Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisIn this volume William S. Anderson sets Plautus, who wrote Rome's earliest surviving poetry, in his rightful place among the Greek and Roman writers of what we know as New Comedy (fourth to second centuries).Anderson begins by defining major innovations that Plautus made on inherited Greek New Comedy (Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus), transforming it from romantic domestic drama to a celebration of rollicking family anarchy. He shows how Plautus diminished the traditional importance of love and replaced it with a new major theme: 'heroic badness,' especially embodied in the rogue slave (ancestor of the impudent servant, valet, or maid). Anderson then examines the unique verbal texture of Plautus' drama and demonstrates his revolt against realism, his drive to have his characters defy everyday circumstances and pit their intrepid linguistic wit against social order, their Roman extravagant impudence against Greek self-control.Finally, Anderson explores the special form

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Book SynopsisThis collection contains 14 essays, written from the late 1970's to the present, making available for the full scope of Berger's unique approach to ethical discourses in Shakespeare's plays.Trade Review“This collection represents a decade of writing by a uniquely brilliant critic who combines intense sensitivity to textual nuance with extraordinary theoretical agility. Complex and sophisticated, these essays brim with thrills, gags, twists, and flashes. And Shakespeare's texts never quite read the same again.”—Margreta de Grazia, University of Pennsylvania.

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Book SynopsisThis book investigates the discursive practices of philosophy and theater/performance on the basis of actual encounters between representatives of these two fields.Trade Review"This book, by theater historian and preformance theorist Freddie Rokem, makes a significant contribution to both fields . . . Rokem has crafted an enaging and vigorous study of the relationship between theater and philosophy that does as Horace recommended theater do, instruct and delight." -- Monica Prendergast * Comparative Literature Studies *"Philosophers and Thespians is a cultural-studies discourse on human life as a journey. Rokem's book embraces wide-ranging cultural contexts that complement his philosophy of history. In contrast to the proponents of new historicism, Rokem supplements his subjective narration with substantive intertextual and historical research. The practical and detailed applications of the concept of performativity make this book a valuable companion to graduate cultural studies and philosophy programs." -- Anna Kawalec * Philosophy in Review *"This is an exemplary book of both comparison and drama. It describes four historical encounters between thespian-like philosophers and philosophically inclined thespians . . . Philosophers and thespians share in thinking and doing, in word and action. Rokem's method of writing and thinking—a method of eyewitnessing and commentary—intends to match and indeed does match his subject matter. The match makes this a most worthwhile book to read and to review." -- Lydia Goehr * Comparative Drama *"Rokem plays out interaction between Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin as theatricalized philosophical thinking. The volume's second part, 'Constellations,' ponders 'performative agendas' embedded in narratives, wistful imaginings in which constellations of dramatic form take shape from points of thought." -- P.D. Nelsen * Choice *"This book's central—and brilliant—idea is to treat the relation between philosophy and theater not as an abstract, disciplinary one, but as an encounter between philosophers and theater people. By portraying actual and fictional encounters between philosophers, playwrights, and directors, Rokem reminds us that theater history has always been entangled with philosophy and that philosophy ignores the theater at its own peril." -- Martin Puchner * Columbia University *

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Book SynopsisA writer who defies categorization, Daniil Kharms has come to be regarded as an essential artist of the modernist avant-garde. This selection of prose and poetry provides the most comprehensive portrait of the writer in English translation to date, revealing the arc of his career and including a particularly generous selection of his later work.Trade Review“[A] profound and subtle testament to Kharms and his brutal era.” - Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisA direct descendant of John Ridge, Nagle has penned a play that twists and turns from violent outbursts to healing monologues, illuminating a provocative double meaning for the sovereignty of both tribal territory and women's bodies.

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Book SynopsisFeatures new plays by Lisa B. Thompson, author of Single Black Female. In these three plays, the black feminist playwright and scholar thoughtfully explores themes such as the black family, motherhood, migration, racial violence, and trauma and its effect on black people from the early twentieth century to the present.Trade Review“Underground is more than a play. It's a powerful weapon of change—a truth bomb that will get conversations started.” —T. Lynn Mikeska, Austin Chronicle “Monroe is a wonderful new play that contains charming characters, witty dialogue and an examination of the horrific effects of racial terrorism in a way that entertains while it educates.” —Frank Benge, Broadway World “The Mamalogues . . . treats [motherhood] in a way that everyone can recognize . . . Sisters in the BBSM—Black Bougie Single Mothers—are here to share, and in this case, that can be fun. But alongside ‘bougie’ and ‘mothers’ in the support group's name are the words ‘single’ and ‘black,’ and they carry a weight that must be acknowledged. Thompson does so in dramatic moments that live side by side with the comic ones, just as it happens in life.” —Robert Faires, The Austin Chronicle “The lushness of Lisa B. Thompson’s singular theatrical imagination is on full display in this dazzling trio of plays. Writing with remarkable urgency, creativity, humor, and humanity, Thompson crafts complex characters and worlds that affirm and invite us to delight in the beauty of black life.” —Isaiah Matthew Wooden, coeditor of Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration “We expect our storytellers to bring truth to the madness, and the stage has been where so much of that madness has been scripted in life-sized proportions. Lisa B. Thompson understands this better than most, and with her new collection, Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues, she captures the magic, trauma, and most importantly, the humor and laughter of Black life, and offers us a lifeline to the could-have-beens and should-have-beens that we can take for our own.” —Mark Anthony Neal, author of Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities “Captivating, funny, and smart, Lisa B. Thompson’s Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues: Three Plays portrays the vitality and complexity of blackness. Drawing from rich histories that pull audiences into specific places and times, the collection enriches our understanding of the black middle class through multifaceted, complicated, and always compelling narratives.” —Soyica Colbert, author of Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics “Scored with laughs joyously and tenderly musical, Thompson’s plays capture symphonies of humor and pathos shared between friends and family. Colloquialisms, vernacular riffs, and style trends condition characters that plumb and challenge notions of race and gender as well as conflicts of language and culture. Thompson marvelously works rhythms and breaks of sincerity, irony, love, and social critique to engage the epic experiences of being Black in America. These plays, like her celebrated Single Black Female, make for deceptively light stage work around intense histories and trenchant reflections.” —Stephanie Leigh Batiste, playwright, actor, and author of Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American PerformanceTable of Contents Foreword by E. Patrick Johnson Acknowledgments Underground Monroe The Mamalogues Interview by Joan Morgan

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Book SynopsisPrince Friedrich of Homburg is the indisputable dramatic masterpiece of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), a leading figure, along with Goethe and Schiller, among early German Romantics.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Writing in a careful yet engaging style, Burkhart succeeds not only in clarifying the historical significance of this Nahuatl interpretation of a Spanish play, she also makes it interesting." * The Americas *

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Book SynopsisJonathan Gil Harris challenges the way we conventionally understand physical objects. Turning to Renaissance theories of matter, he considers the profound untimeliness of things, focusing particularly on Shakespeare's stage materials.Trade Review"It is difficult to do justice here to the extraordinarily wide range of critical and theoretical models that Harris draws on, or the ease with which he brings them together. . . . Harris's book is important . . . not only for its fine discussions of individual works but also for setting a yardstick for the work that early modernists might do in this area, and for the form that a 'turn to time' might take." * TLS *"Excitingly-and excitedly-written, energetic and widely suggestive. In restoring to the discussion of historical objects their resistance to temporal fixities, Harris's book does cultural historians a service." * Renaissance Quarterly *"A deep, intelligent, thought-provoking book on the ways in which physical objects both inhabit and transcend time. . . . This exciting book takes familiar texts and presents them in a new way." * Choice *"One of the most intellectually profound interventions into the field of Renaissance studies to appear in the last five to ten years. In challenging conventional understandings of historical time, Harris's book offers nothing less than a complete overhaul of current critical practice and persuades us to glimpse a scholarly future that is genuinely and excitingly new." * Renaissance Studies *"Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare is rigorously researched, well argued and skillfully written, and follows its own argument by using the past to suggest alternative ways of imaging both present and future. . . . Harris's book impresses with the depth and breadth of his knowledge, and the skill with which he brings together multiple branches of theoretical discourse to inform and advance his argument. . . . One of the more significant works of literary scholarship of recent years." * Parergon *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Urban Housefuls 2. Work in the Atlantic Service Economy 3. Family Credit and Shared Debts 4. Translating Money 5. Shopping Networks and Consumption as Collaboration 6. The Republic of Goods Conclusion Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisCopyright is by no means the only device for asserting ownership of a work. Some writers, including playwrights in the early modern period, did not even view print copyright as the most important of their authorial rights. A rich vein of recent scholarship has examined the interaction between royal monopolies, which have been identified with later notions of intrinsic authorial ownership, and the internal copy registration practices of the English book trades. Yet this dialogue was but one part of a still more complicated conversation in early modern England, James J. Marino argues; other customs and other sets of professional demands were at least as important, most strikingly in the exercise of the performance rights of plays.In Owning William Shakespeare James Marino explores the actors'' system of intellectual property as something fundamentally different from the property regimes exercised by the London printers or the royal monopolists. Focusing on Hamlet,Trade Review"Who, in the early modern period, laid claim to owning Shakespeare's plays? How did the property regimes of print and performance determine the nature of such claims? In tackling these questions, James J. Marino scores some palpable hits." * TLS *"Expertly blending literary criticism, performance theory, and historical analysis of intellectual property, Marino masterfully argues for the important role the Chamberlain's Men/King's Men played in vigorously maintaining their ownership in and the authenticity of Shakespeare's plays." * Choice *"A thematically dense, insightful book that will engage readers interested in the origins and evolutions of intellectual property law, of the business of early modern drama, and of textual transmissions and adaptations." * Early English Studies *"In this fascinating study, which brings together literary and textual studies, book and theatre history, the story of how Shakespeare's plays came to be created and known as his is told as a story of the King's Men and their property. Focusing on how intellectual property was created and maintained, Owning William Shakespeare makes important contributions to theatre and book history, puts paid to scholarship premised on the recovery of Shakespeare's authorial script, and argues for a radically revised understanding of early modern dramatic texts." * Review of English Studies *"Owning William Shakespeare tells the story of early modern drama as intellectual property. It does so with energy, urgency, passion, and originality: it points out details about book history and publication that have never been articulated before, redefining the field in important ways." * Tiffany Stern, University College, Oxford *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Secondhand Repertory: The Fall and Rise of Master W. Shakespeare Chapter 2. Sixty Years of Shrews Chapter 3. Hamlet, Part by Part Chapter 4. William Shakespeare's Sir John Oldcastle and the Globe's William Shakespeare Chapter 5. Restorations and Glorious Revolutions Notes Works Cited Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisFor Jeffrey Masten, the history of sexuality and the history of language are intimately related. In Queer Philologies, he studies particular terms that illuminate the history of sexuality in Shakespeare''s time and analyzes the methods we have used to study sex and gender in literary and cultural history. Building on the work of theorists and historians who have, following Foucault, investigated the importance of words like homosexual, sodomy, and tribade in a variety of cultures and historical periods, Masten argues that just as the history of sexuality requires the history of language, so too does philology, the love of the word, require the analytical lens provided by the study of sexuality.Masten unpacks the etymology, circulation, transformation, and constitutive power of key words within the early modern discourse of sex and gender—terms such as conversation and intercourse, fundament and foundation, friend and boy—that described bodies, pleasures, emoTrade Review"Masten has much to teach us about the consequence of learning to hear how words resonated for Shakespeare's first audiences, and how they can be made to sound and resound today. . . . As Masten indicates, queer philology need not be confined to the study of terms used to describe and 'inscribe' sex and gender, but should be extended to include all the terms of the social exclusions that currently concern us." * Times Literary Supplement *"A groundbreaking new study. . . . Queer Philologies should prove a seminal work for literary critics, sexual historians, queer theorists, and textual editors. Animated by Masten's witty prose, deeply enmeshed in the relevant scholarship, and often breathtaking in its acuity, originality, and capaciousness of thought, it is the most pleasurable polemic in recent literary history." * Review of English Studies *"[A] tour de force of erudition and intellectual wit that maps out a new region of scholarship: 'queer philology.' . . . Masten undertakes a vast philological program to show how vagaries and occluded regularities of early modern sex/gender vocabularies are intimately woven into specific traits of early modern orthography, rhetorical structures, etymologies, and familial bonds between words and word clusters." * SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *"A careful and thought-provoking study . . . with stunning insight and extremely thoughtful attention to detail. Queer Philologies suggests exciting new possibilities in one of the foundational fields of literary study." * Comparative Drama *"Masten's page-turning case studies show us the necessity to get fully philological in order to get fully queer. It is not that we should queer time or locate some version of the 'homosexual' in early modern texts but that we should be more historical and more philological in order to read queerly." * GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies *"Queer Philologies, Jeffrey Masten's brilliant new book, makes the queerness of linguistic relations into the stuff of a genuine page-turner. Doing nothing less than reinventing the field of philology for the twenty-first century, Masten charts striking moments in the two-way traffic between words and world, exploring how accident and error figure in the shaping of sexuality and multiply its significations beyond all scholarly control. To dip into this book is to recognize that it's destined to become a classic, one of the works without which queer theory and early modernism no longer can be thought." * Lee Edelman, Tufts University *"A masterpiece as well as a great intellectual joy. Masten finds in philology and in the history of the book a new approach to the analysis of norms and normativities-that is, to practices of standardization, including the standardization of sex and gender. This queer manifesto for the mutual implication of the history of sexuality and the materiality of language is as powerful as it is scrupulous, as original as it is radical. No one who reads this book will ever think of the letter Q in the same way again." * David Halperin, University of Michigan *"A brilliant, exacting, original book. Coherently organized, deftly argued, elegant in style, and utterly unique, Queer Philologies is not only full of insights relevant to scholars of early modern literature; it advances paradigm-shattering proposals relevant to queer studies scholars and historians of sexuality more generally." * Valerie Traub, University of Michigan *"Jeffrey Masten's witty and searching book will help a new generation of students to recover the philological grounds for the early modern period's sexual relations and gender constructions. Deploying and extending his signature combination of queer theory and textual scholarship, Masten gives us startling new readings of key works, words, and even letters that leave them looking very queer indeed." * William Sherman, Victoria and Albert Museum *Table of ContentsNote on Citations and Quotations Introduction. On Q: An Introduction to Queer Philology Chapter 1. Spelling Shakespeare: Early Modern "Orthography" and the Secret Lives of Shakespeare's Compositors LEXICON 1. FRIENDSHIP Chapter 2. "Sweet Persuasion," the Taste of Letters, and Male Friendship Chapter 3. Extended "Conversation": Living with Christopher Marlowe; a Brief History of "Intercourse" LEXICON 2. BOY-DESIRE Chapter 4. Reading "Boys": Performance and Print Chapter 5. "Amorous Leander," Boy-desire, Gay Shame; Or, Straightening Out Christopher Marlowe LEXICON 3. SODOMY Chapter 6. Is the "Fundament" a Grave? Translating the Early Modern Body Chapter 7. When Genres Breed: "Mongrell Tragicomedie" and Queer Kinship Editing Philologies Chapter 8. All Is Not Glossed: Editing Sex, Race, Gender, and Affect in Shakespeare Chapter 9. More or Less Queer: Female "Bumbast" in Sir Thomas More Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisSituating the theater as a site of broad cultural movements and conflicts, Lisa A. Freeman asserts that antitheatrical incidents from the English Renaissance to present-day America provide us with occasions to trace major struggles over the nature and balance of power and political authority. In studies of William Prynne''s Histrio-mastix (1633), Jeremy Collier''s A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), John Home''s Douglas (1757), the burning of the theater at Richmond (1811), and the U.S. Supreme Court''s decision in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998) Freeman engages in a careful examination of the political, religious, philosophical, literary, and dramatic contexts in which challenges to theatricality unfold. In so doing, she demonstrates that however differently the public might be defined in each epoch, what lies at the heart of antitheatrical disputes is a struggle over the character of the body poliTrade Review"Dazzlingly ambitious and meticulously researched. . . . [Antitheatricality and the Body Public] is a testament to the perspicacity of Freeman's thought that her ideas shed light not only on the theater as a key to understanding how societies have defined and debated their constituents in the near and distant past but also on how we might use the theater to think through the constitutional crises of the present and the future." * TDR: The Drama Review *"Lisa Freeman's rich study should take a privileged place alongside the most influential work in the field. . . . Antitheatricality and the Body Public should inspire any reader to pursue the reciprocity between theater and power modeled by her exemplary scholarship." * Theatre Journal *"It is, a bold-but certainly timely-move by Lisa Freeman to analyze antitheatricality anew. She delivers on this task with a thorough and thought-provoking investigation realized in a compelling series of case studies that demonstrate the pervasiveness of antitheatrical onslaughts across theater history. . . . A must-read for researchers working on any period of British or American theater." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"This book's rigorous historicism and meticulous close readings are impressive, but more importantly, they are foundational to its theoretical reach and power. Freeman's premise that antitheatricality persistently calls on a 'body public,' a particular understanding of the ideal state that includes even as it excludes bodies, is a productive way to consider more than this book's five cases." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"As Lévi-Strauss said of cats, the theater 'is good to think with,' especially in moments of social stress and trauma, and Lisa A. Freeman demonstrates just how useful it can be in five meticulously researched case studies. Her book represents an impressive labor of research and writing, chock full of new material in every chapter." * Joseph Roach, Yale University *"A work of great erudition and scholarly merit that shows how antitheatrical rhetoric emerges as a way of mediating social, cultural, and governmental crisis. The result is a highly self-aware and remarkably original argument about the function of cultural regulation." * Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph *

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Book SynopsisPlaywriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater shows how the rise of England's first commercialized culture industry also gave rise to the first generation of participatory consumers and their attempts to engage with mainstream culture by writing early modern "fan fiction."Trade Review"An extremely substantial contribution to the field. Playwriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater has the potential to reconfigure current debates about theatrical authorship and spectatorship, and it also acts as an invaluable primer on a range of neglected material." * Lucy Munro, King's College London *Table of ContentsIntroduction. "All write Playes" Chapter 1. "Mayn't a spectator write a comedy?": The Early Modern Idea of Playgoers as Playmakers Chapter 2. "Some other may be added": Playwriting Playgoers Revising in Their Manuscripts Chapter 3. "As shall be shewed before the daye of action": Playwriting Playgoers and Performance Chapter 4. "Watching every word": Playwriting Playgoers as Verse Dramatists Conclusion. "I began to make a play" Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Stephen Orgel is interested in books and plays. But throughout The Invention of Shakespeare, Orgel is adamant that a/the book is not the play. These essays, written over thirty years, have an argumentative throughline...as he demonstrates the varied ways in which plays are mutable...The 'invention' of the book’s title is about the way editors, critics and eras give a fixed identity to a figure we confidently but misleadingly identify as 'Shakespeare'....Throughout these essays we are treated to Orgel’s brilliance as a literary critic and close reader. He moves not just effortlessly but analogously from material books – a study of blanks, lacunae, the empty parentheses." * Times Literary Supplement *"Stephen Orgel is one of the greatest Shakespeare and early modern scholars of our time, and every single one of these pieces is engaging, exhilarating, revelatory, thought-provoking." * Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Emma Lipton demonstrates that the legal theory of witnessing serves as both an agent of civic community and as a model of the drama itself. This is a highly original argument, and the critical payoff is large. It says something vital about the shape and form of these plays and their ways of testing out through witnessing the inherited biblical, festive, and liturgical narratives." * Sarah Beckwith, Duke University *

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Book SynopsisA study of the early years of the Field Day Theatre Company, which has been a vital presence on the Irish cultural and intellectual scene since its inception in 1980. Drawing on reviews, pre-production publicity and personal interviews, it discusses Field Day's evolving aims and achievements.Trade ReviewThe strengths of Richtarik's study lie in its undoubted enthusiasm for, and belief in, the potential of theatre; in its meticulously researched detail; and in its concentration on the contradictions within Field Day. - Irish Review

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Book SynopsisArgues that Hamlet's famous phrase not only underscores the blurred boundaries between the warring Protestantism and Catholicism of Shakespeare's time; it is also an appeal for basic spirituality, free from any particular doctrinal scheme.Trade ReviewFiddes’s theological breadth and openness are a breath of the freshest of air, bracing, and giving new life. The book is very engagingly written and thoroughly absorbing throughout. It deserves to garner a wide readership among lovers and scholars of Shakespeare and theologians who wish to think with, and through, art, drama, liturgy, poetry." - Sarah Beckwith, Duke University, author of Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness

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Book SynopsisRather than having spent the last 50 years coming to terms with the magnitude of evil of the Holocaust, this book is about a country that, according to the author, has largely ignored its participation and attempted to minimize its national memory of the event.

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Book SynopsisUpdated and expanded for the third edition, this volume presents a comprehensive account of the development and influence of the American screenwriter.Trade ReviewA fascinating, entertaining romp through the forest of writing for films. You will encounter flora and fauna of the art and business of cinema dramaturgy. It is com­pulsory reading for professional and layman alike. Stempel offers the first general account of the development and influence of the American screenwriter. . . . He discusses hundreds of individual writers, the workings of the writing departments of the big studios during Hollywood’s heyday, the impact of McCarthyism and the blacklist on the profession. . . . A real cornerstone item for film studies collections and a genuinely, enjoyably readable one. Informal in style and anecdotal in approach, this perceptive account is filled with stories spotlighting writers’ creative work and their struggle to achieve recognition. Individual chapters on the narrative styles of the major studios offer fascinating evi­dence of the way in which a single producer could determine the structure of all scripts under his control. . . . An invaluable resource for anyone interested in film, popular culture, or twentieth-century American writing.

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Book SynopsisExplores the history of Irish theater in America, from Harrigan and Hart to the productions of senior Irish playwrights such as Brian Friel and younger writers such as Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson. This volume includes examinations of company dynamics, tours of companies and actors, and the production history of individual works.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“A genuinely new and significant contribution to Irish theater history. . . . No other monograph out there that does what this book does, which is to provide a comprehensive and contextualized history of contemporary women’s contributions to theater inNorthern Ireland.”—Susan Cannon Harris, author of Gender and Modern Irish Drama.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“A genuinely new and significant contribution to Irish theater history. . . . No other monograph out there that does what this book does, which is to provide a comprehensive and contextualized history of contemporary women’s contributions to theater inNorthern Ireland.”—Susan Cannon Harris, author of Gender and Modern Irish Drama.

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Book SynopsisA study of all of the major tragedies of Jean Racine, France's preeminent dramatist—and, according to many, its greatest and most representative author—Mitchell Greenberg's work offers an exploration of Racinian tragedy to explain the enigma of the plays' continued fascination.Table of ContentsA Note on Text and Translations Preface Introduction: Spectacle, Myth, Sacrifice: Racinian Tragedy and the Origins of Modernity 1. La Thébaïde: Politics and Monstrous Origins 2. Andromaque: Myth and Melancholy 3. Britannicus: Power, Perversion, and Paranoia 4. Oriental Oedipus: Bérénice, Bajazet, Mithridate 5. Iphigénie: Sacrifice and Sovereignty 6. Phèdre (et Hippolyte): Tabou, Transgression, and the Birth of Democracy? 7. Esther, Athalie: Religion, and Revolution in Racine's Heavenly City Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance. Jeffery Kennedy offers readers their unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players.

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Book SynopsisCurrently edited by Rhona Justice-Malloy, this is a peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-American Theatre Conference (MATC), a regional body devoted to theatre scholarship and practice.

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Book SynopsisThe Gothic drama came at a critical moment in the history of the theater, of British culture, and of European politics in the shadow of France’s revolution and the fall of Napoleon.Trade Review“Good texts, notes, and a meaty introduction constitutes this ‘must-have’ item for students of British drama and literary gothicism, in whose development drama was important. Cox’s command of the bibliography relevant to his subject is impressive, and his book will stand as a milestone of content, good scholarship, and clear style.” * Choice *“Professor Cox explores the full spectrum of the Gothic drama of revolt—political, social, and metaphysical. This volume acquaints us with that world of grand and mysterious intrigue and unravels the tangled threads of accepted, conventional and dogmatic histories of the theater.” * The Byron Journal *

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Book SynopsisIn Shakespeare the Illusionist, Neil Forsyth reviews the history of Shakespeare’s plays on film, assessing what filmmakers and TV directors have made of the spells, haunts, and apparitions— Puck and the fairies, ghosts and witches, or Prospero’s island—in his plays. A bold step forward in Shakespeare and film studies.Trade Review“This is a wonderful book: learned, bright, and winningly written. It tackles an interesting issue (the nature of illusion in an art form which is all illusion) in Shakespeare on film and does so by not only providing rich and satisfying readings of some major Shakespeare films (Olivier’s Hamlet and Welles’s Macbeth, for example) that I had thought had been well mined by previous critics, but does so by placing those films in the context of the larger film history.”

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Among its many virtues, Negotiating Performance has the merit of bravely tackling the thorny issue of Latino identity head-on. Taylor’s strong and thoughtful introduction sets the tone for a challenging reflection on the pitfalls of a multiculturalist stance (be it purely commercial or naively sympathetic) that blithely incorporates, homogenizes, and dispatches differences without ever dwelling on the more profound implications of those differences in U. S. culture today."—Sylvia Molloy, New York University"The attractiveness of Negotiating Performance lies exactly in the boldness of including a diverse group of essays, each of which speaks with its own voice. It will provide valuable insights into areas of contemporary interest in theatre studies."—George Woodyard, University of KansasTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Opening Remarks / Diana Taylor The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the National Arts Community / Guillermo Gomez-Pena Art in America con Acento / Cherrie Moraga Looking for the Magic: Chicanos in the Mainstream / Jorge Huerta Staging AIDS: What's Latinos Got To Do With It? / Alberto Sandoval Border Boda or Divorce Fronterizo? / Marguerite Waller Seduced and Abandoned: Chicanas and Lesbians in Representation / Sue-Ellen Case Public Art, Performance Art, and the politics of Site / Maria Teresa Marrero "Salvacion Casita": Puerto Rican Performance and Vernacular Architecture in the South Bronx / Juan Flores Inventions and Transgressions: A Fractured Narrative on Feminist Theatre in Mexico / Kirsten F. Nigro A Touch of Evil: Jesusa Rodriguez's Subversive Church / Jean Franco Ethnicity, Gender, and Power: Carnaval in Santiago de Cuba / Judith Bettelheim New Mayan Theatre in Chiapas: Anthropology, Literacy, and Social Drama / Donald H. Frischmann "A Woman Fell into the River": Negotiating Female Subjects in Contemporary Mayan Theatre / Cynthia Steele For Carnival, Clinic, and Camera: Argentina's Turn-of-the-Century Drag Culture Performs "Woman" / Jorge Salessi and Patrick O'Connor Performing Gender: Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo / Diana Taylor Closing Remarks / Juan Villegas Bibliography / Tiffany Ana Lopez and Jacqueline Lazu Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An original and important book relevant to current general interests in literary theory and the problems of interpretation as well as to Pinter scholarship and criticism. Merritt has produced a work of ‘metacriticism’ that I would expect to remain of permanent value. Her knowledge of Pinter scripts, performances of them, and of Pinter critics and reviewers is vast, and parallel to her demonstrations of changes in critical strategies and perspectives, she evokes a sense of the changes Pinter has gone through as a playwright."—Michael Steig, Simon Fraser UniversityTable of ContentsPreface to the Paperback Edition xi Preface xvii Introduction xxi Abbreviations xxix Perspectives on Pinter's Critical Evolution 1. "Progress" and "Fashion" in Pinter Studies 3 2. Aims, Kinds, and Contexts of Criticism 25 3. Criticism as Strategy 49 4. Pinter's "Semantic Uncertainty" and Critically "Inescapable" Certainties 66 Some Strategies of Pinter Critics: Themes, Rituals, Games, Fantasies, Dreams 5. Thematic Tactics and Ritural Ruses: Searches for Meaning 89 6. Psychoanalytic Maneuvers: Smoke Screens against Recognition 108 7. Some Other Language Games: Linguistic Parlays and Parleys 137 8. Cultural Politics 171 Social Relations of Critical and Cultural Change 9. Contingencies of Value Judgments of Pinter's Plays 213 10. The Case of Pinter: Toward Theory as Practice in Critical and Cultural Change 245 Notes 277 Works Cited 299 Index 329

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Book SynopsisModern vernacular comedy took shape in early sixteenth-century Italy with the many plays adapted from and modeled on Plautine New Comedy. This work demonstrates how Italian dramatists reacted to the wide success of this genre with a counterparadigm, a comedy that exploits secrecy as form. It examines this major development in Italian theater.Trade Review“Cope has defined a counter-generic genre that sharpens and refines our understanding of the distinctive Italian contribution to the history of theater. His analysis is shrewd, and his careful close readings of a large number of plays make this fascinating theater of complicity available to readers with little or no Italian. Beyond that, he provokes endless reflection on theater itself as a metaphor of the knowable, and of the ways in which that metaphor was transformed between the early humanistic revivals of Plautus and Terence, and the rise of Gozzi.”—Walter Stephens, Dartmouth CollegeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Il Padano to Il Veneto 17 Siena: Piccolomini's Dialogo and the Rozzi Rusticali 49 Florence 75 Il Manco male: Maggi's Meneghino in Milan 117 Goldoni 139 Afterword on Secrecy and Literary Genres 185 Notes 191 Index 217

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“[A] learned, intelligent, and interesting book. . . . [A] wide-ranging knowledge of Renaissance religious and political commentary and of current criticism is made available in a lucid and persuasive argument.” - Edward Pechter, Journal of English and Germanic Philology“Kronenfeld’s achievement here is enormous, particularly in providing a necessary corrective to versions of historicism that seem Old in all but political slant.” - Andrew James Hartley, Christianity and Literature“To read [this] book . . . is to encounter a mind capable of tackling the most sophisticated of historical and theoretical topics with both grace and reason. Kronenfeld takes us on a tour both of history and of Shakespeare’s text in a way that finally leaves each seeming at once extremely complex but also much more readily comprehensible. She manages the difficult feat of clarifying without simplifying, and for that reason alone her book is well worth the attention of any serious student of Lear, Shakespeare, the Renaissance, and literary theory.” - Ben Jonson Journal“King Lear and the Naked Truth is richly researched, deeply learned, and largely achieves what it sets out to do. This is an important study from which all readers will learn.” - Ronald Knowles, Renaissance Quarterly“Judy Kronenfeld’s book on political criticism and King Lear makes some important points and provides a rich florilegium of quotations from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century homiletic texts (along with an excellent bibliography). It is a book anyone doing sociohistorical or political criticism of Shakespeare, or of any Elizabethan or Jacobean texts, should take seriously.” - Richard Strier, Shakespeare Quarterly“Kronenfeld’s painstaking reconstruction of English Reformed thought on subjects such as charity, rank, and the family deserves a wide audience. . . . Her thoughtful and challenging critique of new historical readings of Lear also merits consideration.” - Kenneth J. E. Graham, Modern Philology"This is a most impressive book, one that is sure to have an impact, raise questions, and create controversy."—Herbert Lindenberger, Stanford University“King Lear and the Naked Truth is richly researched, deeply learned, and largely achieves what it sets out to do. This is an important study from which all readers will learn.” -- Ronald Knowles * Renaissance Quarterly *“[A] learned, intelligent, and interesting book. . . . [A] wide-ranging knowledge of Renaissance religious and political commentary and of current criticism is made available in a lucid and persuasive argument.” -- Edward Pechter * Journal of English and Germanic Philology *“Judy Kronenfeld’s book on political criticism and King Lear makes some important points and provides a rich florilegium of quotations from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century homiletic texts (along with an excellent bibliography). It is a book anyone doing sociohistorical or political criticism of Shakespeare, or of any Elizabethan or Jacobean texts, should take seriously.” -- Richard Strier * Shakespeare Quarterly *“Kronenfeld’s achievement here is enormous, particularly in providing a necessary corrective to versions of historicism that seem Old in all but political slant.” -- Andrew James Hartley * Christianity and Literature *“Kronenfeld’s painstaking reconstruction of English Reformed thought on subjects such as charity, rank, and the family deserves a wide audience. . . . Her thoughtful and challenging critique of new historical readings of Lear also merits consideration.” -- Kenneth J. E. Graham * Modern Philology *“To read [this] book . . . is to encounter a mind capable of tackling the most sophisticated of historical and theoretical topics with both grace and reason. Kronenfeld takes us on a tour both of history and of Shakespeare’s text in a way that finally leaves each seeming at once extremely complex but also much more readily comprehensible. She manages the difficult feat of clarifying without simplifying, and for that reason alone her book is well worth the attention of any serious student of Lear, Shakespeare, the Renaissance, and literary theory.” * Ben Jonson Journal *

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Book SynopsisShakesqueer puts the most exciting queer theorists in conversation with the complete works of William Shakespeare.Trade Review“The adventurous essays in Shakesqueer demonstrate that queer theory does indeed need Shakespeare, if only to defy rumors of its own demise: the essays show what is vital about a queer studies that might have been thought by this point too domesticated or reified or ‘fixed’ to be intellectually vibrant.”—Carolyn Dinshaw, author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern“What happens when queer theory gets into bed with Shakespeare? A play in forty-eight acts, this spirited group production never ceases to entertain and surprise with its queer cast of characters: virgins, eunuchs, and lechers; queens, kings, and pageboys; tyrants, assassins, and killjoys; lions, tigers, and bears—oh my! Full of toil and trouble, wit and wisdom, Shakesqueer succeeds where few other edited collections do: it puts the play back in playwright, and the fun back in theory.”—Diana Fuss, Princeton University“In the end, this book is a big, glorious mess, full of playful juxtapositions and frightening possibilities. It is thrilling. Theatre scholars, queer theorists, actors, directors, and dramaturges will all find something useful and interesting.” -- Michael Cramer * Sixteenth Century Journal *“When studying endless Shakespeare plays on English Literature courses, we always had a hunch there were some exceptionally queer goings on beyond some same sex sonnets and this collection of essays proves us right. Earl on earl analysis sits beside complex queer theories on the bard.” * Gay Times *“Few works of literary criticism deserve the descriptor ‘monumental,’ but this one does. . . . The book is both readable and witty. It is also important, for it drives the final nail into the coffin of 20th-century Shakespearean studies. . . . No hierarchies survive this book. Every play and poem receives a fresh new reading. . . . Essential. All readers.” -- M. J. Emery * Choice *“If you're looking for clues to Romeo and Mercutio's secret romance in the new academic volume Shakesqueer : A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon (Duke), you're barking up the wrong yew tree. American University professor Menon and her queer-theorist contributors find queerness in Shakespeare in that term's most all-encompassing meaning of oddball, unusual, or non-normative. But when you come to think of it, fairy queen Titania falling in love with an ass named Bottom is pretty queer, in all senses of the word.” -- Roberto Friedman * Bay Area Reporter *“It is rare to see a volume that does so much, and does it with such consistent wit, thoughtfulness, and creativity. . . . In putting together this volume, Menon has done scholars from all fields and periods an immense service. Shakesqueer gives us a very queer new reading ‘’companion’’ — friend, helpmeet, comrade-in-arms — that makes us exquisitely aware of the need for the perverse and disruptive critical practice its essays so pleasurably model.” -- Melissa E. Sanchez * Renaissance Quarterly *“There’s something for every queer scholar and Bard-lover in the anthology; from bears in Henry VIII to eunuchs in Antony and Cleopatra, from the death drive in Hamlet to precariously heterosexual marriages in All’s Well that Ends Well, the contributing authors chart Shakespeare’s varied engagements with queerness, putting pressure on assumptions that Shakespeare has nothing to offer to contemporary queer theory. . . . The assorted essays assert that Shakespeare has as much to offer queer theory as queer theory can contribute to understanding and deconstructing the Bard’s texts. This book belongs on every bookish queer’s shelf, right where the leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare butts up against Butler and Foucault.” -- Kestryl Cael Lowrey * Lambda Literary Review *“This fascinating collection of essays explores the queer elements within all of Shakespeare’s works. With contributions from scholars of both queer studies and Shakespeare, the volume represents a joining of the two fields rarely attempted before.” -- Charles Green * Gay & Lesbian Review *“[Shakesqueer] manages to put the fun back into academic research. Shakesqueer is a highly entertaining collection of essays, which all focus on the strange, the unusual, that is, the queer element in the Shakespearean oeuvre.” -- Veronika Schandl * European Journal of English Studies *"For 'insider experts'—those who are Shakespeareans, queer theorists, or both (always, already, at once)—Shakesqueer provides a garden of delights between its covers. . . . Shakesqueer extends, enriches, and strengthens the vocabulary of Shakespeare criticism in concert with queer theory." -- Stephen F. Evans * Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Queer Shakes / Madhavi Menon 1 All is True (Henry VIII)The Unbearable Sex of Henry VIII / Steven Bruhm 28 All's Well That Ends WellIs Marriage Always Already Heterosexual? / Julie Crawford 39 Antony and CleopatraAught an Eunuch Has / Ellis Hanson 48 As You Like ItFortune's Turn / Valerie Rohy 55 Cardenio"Absonant Desire": The Question of Cardenio / Philip Lorenz 62 The Comedy of ErrorsIn Praise of Error / Lynne Huffer 72 Coriolanus"Tell Me Not Wherein I Seem Unnatural": Queer Meditations on Coriolanus in the Time of War / Jason Edwards 80 Cymbelinedesire vomit emptiness: Cymbeline's Marriage Time / Amanda Berry 89 HamletHamlet's Wounded Name / Lee Edelman 97 Henry IV, Part 1When Harry Met Harry / Matt Bell 106 Henry IV, Part 2 The Deep Structure of Sexuality: War and Masochism in Henry IV, Part 2 / Daniel Juan Gil 114 King Henry VScrambling Harry and Sampling Hal / Drew Daniel 121 Henry VI, Part 1"Wounded Alpha Bad Boy Soldier" / Mario Digangi 130 Henry VI, Part 2The Gayest Play Ever / Stephen Guy-Bray 139 Henry VI, Part 3Stay / Cary Howie 146 Julius CaeserThus, Always: Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln / Bethany Schneider 152 King JohnQueer Futility: Or, The Life and Death of King John / Kathryn Schwarz 163 King LearLear's Queer Cosmos / Laurie Shannon 171 A Lover's ComplaintLearning How to Love (Again) / Ashley T. Shelden 179 Love's Labour's LostThe L Words / Madhavi Menon 187 Love's Labour's WonDoctorin' the Bard: A Contemporary Appropriation of Love's Labour's Won / Hector Kollias 194 MacbethMilk / Heather Love 201 Measure for MeasureSame-Saint Desire / Paul Morrison 209 The Merchant of VeniceThe Rites of Queer Marriage in The Merchant of Venice / Arthur L. Little Jr. 216 The Merry Wives of WindsorWhat Do Women Want? / Jonathan Goldberg 225 A Midsummer Night's DreamShakespeare's Ass Play / Richard Rambuss 234 Much Ado About NothingClosing Ranks, Keeping Company: Marriage Plots and the Will to be Single in Much Ado About Nothing / Ann Pellegrini 245 OthelloOthello's Penis: Or, Islam in the Closet / Daniel Boyarin 254 Pericles"Curious Pleasures": Pericles beyond the Civility of Union / Patrick O'Malley 263 The Phoenix and the TurtleNumber There in Love Was Slain / Karl Steel 271 The Rape of LucreeDesire My Pilot Is / Peter Coviello 278 Richard IIPretty Richard / Judith Brown 286 Richard IIIFuck the Disabled: The Prequel / Robert McRuer 294 Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet Love Death / Carla Freccero 302 Sir Thomas MoreMore or Less Queer / Jeffrey Masten 309 The SonnetsMomma's Boy / Aranye Fradenburg 319 Speech Therapy / Barbara Johnson 328 More Life: Shakespeare's Sonnet Machines / Julian Yates 333 The Taming of the ShrewLatin Lovers in The Taming of the Shrew / Bruce Smith 343 The TempestForgetting The Tempest / Kevin Ohi 351 Timon of AthensSkepticism, Sovereignty, Sodomy / James Kuzner 361 Titus AndronicusA Child's Garden of Atrocities / Michael Moon 369 Troilus and CressidaThe Leather Men and the Lovely Boy: Reading Positions in Troilus and Cressida / Alan Sinfeild 376 Twelfth NightIs There an Audience for My Play? / Sharon Holland 385 The Two Gentlemen of VeronaPageboy, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona: The Movie / Amy Villajero 394 The Two Noble KinsmenPhiladelphia, or War / Jody Greene 404 Venus and Adonis421Venus and Adonis Freeze / Andrew Nicholls 414 The Winter's TaleLost, or "Exit, Pursued by a Bear": Causing Queer Children on Shakespeare's TV / Kathryn Bond Stockton 421 References 429 Further Reading 449 Contributors 467 Index 477

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Book SynopsisThis readable, thought-provoking, and multidisciplinary study explores theatrical writings that question the Aristotelian aesthetical-generic conception and seek instead to work with the medium of theatricality itself.Trade Review"With his customary wit and an acupuncturist's knack for exerting philosophical pressure on the most banal formulae of consumer society ('home theater,' 'casting,' 'the commercial break,' 'Stay with us!'), Sam Weber outlines a reading of theater as a place, a juncture, never fully inhabited or vacated by its great theorists (as varied as Plato, Sophocles, Kierkegaard, and Benjamin). The transition from 'theater' to 'media' is made by an excavation of long-submerged metaphors and a recovery of the many meanings of 'acting.' Sharp, dramatic in its own right, and rich in implications, this book is entirely 'in character.'"- -- -Haun Saussy Yale University "Theatricality as Medium is one of those rare and necessary books that seem-but just seem-to appear out of nowhere, to challenge the habits of thougt and dispel intellectual cliches in the fields of performance and theatre studies." -The Drama Review

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Book SynopsisExplores Cavell's writings. This book states that, after Cavell's celebrated reading of "King Lear" turned into a nightmarish meditation on Vietnam, he found a more audible voice. Here, the poetry of ideas and presence of mind that animate Cavell's writing receive readings attuned to the spirit of their composition and its enlivening powers.Trade ReviewStanley Cavell's American Dream moves from discussions of Cavell's philosophy to readings of Walker Percy, Harold Bloom, Shakespeare, Emerson, and contemporary novelist Jane Smiley, traversing institutional divides with a grace and lucidity which recalls the best writing of such stylistically-gifted critics as Hugh Kenner and Alfred Kazin. Rewarding and pleasurable to read. ---—R.M. Berry, author of Frank"Lawrence Rhu's wonderful volume on Stanley Cavell teaches us how to enjoy all Cavell's eloquent, casual, ceremonious, solemn, and high comic ways.---—David Mikics, University of HoustonStanley Cavell's American Dream is an insightful, original contribution to Shakespeare criticism, film criticism, and to our theoretical understanding of the relationship between the two great arts.---—William Rothman, editor of Cavell on Film and coauthor of Reading Cavell's The World ViewedRhu shows how Cavell's philosophy is inseparable from his interest in Shakespeare and Hollywood and so, indirectly, how the interests of an important philosopher are just like anyone else's, and how philosophy for Cavell represents one of the few remaining possibilities of expressing one's simultaneous affection for both Hamlet and North by Northwest.---—Miguel Tamen, author of Friends of Interpretable ObjectsA generous invitation for readers to profit from Cavell's Emersonian ways of combining Shakespeare's evergreen worlds with those of Holly wood's Golden Age.---—Stephen Mulhall, author of Stanley Cavell: Philosophy's Recounting of the Ordinary and editor of The Cavell ReaderThis book brightly illuminates the work of Shakespeare, Emerson and Hollywood melodrama and re-marriage comedy as well as the work of the thinker who has given us such extraordinary pathways into them.---—Sarah Beckwith, Signifying GodRhu's stated aim is to read Cavell's studies of Shakespeare and Hollywood and transcendentalism together, rather than separating them into disciplinary distinctness, as has been the standard. . . Recommended. * —Choice *A work for every Shakespearean—experts and amateurs, teachers and their students, whom this book will delight and instruct. Its eloquence and accessiblity make it ideal for graduate and undergraduate classes.---—John Tobin, coeditor of The Riverside Shakespeare

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Book SynopsisOffers an original way of thinking literary history and a new approach to the question of the relations between literature and politics in modernityTrade Review"Emily Sun subtly and lucidly explores the role of literature as that which 'exposes us to the possibility of an aesthetics and politics of plurality.' Framing her powerful readings with King Lear as a theater at the limit of sovereignty, Sun traces the return of this play in the literary history it opens up, a literature that exposes us to the "radical asymmetry of human perspectives" even as it offers new possibilities for altered forms of listening and telling. The literary texts she reads become, thus, not only sites that reveal a crisis of sovereignty, but also serve as events that demand from us, as she says, a responsiveness before responsibility, and that, in putting "'the world' into question in the face of the unknown," open up a new literary as well as political mode of co-existence." -- -Cathy Caruth Emory University "An excellent work of theoretical synthesis applied to thoughtful, continuously challenging readings of texts that at once form an intuitive unity and at the same time consistently resist and correct preconception through Sun's circumspect, nimble critical strategies." -- -Paul Fry Yale University With her canny intuition for unlikely cultural trajectories, Emily Sun adroitly unfolds a discussion of three aesthetic interventions in a critique of political tyranny. As she moves from Shakespeare's King Lear to Wordsworth's poetry and Agee/Evans collaborative documentation of the impoverished of the 30s Depression, she draws us into a reading adventure, refocusing our vision of familiar texts, making them new in relation to her redefinition of what responsible writing and reading might be. This is literary analysis at its most thought- provoking. -- -Elisabeth Bronfen University of Zurich "Emily Sun has written an ambitious study that is a delight to read on how literary works foster a truly active rather than passive spectatorship as well as a "plural speech" necessary to avoid tyrannous political theologies. Drawing in major contemporary theorists, her patient and clarifying style, with its ability to zoom from large questions to telling textual detail, compels us to think anew about this task. All of us, her moving book insists, literary consumers or creators, must "succeed" great works of art in the sense of accepting and bringing to completion their demanding legacy." -- -Geoffrey Hartman Yale University

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Book SynopsisShakespeare is worth reading, this book argues, because his works help us to make epistemological weakness into a way of life. Kuzner shows how his works offer a means for coming to terms with basic uncertainties about freedom, the world’s abundance, and the demands of love and social life.Trade Review"This is broad and provocative thinking of the first order that promises to show how Shakespeare engages what remain some of the deepest questions concerning the human condition. Throughout the book, Kuzner reads Renaissance humanism, ethics, epistemology and theology in relation to their modern responses and redirections, reinvigorating historical study and theoretical discourse alike through the kinds of astute and creative cross-pollination that have made him such a distinctive voice on the scene of Renaissance studies." -- -Julia Reinhard Lupton University of California, Irvine "Shakespeare as a Way of Life is a thoughtful, meditative, beautifully written book that will interest readers of all critical stripes, whether their bent is toward history, theory, or close reading. Kuzner gives us poised and nuanced readings of his key Shakespearean works. Most of all, he makes a brilliant, original case for Shakespeare's carving out a new kind of skepticism, one that is his own and not classifiable as purely Pyrrhonian or Montaignean or proto-Cartesian." -- -Katherine Eggert University of Colorado, BoulderTable of Contents1. Introduction: Shakespeare's Skeptical Practice and the Politics of Weakness 2. Ciceronian Skepticism and the Mind-Body Problem in Lucrece 3. "It stops me here": Love and Self-Control in Othello 4. The Winter's Tale: Faith in Law and the Law of Faith 5. Doubtful Freedom in The Tempest 6. Looking Two Ways at Once in Timon of Athens Epilogue: Shakespeare as a Way of Life Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe earliest surviving comic drama, Acharnians is a highly committed play. Its message is that Athens war with the Peloponnesians can and should be ended, and that peace will mean the restoration of normal life. First published in 1980, this edition has been updated, and presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, commentary and notes.Trade Review‘For an overall series of the entire corpus, including critical text, commentary, translation, and full introduction, all subsumed to one man’s intelligent analysis and wide-ranging scholarship, Sommerstein stands triumphantly alone. […] Aristophanes is lucky to have so devoted, erudite, and witty a modern celebrant.’ ScholiaTable of ContentsPrefaceAbbreviationsGENERAL INTRODUCTIONI. AristophanesII. Aristophanic ComedyIII. ProductionIV. Transmission Notes to General IntroductionACHARNIANSIntroductory NoteNote on the TextSiglaText and TranslationSELECT BIBLIOGRAPHYADDENDA

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Book SynopsisIon is generally regarded as one of Euripides’ most attractive plays. A skilfully organised plot, charming characters, exciting situations and thought-provoking themes make it an excellent introduction to the study of Greek drama generally and of Euripides in particular. Greek text with facing translation, introduction and commentary.Table of ContentsGeneral Editor’s ForewordPrefaceAbbreviationsAddenda 2007Updated General BibliographyIntroduction to Ion 1. Plot and meaning 2. Structure 3. Characters 4. Themes and Issues 5. Myth 6. Staging 7. Date 8. Text and TranslationManuscripts and Editorial SymbolsText and Translation of Ion CommentaryBibliography for IonIndex

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Book SynopsisAjax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of his enemies.Table of Contents Preface Introduction Bibliography Ajax: Text and translation Commentary Metrical Appendix Index

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Book SynopsisIn Peace, produced in 421 B.C., Aristophanes celebrates in anticipation the conclusion, after ten years, of the great war between Athens and Sparta. This volume presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, commentary and notes. The second edition has been substantially updated with extensive addenda to the Notes and Bibliography.Trade Review'College and university libraries should own a copy for students and faculty looking for a current, comprehensive bibliography to the play.'Martha Habash, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2007‘For an overall series of the entire corpus, including critical text, commentary, translation, and full introduction, all subsumed to one man’s intelligent analysis and wide-ranging scholarship, Sommerstein stands triumphantly alone. […] Aristophanes is lucky to have so devoted, erudite, and witty a modern celebrant.’ ScholiaTable of ContentsPrefaceReferences and AbbreviationsPEACE Introductory Note Note on the Text Sigla Text and Translation Notes Addenda including Bibliography

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