish in all four skills areas in language learning.Table of ContentsIntroduction There’s no-one quite like Grandma 1 Vallecas: from village to neighbourhood and on stage 2 Plot summary 5 Alonso de Santos and the theatre of his time: playwriting and politics 7 La estanquera de Vallecas: a blend of sainete and the picaresque 13 Characters 20 Premiere(s): critical and commercial reaction 28 Notes on the translation 32 Acknowledgements 35 Translator's Note 35 Bibliography 36 La estanquera de Vallecas / The Granny and the Heist 39 Teaching Resources Introduction 138 Addressing any concerns 139 Teaching and learning objectives 140 Skills activities 142 Speaking 142 Listening 151 Reading 153 Writing 155 Research project 159 Performance 160 Lesson sequence 163 Entrevista con Beatriz Bergamín / Interview with Beatriz Bergamín 166 Transcriptions of videoclips 172 Photographs from the 1985 stage production 176 Sample student work 178 Answers to questions 189

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Book SynopsisLove on the Dole (1933), the iconic novel about 1930s British working-class life, has a significant place in British cultural history. Its author, Walter Greenwood, went from unemployed Salford man to best-selling writer, and the novel has never been out of print. The 1935 stage adaptation was said to have been seen by three million people by 1940, including the King and Queen. Greenwood proposed a film adaption in 1936, but the story was pronounced too ‘sordid’ and depressing’ by the British Board of Film Censors. However, in 1940 the Ministry of Information decided that this story of pre-war economic and social failure should be filmed as a contribution to the ‘people’s war’. It was widely regarded as one of the best British wartime productions – and all three versions of Love on the Dole were frequently referenced during wartime debate about how a reconstructed post-war society should make a repetition of the 1930s impossible.This study explores in detail what made this important text so influential, analyses the considerable differences between the novel, play and film versions and places the public response to Love on the Dole in its full historical context. It examines Greenwood’s whole literary career and his continuing success until the 1960s: casting new light on his subsequent novels, plays and non-fiction works, few of which have received critical attention.Trade Review'A fascinating, comprehensive and vital study. It rehabilitates Greenwood as an artist, it analyses 1930s’ culture, and it provides some engaging reflections on the history of Salford.'Dr Claire Warden, Reader in Drama, De Montfort University‘Ten years in the making, Chris Hopkins’s book was certainly worth waiting for. It is an exhaustively researched, painstakingly analytical and compulsively readable work which is essential for anyone interested in the social and cultural history of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.’ Jeffrey Richards, Journal of Cinema and Television Studies'This book is both a criticism of Love on the Dole and its impact, and a commentary on life in the 1930s for the poorer working classes. It succeeds in both, and highlights why the work has had an important and pertinent message about poverty which has resonated throughout the decades. I can recommend Hopkins’s text to students and academics of 1930s British and literary history, and to anyone wishing to understand the impact of Love on the Dole and why it has remained relevant since its publication.' Mike Langthorne, Labour History ReviewReviews ‘Provides the definitive study of this iconic text and this reviewer has certainly benefited from reading it in my appreciation and understanding of the novel.’ Stewart Vann, North West Labour HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Love on the Dole: Novel2. Love on the Dole: Play and Film3. Walter Greenwood: Life and WritingsConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the ‘tyrant by entrie’ or the usurper, who supplanted earlier ‘tyrant by the administration’ as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtù’ and through an act of ‘lawmaking’ violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare’s history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence? As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.Trade ReviewReviews'Original scholarship of significant value to the academic study of the intersections between drama and politics in the early modern period; its strengths lie in its wide coverage of dramatic texts, from political moralities to Senecan tragedies, and from university dramas to histories of the commercial stage; its combination of these dramatic texts with the analysis of a variety of political materials; and its dual focus on the historical and political contexts of both England and Scotland.'Dr Clare Egan, Lancaster University'[A] perceptive study... [Majumder] examines a span of English and Scottish works, from John Skelton’s Magnificence, through David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and George Buchanan’s literary and polemical work, to the Richard III plays of the late 1500s, identifying a crucial shift in the ways in which tyranny and its relationship to usurpation were represented.'Lucy Munro, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Doyeeta Majumder [provides] a refreshing approach to what has become one of the most discussed topics in Shakespearean studies—that of the expression and negotiation of authority on the stage. [...] It is the final chapter that offers a truly original approach to the issues of tyranny and usurpation in its consideration of three versions of Richard III. [...] Majumder’s analysis takes into consideration the particular audiences and literary conceits employed in each play and offers nuanced and intelligent readings that expose the constant contestation and fluidity of supreme authority.'Ben Haworth, The Year's Work in English Studies Table of ContentsNote on Spellings and AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter One: The Kingly Vice: The Tyrant in Early Tudor DramaChapter Two: Sovereignty, Counsel, and Consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisChapter Three: Artful Construction of the Political Realm: Buchanan and the Legitimacy of ResistanceChapter Four: Gorboduc: Absolutist Decision and the Two Bodies of the KingChapter Five: Tyranny Added to Usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard IIIEpilogueBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn 1623 the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell assembled Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, better known as The First Folio. In doing so they preserved literature's most dramatically vital and poetically rich account of our human world. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and performers, Shakespeare's inexhaustible work has remained abreast of contemporary concerns ever since, and it continues to hold a mirror up to the nature of our troubled society and our contradictory selves. The plays accompany us through the ages of mankind, from comic springtime to wintry age, compressing our life in time into the three hours' traffic of the stage; the characters in them have shaped the way we think about politics and war, consciousness and morality, love and death. Peter Conrad examines the world-view of the plays, their generic originality and their astonishingly inventive language. He goes on to explore Shakespeare's global legacy as his characters migrate to every continent and are reinvented by later writers, painters, composers, choreographers and film-makers.Trade ReviewThe success of Peter Conrad's Shakespeare [...] lies in the balance it strikes between personal, confessional, emotional responses such as Flaubert's, and more critical perspectives * TLS *

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Book SynopsisAn enlightening, nuanced, and accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the greatest writers of short fiction in history. Anton Chekhov's stories and plays endure, far beyond the Russian context, as outstanding modern literary models. In a brief, remarkable life, Chekhov rose from lower-class, provincial roots to become a physician, leading writer, and philanthropist, all in the face of a progressive fatal disease. In this new biography, Michael C. Finke analyzes Chekhov's major stories, plays, and nonfiction in the context of his life, both fleshing out the key features of Chekhov's poetics of prose and drama and revealing key continuities across genres, as well as between his lesser-studied early writings and the later works. An excellent resource for readers new to Chekhov, this book also presents much original scholarship and is an accessible, comprehensive overview of one of the greatest modern dramatists and writers of short fiction in history.Trade Review“A crown achievement of his life-time engagement with Chekhov, Finke’s concise biography tells a compelling and comprehensive story of the Russian writer’s life and work. Written with surgical precision and creative sensitivity, this highly readable book pulsates with a multitude of insights into Chekhov as a person and an artist. Freedom from Violence and Lies will be a treasure for anyone interested in Russian literature and this great beloved writer.” -- Radislav Lapushin, Associate Professor of Russian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“This valuable guide to the last great Russian writer of the nineteenth century achieves an exceptional balance between the life and the work. A wealth of biographical detail is harmoniously intertwined with rich analysis of Chekhov’s literary work, abounding with original and perspicacious interpretations. Chekhov’s life is studied in its two parallel streams—those of a writer’s career and of a medical professional. The latter further reveals competing lines of travail: as a practicing doctor, as a philanthropist, and as a student of the history and sociology of health care. The reader will enjoy a charming image of the writer, but also frequent, delicate reflections on the unique problems a scholar of Chekhov encounters, fascinating excavations into the deeper reaches of Chekhov’s work, and subtle commentaries on his poetics. An intellectual endeavor of considerable complexity, Finke’s book will have a distinguished place amidst the vast literature on Chekhov.” -- Savely Senderovich, Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature and Medieval Studies, Cornell University

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Book SynopsisWas Shakespeare a snob? Poor Naked Wretches challenges the idea that our greatest writer despised working people, and shows that he portrayed them with as much insight, compassion and purpose as the rich and powerful. Moreover, they play an important role in his dramatic method. Stephen Unwin reads Shakespeare anew, exploring the astonishing variety of working people in his plays, as well as the vast range of cultural sources from which they were drawn. Unwin argues that the robust realism of these characters, their independence of mind and their engagement in the great issues of the day, makes them much more than mere ‘comic relief’. Compassionate, cogent and wry, Poor Naked Wretches grants these often-overlooked figures the dignity and respect they deserve.

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Book Synopsis Memory and commemoration play a vital role not only in the work of Shakespeare, but also in the process that has made him a world author. As the contributors of this collection demonstrate, the phenomenon of commemoration has no single approach, as it occurs on many levels, has a long history, and is highly unpredictable in its manifestations. With an international focus and a comparative scope that explores the afterlives also of other artists, this volume shows the diverse modes of commemorative practices involving Shakespeare. Delving into these “cultures of commemoration,” it presents keen insights into the dynamics of authorship, literary fame, and afterlives in its broader socio-historical contexts.Table of Contents Introduction: Shakespeare and the Cultures of Commemoration Ton Hoenselaars and Clara Calvo Chapter 1. Acting as an Epitaph: Performing Commemoration in the Shakespearean History Play Emily Shortslef Chapter 2. From Jubilee to Gala: Remembrance and Ritual Commemoration Robert Sawyer Chapter 3. Shakespeare Remembered Graham Holderness Chapter 4. American Shakespeare Clubs and Commemoration Katherine Scheil Chapter 5. Shakespeare and ‘Native Americans’: Forging Identities through the 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary Monika Smialkowska Chapter 6. The Disciplines of War, Memory, and Writing: Shakespeare’s Henry V and David Jones’s In Parenthesis Adrian Poole Chapter 7. Monumental Play: Commemoration, Post-war Britain, and History Cycles Anita M. Hagerman Afterword: The Seeds of Time Graham Holderness

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Book Synopsis As the site of literary pilgrimage since the eighteenth century, the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the topic of hundreds of imaginary portrayals, Stratford is ripe for analysis, both in terms of its factual existence and its fictional afterlife. The essays in this volume consider the various manifestations of the physical and metaphorical town on the Avon, across time, genre and place, from America to New Zealand, from children’s literature to wartime commemorations. We meet many Stratfords in this collection, real and imaginary, and the interplay between the two generates new visions of the place.Table of Contents Preface Katherine Scheil Chapter 1. Helen Faucit and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1879 Christy Desmet Chapter 2. Secret Stratford: Shakespeare’s Hometown in Recent Young Adult Fiction Susanne Greenhalgh Chapter 3. Stratfordian Perambulations; or, Walking with Shakespeare Julie Sanders Chapter 4. Shakespeare’s Church and the Pilgrim Fathers: Commemorating Plymouth Rock in Stratford Clara Calvo Chapter 5. Importing Stratford Katherine Scheil Afterword: ‘Dear Shakespeare-land’: Investing in Stratford Nicola J. Watson

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Book Synopsis As the site of literary pilgrimage since the eighteenth century, the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the topic of hundreds of imaginary portrayals, Stratford is ripe for analysis, both in terms of its factual existence and its fictional afterlife. The essays in this volume consider the various manifestations of the physical and metaphorical town on the Avon, across time, genre and place, from America to New Zealand, from children’s literature to wartime commemorations. We meet many Stratfords in this collection, real and imaginary, and the interplay between the two generates new visions of the place.Table of Contents Preface Katherine Scheil Chapter 1. Helen Faucit and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1879 Christy Desmet Chapter 2. Secret Stratford: Shakespeare’s Hometown in Recent Young Adult Fiction Susanne Greenhalgh Chapter 3. Stratfordian Perambulations; or, Walking with Shakespeare Julie Sanders Chapter 4. Shakespeare’s Church and the Pilgrim Fathers: Commemorating Plymouth Rock in Stratford Clara Calvo Chapter 5. Importing Stratford Katherine Scheil Afterword: ‘Dear Shakespeare-land’: Investing in Stratford Nicola J. Watson

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Book Synopsis How does Shakespeare represent war? This volume reviews scholarship to date on the question and introduces new perspectives, looking at contemporary conflict through the lens of the past. Through his haunting depiction of historical bloodshed, including the Trojan War, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare illuminates more recent political violence, ranging from the British occupation of Ireland to the Spanish Civil War, the Balkans War, and the past several decades of U. S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can a war be just? What is the relation between the ruler and the ruled? What motivates ethnic violence? Shakespeare’s plays serve as the frame for careful explorations of perennial problems of human co-existence: the politics of honor, the ethics of diplomacy, the responsibility of non-combatants, and the tension between idealism and Realpolitik.Table of Contents Chapter 1. Shakespeare and War: Honour at the Stake Patrick Gray Chapter 2. Shakespeare in Sarajevo: Theatrical and Cinematic Encounters with the Balkans War Sara Soncini Chapter 3. John of Lancaster’s Negotiation with the Rebels in 2 Henry IV: Fifteenth-Century Northern England as Sixteenth-Century Ireland Jane Yeang Chui Wong Chapter 4. Shakespeare’s Unjust Wars Franziska Quabeck Chapter 5. Sine Dolore: Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War Daniel Derrin Chapter 6. The Better Part of Stolen Valour: Counterfeits, Comedy and the Supreme Court David Currell Chapter 7. Hamletism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39 Jesús Tronch Chapter 8. Where Character Is King: Gregory Doran’s Henriad Alice Dailey

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Book SynopsisThe Girl from Andros was the first play of the brilliant but short-lived Roman comic playwright Terence and shows him as already a master dramatist. It is based on two plays (both now lost) by the Greek playwright Menander and was first put on in Rome in 166 BCE. The main focus of interest is the plotting and counter-plotting of a devious master and his equally devious slave, but there are also two boys both in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl in search of the family from which she has long been separated – typical ingredients of a Latin comedy.The play is a theatrical tour de force with many comic highlights and is enlivened by a succession of metatheatrical remarks; but it also provokes thought on various aspects of human relationships in a male-dominated, slave-owning society that jealously guards its rights of citizenship. It was the first ancient Latin comedy to be performed in the Renaissance and influenced a number of plays in succeeding centuries, most notably Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722); it was also the inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s novel The Woman of Andros (1930). This volume includes the first detailed commentary on the play in any language for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Dr Brown's book fills a real need, with a right-to-the-point introduction and commentary. His translation stays close to the Latin, but that does not keep it from being brilliant by moments'.Professor Benjamin Victor, University of Montreal'I am very happy to say that this Andria is an exemplary edition, invaluable for scholars, students and the Latin-inclined general reader alike. A fine work for us to remember Peter by.' Keith Maclennan, Classics for All'In preparing this last of his many contributions to the study of Terence, Brown was thus able to draw upon the full range of his knowledge, experience, and interests, and the result has all the virtues we might expect of him: clear and accurate discussion of the Latin text, a keen eye for details and nuances of interpretation, scrupulously evenhanded reporting and cogent analysis of past scholarly views, and a precise English rendering of the Latin original.' Sander Goldberg, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionText and TranslationCommentaryBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Girl from Andros was the first play of the brilliant but short-lived Roman comic playwright Terence and shows him as already a master dramatist. It is based on two plays (both now lost) by the Greek playwright Menander and was first put on in Rome in 166 BCE. The main focus of interest is the plotting and counter-plotting of a devious master and his equally devious slave, but there are also two boys both in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl in search of the family from which she has long been separated – typical ingredients of a Latin comedy.The play is a theatrical tour de force with many comic highlights and is enlivened by a succession of metatheatrical remarks; but it also provokes thought on various aspects of human relationships in a male-dominated, slave-owning society that jealously guards its rights of citizenship. It was the first ancient Latin comedy to be performed in the Renaissance and influenced a number of plays in succeeding centuries, most notably Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722); it was also the inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s novel The Woman of Andros (1930). This volume includes the first detailed commentary on the play in any language for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Dr Brown's book fills a real need, with a right-to-the-point introduction and commentary. His translation stays close to the Latin, but that does not keep it from being brilliant by moments'.Professor Benjamin Victor, University of Montreal'I am very happy to say that this Andria is an exemplary edition, invaluable for scholars, students and the Latin-inclined general reader alike. A fine work for us to remember Peter by.' Keith Maclennan, Classics for All'In preparing this last of his many contributions to the study of Terence, Brown was thus able to draw upon the full range of his knowledge, experience, and interests, and the result has all the virtues we might expect of him: clear and accurate discussion of the Latin text, a keen eye for details and nuances of interpretation, scrupulously evenhanded reporting and cogent analysis of past scholarly views, and a precise English rendering of the Latin original.' Sander Goldberg, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionText and TranslationCommentaryBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe emergence of a theatrical science of man in France, 1660-1740 highlights a radical departure from discussions of dramatic literature and its undergirding rules to a new, relational discourse on the emotional power of theater. Through a diverse cast of religious theaterphobes, government officials, playwrights, art theorists and proto-philosophes, Connors shows the concerted effort in early Enlightenment France to use texts about theater to establish broader theories on emotion, on the enduring psychological and social ramifications of affective moments, and more generally, on human interaction, motivation, and social behavior. This fundamentally anthropological assessment of theater emerged in the works of anti-theatrical religious writers, who argued that emotional response was theater’s raison d’être and that it was an efficient venue to learn more about the depravity of human nature. A new generation of pro-theatrical writers shared the anti-theatricalists’ intense focus on the emotions of theater, but unlike religious theaterphobes, they did not view emotion as a conduit of sin or as a dangerous, uncontrollable process; but rather, as cognitive-affective moments of feeling and learning. Connors’ study explores this reassessment of the theatrical experience which empowered writers to use plays, critiques, and other cultural materials about the stage to establish a theatrical science of man—an early Enlightenment project with aims to study and ‘improve’ the emotional, social, and political ‘health’ of eighteenth-century France.Trade Review‘Informed by recent work in emotions history and affect theory, the book’s six engaging and original chapters show how this theatrical science repositioned early eighteenth-century spectators, not as hapless victims, but as active learners for whom the theatrical experience was a source of knowledge about the emotions… The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France makes a strong case for why cultural understandings of theatre as a social practice must also consider intellectual history as well as the dramatic texts that were performed. There are many fine-grained analyses of plays that convincingly illustrate the emotional dynamics described in the book… this book makes for fascinating, provocative reading.’ Annelle Curulla, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: theater, emotions, science of manDiderot’s relational dramaFrom religious theaterphobia to theatrical innovationAffect, intentionality, and the history of emotions Chapter 1: Theaterphobia and the transformational power of performanceAnti-theatrical criticism: goals and strategiesCorneille, Nicole, and the reality of emotionsLearning dangerously from the passions: Pierre Nicole’s Traité de la comédieDebating theatrical emotions in the wake of Nicole’s Traité Chapter 2: “Que sur la superficie de notre cœur”: Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s theatrical emotionsEmotional debates: past and presentA different path to aesthetic appreciationThe political case for pleasureDubos’s cognitive-affective sequences Chapter 3: Beyond affect: from Dubos’s “passions superficielles” to Houdar de La Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”La Motte, the Querelle, and the RegencyLa Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”The dramaturgical power of intérêt Chapter 4: From the page to the stage: La Motte’s theatrical inquiry into the emotionsContext and emotion in Les Macchabées (1721)Intentionality and suspense in Romulus (1722)Inès de Castro (1723) and the emotional politics of intérêt Chapter 5: Strategic passions: Marivaux’s Moderne subjectivitiesMarivaux’s trajectory from Moderne to bel esprit to scientist of manLearning from the “organs”: Marivaux’s intuitive ethicsSentimental strategies: Marivaux’s theories of emotion in Le Triomphe de l’amour (1732) Chapter 6: Learning through multiplicité: emotion and distance in the comédie larmoyanteThe decline and rebirth of Nivelle de La Chaussée’s emotional poeticsMeaning-making through the romanesqueThe pièce-cadre: emotion, multiplicité, and spectatorship in La Fausse Antipathie (1733) Conclusion: avant-gardes, emotion, and Enlightenment Works citedIndex

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022 'Sparklingly sardonic ... There really is no one like Bennett' Independent 'Filled with elegiac memories and literary gossip ... a major National Treasure' Lynn Barber 4 March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. 20 March. With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. A year in and out of lockdown as experienced by Alan Bennett. The diary takes us from the filming of Talking Heads to thoughts on Boris Johnson, from his father's short-lived craze for family fishing trips, to stair lifts, junk shops of old, having a haircut, and encounters on the local park bench. A lyrical afterword describes the journey home to Yorkshire from King's Cross station via fish and chips on Quebec Street, past childhood landmarks of Leeds, through Coniston Cold, over the infant River Aire, and on.Trade ReviewThe dyspeptic Pepys from Yorkshire, Alan Bennett, master of the "absurd and inexplicable" moments of ordinary life, offers up a curation of his thoughts, diaries and essays of the pandemic years that makes for a digestible stocking filler ... his thoughts and writing are as clear-eyed and vigorous as ever * Times Best Biography and Memoir Books of 2022 *From the singular pen of the incomparable Alan Bennett comes a drily witty and endlessly charming diary of life in and out of lockdown, running the gamut from park bench encounters to haircuts to Boris Johnson * Waterstones Best Books of 2022: Biography *Sparklingly sardonic ... There really is no one like Bennett, as this small gem demonstrates -- Martin Chilton * Independent *Filled with elegiac memories and literary gossip ... a major National Treasure -- Lynn Barber * Telegraph *Mournful and witty ... Bennett at his best -- Roger Lewis * Daily Mail *I worship Alan Bennett -- David SedarisHis stories improve with each telling ... Perhaps it is Bennett's long experience as a dramatist that lends his prose such perfect timing -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *Our greatest living writer -- Clive Davis * The Times *He still has the sharpest pen in Britain ... Bennett is at his best when flirting with indecency ... mesmerising and unbearably sad * Daily Telegraph *There is no other writer, certainly none from any other era or nation, quite like Alan Bennett -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *Cleverer and funnier than any one person has a right to be -- John Carey * Sunday Times *His writing remains as deft and seamless as ever -- Kathryn Hughes * The Guardian *Vivid and evocative in the way we've come to expect from him ... the diaries of the inimitable Alan Bennett are always highly anticipated -- Alastair Mabbot * The Herald *He may clearly be increasingly frail but, even in lockdown, Alan Bennett retains his customary waspish wit in the latest tranche of his diaries * Choice *

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Book SynopsisIn the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the ‘tyrant by entrie’ or the usurper, who supplanted earlier ‘tyrant by the administration’ as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtù’ and through an act of ‘lawmaking’ violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare’s history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence? As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.Trade ReviewReviews'Original scholarship of significant value to the academic study of the intersections between drama and politics in the early modern period; its strengths lie in its wide coverage of dramatic texts, from political moralities to Senecan tragedies, and from university dramas to histories of the commercial stage; its combination of these dramatic texts with the analysis of a variety of political materials; and its dual focus on the historical and political contexts of both England and Scotland.'Dr Clare Egan, Lancaster University'[A] perceptive study... [Majumder] examines a span of English and Scottish works, from John Skelton’s Magnificence, through David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and George Buchanan’s literary and polemical work, to the Richard III plays of the late 1500s, identifying a crucial shift in the ways in which tyranny and its relationship to usurpation were represented.'Lucy Munro, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Doyeeta Majumder [provides] a refreshing approach to what has become one of the most discussed topics in Shakespearean studies—that of the expression and negotiation of authority on the stage. [...] It is the final chapter that offers a truly original approach to the issues of tyranny and usurpation in its consideration of three versions of Richard III. [...] Majumder’s analysis takes into consideration the particular audiences and literary conceits employed in each play and offers nuanced and intelligent readings that expose the constant contestation and fluidity of supreme authority.'Ben Haworth, The Year's Work in English Studies Table of ContentsNote on Spellings and AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter One: The Kingly Vice: The Tyrant in Early Tudor DramaChapter Two: Sovereignty, Counsel, and Consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisChapter Three: Artful Construction of the Political Realm: Buchanan and the Legitimacy of ResistanceChapter Four: Gorboduc: Absolutist Decision and the Two Bodies of the KingChapter Five: Tyranny Added to Usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard IIIEpilogueBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisCharles Macklin (1699?–1797) was one of the most important figures in the eighteenth-century theatre. Born in Ireland, he began acting in London in around 1725 and gave his final performance in 1789 – no other actor can claim to have acted across seven decades of the century, from the reign of George I to the Regency Crisis of 1788. He is credited alongside Garrick with the development of the natural school of acting and gave a famous performance of Shylock that gave George II nightmares. As a dramatist, he wrote one of the great comic pieces of the mid-century (Love à la Mode, 1759), as well as the only play of the century to be twice refused a performance licence (The Man of the World, 1781). He opened an experimental coffeehouse in Covent Garden, he advocated energetically for actors’ rights and copyright reform for dramatists, and he successfully sued theatre rioters. In short, he had an astonishingly varied career. With essays by leading experts on eighteenth-century culture, this volume provides a sustained critical examination of his career, illuminating many aspects of eighteenth-century theatrical culture and of the European Enlightenment, and explores the scholarly benefit – and thrill – of restaging Macklin’s work in the twenty-first century.Trade Review‘With thirteen scholarly articles by established academics, this publication will without doubt restore Macklin to his rightful place as a towering personality of the London theatre world of the eighteenth century… [a] powerful academic panorama of Macklin’s work.’ Seán Beattie, Donegal Annual‘This collection will interest more than just fans of the Irish actor Charles Macklin. At stake in examining Macklin’s life and work is the fashioning of a more capacious understanding of the Enlightenment… meticulous research also unearths evidence that expands our view of Macklin’s impact on Georgian theatre.’ Kristina Straub, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies. CONTRIBUTORS: David Clare, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Barry Houlihan, Radvan Markus, Deirdre McFeely, Justine Nakase, Siobhan O'Gorman, Mary Trotter, Grace Vroomen, Ian R. Walsh, Feargal WhelanTrade ReviewReviews‘The excellent essays in this collection add significantly to our knowledge of the Gate Theatre and its social and cultural practices and their contexts.’ Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee‘This rich stimulating collection revisions the work of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and celebrates how it posed radical challenges to Irish society’s social and cultural sore points and no-go-areas. Through a dazzling diversity of case studies in production, performance and theatrical practices the essays argue convincingly for the role of the Gate in confronting audiences with images and impacts that countered attitudes and assumptions about sexuality, gender, class divisions, racialization and Irish (including language) identity. While the Gate’s acknowledged theatrical aesthetics are not neglected, the book stresses the Gate Theatre’s achievement in juggling localism and cosmopolitanism with invigorating and engaging tension.’Dr Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin'A Stage of Emancipation is full of outstanding theatre scholarship from emerging and established voices. It provides fascinating insight into the role that the Dublin Gate Theatre has played in promoting social, economic, and cultural change within Irish society since the late 1920s. Most notably, it highlights the valiant efforts by key figures in the theatre’s history to bring marginalised stories and progressive attitudes to the Irish stage. This is an enormously valuable book for students, academics, and practitioners alike.'Dr Fiona McDonagh, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick'This collection makes room to breathe in Irish theatre – allowing us to inhale the extraordinary diversity of identities and artistry which were embodied on the Gate stage. Our eyes are opened once again to these forgotten legacies which challenge singular concepts of nation and society, transforming not only our understanding of the past but liberating our approach to theatre now.'- Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College DublinTable of Contents1. IntroductionMarguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den BeukenI: Liberating Bodies2. Queering the Irish Actress: The Gate Theatre Production of Children in Uniform (1934)Mary Trotter3. Maura Laverty at the Gate: Theatre as Social Commentary in 1950s IrelandDeirdre McFeelyII: Emancipating Communities4. ‘Let’s Be Gay, While We May’: Artistic Platforms and the Construction of Queer Communities in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–?Grace Vroomen5. Images and Imperatives: Robert Collis’s Marrowbone Lane (1939) at the Gate as Theatre for Social ChangeIan R. WalshIII: Staging Minority Languages 6. Authenticity and Social Change on the Gate Stage in the 1970s: ‘Communicating with the People’Barry Houlihan7. Micheál mac Liammóir, the Irish Language and the Idea of FreedomRadvan MarkusIV: Deconstructing Aesthetics8. The Use of Minority Languages at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and Barcelona’s TeatreLliureFeargal Whelan and David Clare9. Mogu and the Unicorn: Frederick May’s Music for the Gate TheatreMark Fitzgerald10. Tartan Transpositions: Materialising Europe, Ireland and Scotland in the Designs of Molly MacEwenSiobhán O’GormanV: Contesting Traditions in Contemporary Theatre11. From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate TheatreJustine Nakase12. Bending the Plots: Selina Cartmell’s Gate and Politics of Gender InclusionMarguérite Corporaal

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Book SynopsisThis two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women’s playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance.Volume One covers plays by Irish women playwrights written between 1716 to 1992, and seeks to address and redress the historic absence of Irish female playwrights in theatre histories. Highlighting the work of nine women playwrights from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as thirteen of the twentieth century’s key writers, the chapters in this volume explore such varied themes as the impact of space and place on identity, women’s strategic use of genre, and theatrical responses to shifts in Irish politics and culture.CONTRIBUTORS: Conrad Brunström, David Clare, Thomas Conway, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Shirley-Anne Godfrey, Úna Kealy, Sonja Lawrenson, Cathy Leeney, Marc Mac Lochlainn, Kate McCarthy, Fiona McDonagh, Deirdre McFeely, Megan W. Minogue, Ciara Moloney, Justine Nakase, Patricia O'Beirne, Kevin O'Connor, Ciara O'Dowd, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, Anna Pilz, Emilie Pine, Ruud van den Beuken, Feargal WhelanTrade Review'Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women’s writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.'Colleen English, The New Books Network'This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable. [....] All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.'María Gaviña-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies‘The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work… a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.’ Hélène Lecossois, Études irlandaisesTable of ContentsIntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine Nakase“There’s no Place like old England”: Space and Identity in Mary Davys’s The Northern Heiress; Or, the Humours of York (1716)Marguérite Corporaal“Some tender scenes demand the melting tear”: Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery (1763) and the Vindication of “Sentimental Comedy”Conrad BrunströmIrish Wit on the London Stage: Elizabeth Griffith’s The Platonic Wife (1765)Clíona Ó GallchoirDeceptive Disabilities in Maria Edgeworth’s The Double Disguise (1786): Irish Patriotism, Consumption, and the Martial Male BodySonja LawrensonReimagining Maria Edgeworth’s The Knapsack (1801) for a Contemporary Young AudienceFiona McDonagh & Marc Mac LochlainnMary Balfour’s Kathleen O’Neil (1814): An Expression or Betrayal of Her Ulster Scots Background?David ClareJustice and the “Triple Goddess” Archetypes in Anna Maria Hall’s Mabel’s Curse (1837)Ciara MoloneyOperas without a Hero: A Comic Trilogy (1876–1879) by Elena Norton and Mary HeyneMark Fitzgerald“Petticoats!—petticoats! petticoats!”: Sartorial Economics in Clotilde Graves’s A Mother of Three (1896)Justine NakaseFrom Gort to Antarctica: Lady Gregory’s Audiences and The Rising of the Moon (1903)Anna PilzLady Gregory’s Grania (1912): Myth and MythologyShirley-Anne Godfrey“You have let the play go to pieces”: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne R. Day’s Fox and Geese (1917) and the Hegemony of the Early Abbey TheatreThomas Conway“Something left over from the Eighteenth Century, undergoing a slow process of decay”: The Impotence of the Ascendancy in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–? (1931)Ruud van den BeukenShape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017) by Amanda Coogan in Collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, an Appropriation of Teresa Deevy’s The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935)Úna Kealy & Kate McCarthyThe Premiere Staging of Mount Prospect (1940) by Elizabeth Connor (the Pen Name of Una Troy) at the Abbey TheatreCiara O’DowdCorruption and Socio-Political Tensions in Christine Longford’s Tankardstown (1948)Kevin O’ConnorSocial Class, Space, and Containment in 1950s Ireland: Maura Laverty’s “Dublin Trilogy” (1951–1952)Cathy Leeney & Deirdre McFeelyMáiréad Ní Ghráda’s An Triail/On Trial (1964): Hiding Hypocrisy in Plain SightFeargal WhelanChristina Reid: Acts of Memory in Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989)Emilie PineAnne Devlin: Depicting a Gendered Journey: Men and Women on The Long March (1984)Megan W. MinogueA Partial Eclipse: The Role of the Religious in Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed (1988 / 1992)Patricia O’BeirneCoda – What the Woman Sees: Waking Up to Feminist AestheticsCathy Leeney

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Book SynopsisThis two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women’s playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance. Volume Two contains chapters focused on plays by sixteen Irish women playwrights produced between 1992 and 2016, highlighting the explosion of new work by contemporary writers. The plays in this volume explore women’s experiences at the intersections of class, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity, pushing at the boundaries of how we define not only Irish theatre, but Irish identity more broadly.CONTRIBUTORS: Nelson Barre, Mary Burke, David Clare, Shonagh Hill, Mária Kurdi, José Lanters, Fiona McDonagh, Dorothy Morrissey, Justine Nakase, Brian Ó Conchubhair, Brenda O'Connell, Shane O'Neill, Graham Price, Siobhán Purcell, Carole Quigley, Sarah Jane Scaife, Melissa Sihra, Clare WallaceTrade Review'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies‘The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work… a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.’ Hélène Lecossois, Études irlandaises‘This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable... All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.’ María Gaviña-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses‘Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women’s writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.’ Colleen English, The New Books NetworkTable of ContentsIntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine NakaseMarie Jones’s Don’t Look Down (1992): Representations of Disability for Young AudiencesFiona McDonaghLesbianism and Legibility in Emma Donoghue’s I Know My Own Heart (1993)Shonagh HillLearning to Play Poker: The Re-vision of Irish Women’s Agency in Gina Moxley’s Danti-Dan (1995)Nelson BarreDirecting Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… (1998) in ChinaSarah Jane ScaifeUrsula Rani Sarma’s Blue (2000) and Social Transformation in IrelandShane O’NeillChallenging “Good Taste”: Roslaeen McDonagh’s The Baby Doll Project (2003) and the Creation of a “Traveller Canon”Mary BurkeDisordered States and Affective Economies in Stella Feehily’s O Go My Man (2006)Clare WallaceLiving in a Rape Culture: Gang Rape and “Toxic Masculinity” in Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006)Carole QuigleyMarina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow (2006) and the Ars MoriendiJosé LantersLizzie Nunnery’s Intemperance (2007) and Compromised Mental Health among the Irish in BritainDavid ClareMemory, History, and Forgetting in Anne Devlin’s The Forgotten (2009)Graham Price“We are here, we were here all along”: Queer Invisibility and Performing Age in Amy Conroy’s I (Heart) Alice (Heart) I (2010)Brenda O’ConnellMotherhood and the Search for Recognition in Deirdre Kinahan’s Moment (2011)Dorothy Morrissey“Unrealing the Real”: Disability and Darwinism in Lynda Radley’s Futureproof (2011)Siobhán PurcellFamily Dysfunction and Character Dynamics: Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl (2012) in Conversation with Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlin (1996) and Martin Crimp’s The Country (2000)Mária KurdiUnconscious Casting: Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015), Walls, and the (En)Gendering of ViolenceJustine NakaseNevertheless, She Persisted: Celia de Fréine’s Luíse (2016)Brian Ó ConchubhairCoda – Spinning Gold: Threads of Augusta Gregory and Marina CarrMelissa Sihra

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies. CONTRIBUTORS: David Clare, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Barry Houlihan, Radvan Markus, Deirdre McFeely, Justine Nakase, Siobhan O'Gorman, Mary Trotter, Grace Vroomen, Ian R. Walsh, Feargal WhelanTrade ReviewReviews‘The excellent essays in this collection add significantly to our knowledge of the Gate Theatre and its social and cultural practices and their contexts.’ Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee‘This rich stimulating collection revisions the work of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and celebrates how it posed radical challenges to Irish society’s social and cultural sore points and no-go-areas. Through a dazzling diversity of case studies in production, performance and theatrical practices the essays argue convincingly for the role of the Gate in confronting audiences with images and impacts that countered attitudes and assumptions about sexuality, gender, class divisions, racialization and Irish (including language) identity. While the Gate’s acknowledged theatrical aesthetics are not neglected, the book stresses the Gate Theatre’s achievement in juggling localism and cosmopolitanism with invigorating and engaging tension.’Dr Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin'A Stage of Emancipation is full of outstanding theatre scholarship from emerging and established voices. It provides fascinating insight into the role that the Dublin Gate Theatre has played in promoting social, economic, and cultural change within Irish society since the late 1920s. Most notably, it highlights the valiant efforts by key figures in the theatre’s history to bring marginalised stories and progressive attitudes to the Irish stage. This is an enormously valuable book for students, academics, and practitioners alike.'Dr Fiona McDonagh, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick'This collection makes room to breathe in Irish theatre – allowing us to inhale the extraordinary diversity of identities and artistry which were embodied on the Gate stage. Our eyes are opened once again to these forgotten legacies which challenge singular concepts of nation and society, transforming not only our understanding of the past but liberating our approach to theatre now.'- Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College DublinTable of Contents1. IntroductionMarguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den BeukenI: Liberating Bodies2. Queering the Irish Actress: The Gate Theatre Production of Children in Uniform (1934)Mary Trotter3. Maura Laverty at the Gate: Theatre as Social Commentary in 1950s IrelandDeirdre McFeelyII: Emancipating Communities4. ‘Let’s Be Gay, While We May’: Artistic Platforms and the Construction of Queer Communities in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–?Grace Vroomen5. Images and Imperatives: Robert Collis’s Marrowbone Lane (1939) at the Gate as Theatre for Social ChangeIan R. WalshIII: Staging Minority Languages 6. Authenticity and Social Change on the Gate Stage in the 1970s: ‘Communicating with the People’Barry Houlihan7. Micheál mac Liammóir, the Irish Language and the Idea of FreedomRadvan MarkusIV: Deconstructing Aesthetics8. The Use of Minority Languages at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and Barcelona’s TeatreLliureFeargal Whelan and David Clare9. Mogu and the Unicorn: Frederick May’s Music for the Gate TheatreMark Fitzgerald10. Tartan Transpositions: Materialising Europe, Ireland and Scotland in the Designs of Molly MacEwenSiobhán O’GormanV: Contesting Traditions in Contemporary Theatre11. From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate TheatreJustine Nakase12. Bending the Plots: Selina Cartmell’s Gate and Politics of Gender InclusionMarguérite Corporaal

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas

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Book SynopsisPublished here for the first time, Maura Laverty’s plays Liffey Lane, Tolka Row and A Tree in the Crescent are rooted in 1950s Dublin, its territories and enclaves. Teeming with the lives of the poor, the ambitious, the trapped and the struggling, the plays are moving, funny and vividly alive. They capture the capital in a state of transformation – reaching for modernisation while still enmired in stagnant class divisions, poor housing and narrow social values. Key to all three plays are questions of home, the lives of women and girls, and the impact of conservative government policies and church attitudes. Already a public figure in Irish life, and an influencer before her time through her fiction, cookery books and broadcasting, Laverty’s plays met with huge success when staged in 1951 and 1952 by Hilton Edwards of the Gate Theatre Company at Dublin’s Gaiety and Gate Theatres and on tour. Laverty’s trilogy is a significant and long-awaited part of the twentieth-century Irish theatrical canon. This volume presents the Trilogy, including a preface by Christopher Fitz-Simon, who knew and worked with Laverty. The editors’ introduction contextualises Laverty’s work and considers the theatrical values of the plays.Trade Review‘Maura Laverty bore vivid witness to newly independent Ireland in her journalism, broadcasting, cookery writing, novels for adults and children, and in the plays she wrote for the Gate Theatre in the 1950s. In publishing these three plays and providing valuable editorial commentary on them, Cathy Leeney and Deirdre McFeely have resurrected one brilliant writer’s perceptions of the problems, challenges, joys and sorrows of Dublin life in a decade of slow-burning social change.’ Caitriona Clear, Senior Lecturer in Modern Irish and European History, University of Galway‘Maura Laverty’s Dublin Trilogy was hugely popular when it premiered in Ireland in the 1950s. This landmark publication explains why, making these important plays available to a new generation of readers and theatre producers – while also providing a fascinating and comprehensive introductory essay that places these works in their social and theatrical contexts. The book’s overall impact is to retrieve the work of a writer who was celebrated in her own time, and who deserves to be better known in the present.’ Patrick Lonergan, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Galway‘The trilogy is a significant and long-awaited part of the Irish theatrical canon.’ Books IrelandTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Maura Laverty’s Dublin TrilogyLiffey LaneTolka RowA Tree in the CrescentBibliography and Further Reading

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Book SynopsisWhile the infamous Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris closed its doors in 1962, the particular form of horror theatre it spawned lives on and has, moreover, witnessed something of a resurgence over the past twenty years. During its heyday it inspired many imitators, though none quite as successful as the Montmartre-based original. In more recent times, new Grand-Guignol companies the world over have emerged to reimagine the form for a new generation of audiences. This book, the fourth volume in University of Exeter Press’s series on the Grand-Guignol by Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson, examines the ongoing influence and legacy of the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol through an appraisal of its contemporary imitators and modern reincarnations. As with the previous volumes, Grand-Guignolesque consists of a lengthy critical introduction followed by a series of previously unpublished scripts, each with its own contextualizing preface. The effect thereof is to map the evolution of horror theatre over the past 120 years, asking where the influence of the Grand-Guignol is most visible today, and what might account for its recent resurgence. This book will be of interest not only to the drama student, theatre historian and scholar of popular theatre, but also to the theatre practitioner, theatregoer and horror fan.Trade ReviewOne of the things I like about it is the absence of the verbosity that sometimes ruins academic writing; Hand and Wilson write snappily and makes their points clearly...All in all, a very interesting book - I learned a good deal from it. -- Martin Edwards, crime writer and crime fiction criticTable of ContentsContents Preface Chapter 1. Establishing the Grand-Guignolesque Chapter 2. The Grand-Guignol’s Contemporary Imitators and Competitors Chapter 3: The New Wave Chapter 4: Afterword Appendix: The Molotov Manifesto, or Acting Grand Guignol, Molotov Style Thirteen Plays of Grand-Guignol and the Grand-Guignolesque Professor Verdier’s Operations (Les Opérations du Professeur Verdier, 1907) by Élie de Bassan Short Circuit (Le Court-Circuit, 1916) by Benjamin Rabier and Eugène Joullot The Little House at Auteuil (La Petite Maison D’Auteuil, 1917) by Robert Scheffer and Georges Lignereux The Unhinged (Les Détraquées, 1924) by Palau and Olaf The Eyes of the Phantom (Les Yeux du Spectre, 1924) by Jean Aragny The Lover of Death (L’Amant de Mort, 1925) by Maurice Renard Orgy in the Lighthouse (L’Orgie dans le phare, 1956) adapted by Eddie Muller from Alfred Machard’s play The Sticking Place (2008) by Lucas Maloney and Michael McMahon, with Alex Zavistovich A Room With No View (2009) by James Comtois The Ghost Hunter (2013) by Stewart Pringle We’ll Fix It! (2013) by Les Williams Leviticus: Evil Resides Within (2014) by Antonio Rimola Abel Hartmann's Grand-Guignol: A History of Violence (2015) by Dreamcatcher Horror Theatre Bibliography Webography Index

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Book SynopsisA play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.Table of ContentsIntroductionEl valiente negro en Flandes / The Valiant Black Man in FlandersFootnotesCritical EssaysBibliographyIllustrationsCritical ApparatusAppendices

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Book SynopsisSut mae ysgrifennu drama ‘genedlaethol’ mewn cenedl ddwyieithog a diwladwriaeth? A yw ymdrech dramodwyr yr 1990au i ddychmygu cenedl amgen ac annibynnol ar lwyfan wedi pylu ers datganoli? Sut y mae lleiafrifoedd eraill wedi dygymod â heriau’r oes honedig ôl-fodern ac ôl-genedlaethol hon, ac a oes gan eu profiadau wersi i Gymru? Dyma rai o’r cwestiynau y mae nifer o arloeswyr y ddrama Gymraeg gyfoes yn ymhél â nhw yn y gyfrol ddiweddaraf hon yng nghyfres Safbwyntiau. Mae Llwyfannu’r Genedl Anghyflawn yn gasgliad heriol o ysgrifau, wedi ei guradu a’i olygu gan un o’n dramodwyr mwyaf blaengar.Table of ContentsRhagair Dramodydd ‘Proses’ Datganoli: Sylwadau ar Lwyfannu Cenedl Anghyflawn Ian Rowlands Plethu Diwylliannau Perfformio: Theatr Drawsddiwylliannol Gyfoes rhwng Cymru a Bryniau Casi Lisa Lewis Pwy fuck yw’r werin datws erbyn hyn?’ Y Werin, y Genedl a’r Ddrama Dafydd Llewelyn Menywod ar Lwyfan: Llais y Fenyw yn y Theatr Gymraeg Sharon Morgan Iaith fel Arf, Iaith fel Allwedd: Cyfweliad gydag Aled Jones Williams a Sergi Belbel Hannah Sams a David George Bywgraffiadau Mynegai

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Book SynopsisAn essential resource for anyone studying Leave Taking by Winsome Pinnock for GCSE English Literature – featuring a complete guide to the text, plus sample questions and answers to help you prepare for assessment. Get to grips with Leave Taking with expert, easy-to-follow breakdowns and analyses of key aspects of the play – including the characters, plot, structure, themes, setting and language – along with a clear explanation of the historical context. This guide also contains prompts for further reflection and research, to help you get the most out of your study and revision, whether at home or in the classroom. Featuring insights from playwright Winsome Pinnock, colour photographs of the play in performance, and extensive quotes and extracts from the text, this GCSE Study Guide will strengthen your understanding, build your confidence and boost your chances of success. It is also an invaluable resource for teachers approaching the play.

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Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeare and 21st-Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership examines problems, challenges, and crises in our contemporary world through the lens of William Shakespeare's plays, one of the best-known, most admired, and often controversial authors of the last half-millennium. As perhaps the most oft-cited author in the West outside of the Judeo-Christian Bible, Shakespeare has often been considered a sage, providing manifold insights into our shared human qualities and experiences across time and geography. The editors and authors of this accessible book leverage the now global scope of that sibylline reputation to explore what the Bard might tell us about ourselves, our politics, our leaders, and our societies today.The chapters are written with critical rigor and will appeal to scholars and students in leadership and literary studies but are accessible to non-Shakespeare experts. Anyone looking to explore the ongoing relevance of Shakespeare's work will find this volume enlightening and entertaining.Trade Review'Shakespeare Behind Bars was founded to assist the incarcerated in finding their authentic voices through an immersive experience in Shakespeare's original language, complex themes, and multiple meanings. I find myself today, happily aided in this process by writers in this collection from a rich variety of backgrounds who find truth in historical Shakespeare.' -- Curt L. Tofteland, Founder, Shakespeare Behind Bars'This wide-ranging volume marks an exciting moment in the study of leadership and literature alike. Truly interdisciplinary in their approach, informed by rigorous scholarship, and engagingly written, the book’s chapters help to broaden and deepen our understanding of Shakespeare's continuing--in some ways even increasing--resonance with problems of politics, power, and leadership in our world today.' -- Nicholas Warner, Claremont McKenna College, US'Timely studies of a timeless author: from #metoo to racial justice to Donald Trump, this brilliant collection, edited by two leading scholars of leadership and literature, highlights the resonances between contemporary political issues and Shakespeare's complex explorations of authority, civic participation, leadership, autocracy--and human identity itself.' -- Michael Harvey, Provost, Washington College, USTable of ContentsContents: Introduction: “I that please some, try all”: Shakespeare this time 1 Anthony Presti Russell and Kristin M. S. Bezio PART I PERFORMANCE 1 Performance and the political subject in Richard II 11 Melissa Caldwell 2 “Liars and swearers”: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the dissemblance of modern autocrats 30 Ryan Farrar 3 Learning about leadership from Coriolanus and Coriolanus 51 Peter Iver Kaufman PART II TRUTH 4 “Lies like truth”: Macbeth and the American Dream 67 Anthony Presti Russell 5 When it is wise to play the fool: a lesson in servant leadership, courtesy of King Lear 90 Katey Roden 6 Post-truth and pre-truth: how rhetoric shapes reality in Boyle’s Certain Physiological Essays , Shakespeare’s Othello , and the language of Donald Trump 109 Samantha Dressel PART III RESISTANCE 7 Much ado about me too: the personal and political activism of Shakespeare’s women 131 Jess Landis 8 Importance of highlighting the rotten state: a study of Vishal Bharadwaj’s Haider (2014) and its subversive strategies 149 Debaditya Mukhopadhyay 9 The Shakespeare Company Japan and regional self-fashioning 164 Tetsuhito Motoyama and Fumiaki Konno PART IV FREEDOM 10 “Mountainish inhumanity”: the politics of religion, refugees, and ego from Sir Thomas More to Donald Trump 183 Kristin M. S. Bezio 11 Twelfth Night and gender fluidity 202 Maria Carrig 12 Shakespeare in other tongues: translation and adaptation into Yoruba and Hausa in text, film, and stage productions in Nigeria 218 Kayode Gboyega Kofoworola Epilogue and post-script: the art of the De’ill, followed by a discussion between “M” and the editors 236 Raphael Seligmann Index

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Book SynopsisWilliam Congreve was deeply involved in the events of his turbulent times. That involvement reveals itself in works which have sometimes been regarded as entirely unengaged with the realities of his society. This book attempts to read Congreve’s plays and his novella, Incognita, against the political and social upheaval of the period initiated by the rebellion of 1688. A strong supporter of the new world ushered in by William III and Mary, Congreve fought against the reactionary politics of the Jacobite opposition.Trade Review“Novak offers new readings of Congreve while grounding his argument not only in a thorough understanding of the social, political, ethical and religious conflicts of Congreve’s decade of writing for the stage but also in the best historical scholarship of the period and the best literary criticism of Congreve of the last ninety years.”—Kevin J. Gardner, Professor and Department Chair, Baylor English Department, Baylor University, USA“Imaginary Plots and Political Realities in the Plays of William Congreve is an engaging book that makes a significant contribution to Restoration and eighteenth-century studies. Congreve has been ignored too often in recent work on the late seventeenth-century theatre, and Novak’s study should help to remedy this situation by reminding his readers of the dramatist’s crucial role in the stage politics of the 1690s.”—Robert Markley, W. D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor, University of Illinois, USA“The book, with its fine-grained attention to the changing political and social circumstances of the 1690s, the decade during which Congreve’s dramatic career unfolded, reads as a synthesis of a career’s worth of thought about the playwright, with fresh perspectives and a clarifying specificity of focus, especially on the question of politics.”—James Noggle, Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of English, Wellesley College, USATable of ContentsAcknowledgements; List of illustrations; Foreword; Chapter 1, The politics of love, marriage and scandal in Congreve’s world; Chapter 2, Incognita and some problems in morality and epistemology; Chapter 3, The “fashionable cutt of the town” and William Congreve’s The Old Batchelor; Chapter 4, Political and moral double-dealing in Congreve’s The Double Dealer; Chapter 5, Foresight in the stars and scandal in London: Reading the hieroglyphics in Congreve’s Love for Love; Chapter 6, The failure of perception in Congreve’s The Mourning Bride; Chapter 7, Politics and Congreve’s The Way of the World; Afterword; Works Cited; Index.

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Book Synopsis"The religious fraud Tartuffe has wormed his way into the affections and household of rich merchant, Orgon, with pantomime piety and counterfeit zeal. So comprehensively has he hoodwinked Orgon that he looks set to succeed in driving away the son, marrying the daughter, seducing the wife and imprisoning Orgon. Moliere's classic satire was denounced on its first performance as a sacrilegious outrage and banned from further public view. Only after petition to Louis XIV was the ban lifted, and the play's trenchant mockery of human frailties has ensured its popularity ever since."Trade Review"Much of the credit for the evening's success belongs to Bolt's superb translation.' Guardian 'Bolt's irreverent, colloquial translation, in neat, octosyllabic rhyming couplets, is blessed with a filthy wit' Daily Telegraph"

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Book SynopsisAdapted from Mervyn Peake's gothic trilogy. In one evening of physical theatre you enter a world of ritual and drama.

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Book Synopsis'In Iraq, a wedding is not a wedding unless shots get fired. It's like in England where a wedding is not a wedding unless someone pukes or tries to fuck one of the brides' maids. That's just the way it goes.'Against a backdrop of London and war-torn Baghdad, three friends grapple with their sexual, cultural and political identity. This is a surprising first play from Iraqi writer Hassan Abdulrazzak.

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