Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisA study of how the use of Ovid in Middle English texts affected Shakespeare's treatment of the poet. The debt owed by Shakespeare to Ovid is a major and important topic in scholarship. This book offers a fresh approach to the subject, in aiming to account for the Middle English literary lenses through which Shakespeare and his contemporaries often approached Greco-Roman mythology. Drawing its principal examples from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Lucrece, and Twelfth Night, it reinvestigates a selection of moments in Shakespeare's works that have been widely identified in previous criticism as "Ovidian", scrutinising their literary alchemy with an eye to uncovering how ostensibly classical references may be haunted by the under-acknowledged, spectral presences of medieval intertexts and traditions. Its central concern is the mutual hauntings of Ovid, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower in the early modern literary imagination; it demonstrates that "Ovidian" allusions to mythological figures such as Ariadne, Philomela, or Narcissus in Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic works were sometimes simultaneously mediated by the hermeneutic and affective legacies of earlier vernacular texts,including The Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Confessio Amantis. LINDSAY ANN REID is a Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway.Trade ReviewShakespeare and Ovid are a familiar coupling; so too, to medievalists, are Ovid and the medieval; and the pairing of Shakespeare and the medieval is making its presence increasingly felt. * TRANSLATION AND LITERATURE *Scholarly efforts to rethink the once sacrosanct period-divide between late medieval and early modern English culture have been under way for quite some time now, and the Studies in Renaissance Literature series has made several important contributions to these exertions. Lindsay Ann Reid's Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval is the latest-exhibiting the perspicacity, nuance, and scope that we have come to expect from the series. The strength of this study is its dense and challenging close readings of ancient, medieval, and early modern texts. * STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER *Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval is a courageous book rectifying the influential oversights by celebrated critics of a canonical writer. With thorough research and probing insights, Reid corrects a distorted understanding of the culture and traditions informing early modern literature, and of Shakespeare himself. * PARERGON *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chaucer's Ghoast, Ovid's 'Pleasant Fables', and the Spectre of Gower Shakespeare's Ovid and Sly's Chaucer Theseus and Ariadne [and her Sister] Philomela and the Dread of Dawn The Cross-Dressed Narcissus Afterword Appendix 1: The Gowerian Riddles of Chaucer's Ghoast Appendix 2: Ariadne's Desertion in Bulleins Bulwarke of Defence Bibliography

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Book SynopsisEssays on aspects of early drama. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The articles in this fortieth volume engage with the key communities for early theatre: royalty, city and household, and religious institutions. Topics include the Royal Entry of Elizabeth Woodville into Norwich (1469); Henry VIII's Robin Hood entertainment for Catherine of Aragon; the sun's contribution to stage effects in the York Corpus Christi Play: the engagement with local worthies in Mankind; and the convent drama of Huy, in the Low Countries. Contributors: Aurélie Blanc, Philip Butterworth, Clare Egan, John Marshall, Olivia Robinson, Michael Spence, Meg Twycross.Table of ContentsProducing the Journal over Forty Years - Meg Twycross William Parnell, supplier of staging and ingenious devices, and his role in the visit of Elizabeth Woodville to Norwich in 1469 - Philip Butterworth William Parnell, supplier of staging and ingenious devices, and his role in the visit of Elizabeth Woodville to Norwich in 1469 - Michael Spence The Huy Nativity from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century: Translation, Play-Back, and Pray-Back - Olivia Robinson The Huy Nativity from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century: Translation, Play-Back, and Pray-Back - Aurélie Blanc A 'Gladnes' of Robin Hood's Men: Henry VIII Entertains Queen Katherine - John Marshall Reading Mankind in a Culture of Defamation - Clare Egan The Sun in York (Part One): Illumination, Reflection, and Timekeeping for the Corpus Christi Play - Meg Twycross

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Book SynopsisNewest research into drama and performance of the Middle Ages and Tudor period. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays , and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The papers in this volume explore richly interlocking topics. Themes of royalty and play continue from Volume 43. We have the first in-depth examination of the employment of the now-famous Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, at the royal courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. An entertaining survey of the popular European game of blanket-tossing accompanies the translation of a raucous, sophisticated, but surprisingly humane Dutch rederijkers farce. The Towneley plays remain fertile ground for further research, and this blanket-tossing farce illuminates a key scene of the well-known Second Shepherd's Play. New exploration of a colloquial reference to 'Stafford Blue' in another Towneley pageant, Noah, not only enlivens the play's social context but contributes to important current re-thinking of the manuscript's date. Two papers bring home the theatrical potential of food and eating. We learn how the Tudor interlude Jacob and Esau dramatises the preparation and provision of food from the Genesis story. Serving and eating meals becomes a means of social, theological, and theatrical manipulation. Contrastingly, in the N. Town Last Supper play and a French convent drama, we see how the bread of Passover, the Last Supper, and the Mass could be evoked, layered and shared in performance. In both these plays the audiences' experiences of theatre and of communion overlap and inform each other.Table of ContentsJohn Blanke's Wages: No Business Like Show Business - Nadia van Pelt Perpetually Editing Towneley: A Speculative Textual Note on Mrs Noah's 'Stafford Blue' - Pamela M. King Understanding the Blanket-Toss in Medieval Drama: The Case of Een Cluijt van Lijsgen en Jan Lichthart - Ben Parsons and Bas Jongenelen Alimentary Address and the Management of Appetite and Hunger in Jacob and Esau - Ernst Gerhardt Last Supper, First Communion: Some Staging Challenges in N. Town and the Huy Nuns' Play based on Deguileville's Pèlerinage de la vie humaine - Elisabeth Dutton and Olivia Robinson

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Book SynopsisNewest research into drama and performance from the Middle Ages and the Tudor period. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. This volume offers new perspectives in three important areas. It opens with an investigation of the tantalising image of the Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, in the Westminster Tournament Roll. Complementing the assessment of the documentary evidence for his employment in our last volume, it uncovers the surprising complexity of how Islamic dress was represented at the court of Henry VIII. Two essays engage with the challenging Croxton Play of the Sacr

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Book SynopsisThis book offers a theory of the archaic mode of fictional thinking and a methodology for the analysis of fictional worlds. It presupposes the mutual independence of the description of a fictional world, in any language or medium, and the described fictional world. Such a world is generated by an autonomous fictional structure, which reflects the spontaneous expectations of the spectator, and thematic specification. A model of this structure is presented, comprising seven layers: personified, mythical, praxical, naive, ironic and aesthetic -- and overriding these layers, the fictional experience on the level of relationship between the fictional world and spectator. This experience depends on the spectator's ability to complement such a description with pertinent associations, drawn from shared cultural resources, and psychical mechanisms of response. Explanations and examples are couched in poetic, pragmatic, aesthetic and rhetoric methodologies. An Introduction surveys the major contributions made to a methodology of fictional analysis since Aristotle's Poetics, problematises them and suggests possible alternatives. Part I is devoted to the inner structure of fictional worlds; i.e., to the poetic rules that generate them. The innovation of this approach lies in its multi-layered nature. Part II deals with the structure of the fictional experience, which is metaphoric and rhetoric in nature. Part III deals with the specific structures of fictional worlds that reflect the particular intentions and purposes of their authors. Part IV contains analyses of actual fictional worlds that illustrate the application of the previously presented principles. The focus throughout is on theatre fictional worlds which by their nature exhibit the most complex fictional thoughts that the human brain can generate. The theoretical insights gained for theatre assumedly apply to descriptions of such worlds in any language or medium. More than a hundred fictional worlds created during 2500 years of theatre recorded history are analysed. The volume has been purposefully designed to address undergraduate and postgraduate student needs to provide a fundamental competence of theatre studies.Table of ContentsIntroduction: State of the Art & Perspectives; The Nature of Fictional Worlds; The Mythical Layer; The Praxical Layer; The Naive Layer; The Ironic Layer; The Modal Layer; The Aesthetic Layer; Structure of Character; Characterisation & Credibility; Intertextual Relations; Fictional Interaction; Fictional Time & Place; Metaphoric Structure; Allegoric Structure; Rhetoric Structure; Spectator's Complementation; Hamartia / Catastrophe Structure; Virtue / Villainy Structure; Hamartia & Christianity; Absurdist Structure; Structure of Conflict; Ritual Experience & Truth; Anti-Aristotelian Poetics; Generic Transformation: The Hippolytus-Phaedra; Generation of Life is a Dream from Oedipus the King; Deconstruction of Archetypal Characterisation in The Seagull; The Chairs in Performance; Index.

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Book SynopsisMagic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical. Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticising it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audience's everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights' designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa & Sixteenth-Century Magic; The Supernatural in Giordano Bruno's Natural Philosophy; Early Modern England's Belief in Fictional Witchcraft; Fictions of Alchemy & Angelic Communication in the Confusion of Religious & Magical Fiction in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; Madness & Damnation: The Consequences of Macbeth's Magic; Witchcraft, Political Scandal & the Theatrical Moment of Middleton's The Witch; Alchemy & Witchcraft in The Drama of Ben Jonson; Magic in the Tempest: Shakespeare's Critique of Rough Art & Harsh Reason.

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Book SynopsisHerewith an original approach to the study of comedy. While assimilating theoretical insights from Aristotle to the present day, it contests, inter alia, the theory of comedy's ritual origin; challenges the age-old and continuing attempts to determine the structure of action that characterises comedy; and suggests instead that structures of action are shared by all genres, and that it is the specific mood that accounts for their differences. Mood is a prism through which a playwright wishes the spectator to perceive a fictional world. Comedy is characterised by its light-hearted mood, which generates a specific kind of laughter. If mood determines the genre of a fictional world, in contrast to current theory, comedy, satiric drama and grotesque drama are different genres promoting different moods and aiming at different effects. Each genre should thus be read and experienced according to its inherent rules and not in terms of a theory that lumps these genres together. The book discusses the pivotal role of commedia dell'arte in both reflecting comedy's classical tradition and influencing subsequent developments, especially in comedy's style of acting; it explores the relations between comedy and carnival and between comedy and joke-telling; probes the view that comedy is characterised by a unique vision; and examines comedy in different media -- such as cinema, comics, puppet theatre, radio drama and TV drama. Eli Rozik questions the traditional semiotic view that all meaning is in the text, and suggests that, in generating comedic meaning, the spectator's contribution/reaction is no less vital than that of the text itself. Major contributions to a general theory of comedy, and to a sound methodology for the analysis of comedies, are presented, and ample reference to comedies and/or pertinent analyses of such comedies, written over the course of 2,500 years of theatre recorded history, is provided to enable readers to grasp ideas in their original terminology and logic. Each presentation is accompanied by critical comments which attempt both to introduce the problems involved and suggest possible solutions.

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Book SynopsisHölderlin (1770-1843) is the magnificent writer whom Nietzsche called 'my favourite poet'. His writings and poetry have been formative throughout the twentieth century, and as influential as those of Hegel, his friend. At the same time, his madness has made his poetry infinitely complex as it engages with tragedy, and irreconcilable breakdown, both political and personal, with anger and with mourning. This study gives a detailed approach to Hölderlin's writings on Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles, whom he translated into German, and gives close attention to his poetry, which is never far from an engagement with tragedy. Hölderlin's writings, always fascinating, enable a consideration of the various meanings of tragedy, and provide a new reading of Shakespeare, particularly Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the work proceeds by opening into discussion of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy. Since Hölderlin was such a decisive figure for Modernism, to say nothing of modern Germany, he matters intensely to such differing theorists and philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, all of whose views are discussed herein. Drawing upon the insights of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalysis, this book gives the English-speaking reader ready access to a magnificent body of poetry and to the poet as a theorist of tragedy and of madness. Hölderlin's poetry is quoted freely, with translations and commentary provided. This book is the first major account of Hölderlin in English to offer the student and general reader a critical account of a vital body of work which matters to any study of poetry and to all who are interested in poetry's relationships to madness. It is essential reading in the understanding of how tragedy pervades literature and politics, and how tragedy has been regarded and written about, from Hegel to Walter Benjamin.

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Book SynopsisHölderlin (1770-1843) is the magnificent writer whom Nietzsche called 'my favourite poet'. His writings and poetry have been formative throughout the twentieth century, and as influential as those of Hegel, his friend. At the same time, his madness has made his poetry infinitely complex as it engages with tragedy, and irreconcilable breakdown, both political and personal, with anger and with mourning. This study gives a detailed approach to Hölderlin's writings on Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles, whom he translated into German, and gives close attention to his poetry, which is never far from an engagement with tragedy. Hölderlin's writings, always fascinating, enable a consideration of the various meanings of tragedy, and provide a new reading of Shakespeare, particularly Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the work proceeds by opening into discussion of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy. Since Hölderlin was such a decisive figure for Modernism, to say nothing of modern Germany, he matters intensely to such differing theorists and philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, all of whose views are discussed herein. Drawing upon the insights of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalysis, this book gives the English-speaking reader ready access to a magnificent body of poetry and to the poet as a theorist of tragedy and of madness. Hölderlin's poetry is quoted freely, with translations and commentary provided. This book is the first major account of Hölderlin in English to offer the student and general reader a critical account of a vital body of work which matters to any study of poetry and to all who are interested in poetry's relationships to madness. It is essential reading in the understanding of how tragedy pervades literature and politics, and how tragedy has been regarded and written about, from Hegel to Walter Benjamin.

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Book SynopsisPerhaps the most astonishing set of personal poems ever written, Shakespeare's Sonnets have both delighted and puzzled readers down the ages. Two Loves I Have is a reading of the sequence that brings the four characters involved to life. The 'fair, kind and true' young man to whom the majority of poems are addressed, the woman 'as black as hell, as dark as night' who dominates a part of the narrator's inner landscape against his will, the narrator himself, who at times is unexpectedly wholly at ease with his mistress, but at other times is sunk in a form of self-loathing, and whom nothing on earth will deter in his devotion to the young man ... these three play out a drama as fierce as that in any of the author's plays. And the author himself, at some remove behind the narrator, is the shadowy fourth character. Did he invent the young man and the Dark Lady? Did he adapt an existing situation in his life or indeed record it simply as it was? Whatever the historical fact, which can never be known, the poetic situation is enthralling. Without insisting on any particular view, Two Loves I Have (from sonnet 144) allows the reader a vista of the whole sonnet sequence, and a sense of its shifting currents. J. D. Winter carefully elucidates each individual poem, thus enabling the reader not only to come to terms with their outward meaning but to appreciate the rhetorical flow and the poet's idiosyncratic use of the sonnet-form itself. The sonnet sequence has been a comparatively neglected part of the Shakespearean canon. The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016 is an appropriate time to shed a new light upon the poems.

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Book SynopsisIs there anything more to say on Hamlet? 'Hide fox, and all after,' a casual quip of the Prince, as he and his enemy the King start to hunt each other down, is taken as the title for this closely-considered survey of the play. J D Winter finds question after question in it raised and unanswered, as if the play's dramatic method were in part to create uncertainty in its audience and so draw them in. He adopts three phrases from the text to provide a context for his approach: the play's the thing, a rhapsody of words, and the invisible event. The first phrase suggests the spectacle itself, without regard to what has been written about it. There is no reference to outside opinion nor is another literary work named. The second indicates an awareness of the text as poem. While the tremendous sweep of Shakespearean blank verse, the prose-paragraphs on fire with their own poetry, the whispering gallery of metaphor, can scarcely be accorded proper respect in a prose commentary, certain rhapsodic effects are everywhere noted. Finally, the play is contained within a mystery. So much seems to happen; so little seems to happen. Almost all the major characters are subject to a pattern of error in their dealings as they are swept on from one catastrophic misjudgement to another. The level to which the play is focussed upon the blind time between events is unusually high. This too draws in the audience; it is a part of the spectators own internal experience. There can be no definitive answer to Hamlet or Hamlet. But like a signpost in a swarming mist, the third phrase may offer a faint clue: the invisible event.

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Book SynopsisMagic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical. Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticising it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audience's everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights' designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa & Sixteenth-Century Magic; The Supernatural in Giordano Bruno's Natural Philosophy; Early Modern England's Belief in Fictional Witchcraft; Fictions of Alchemy & Angelic Communication in the Confusion of Religious & Magical Fiction in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; Madness & Damnation: The Consequences of Macbeth's Magic; Witchcraft, Political Scandal & the Theatrical Moment of Middleton's The Witch; Alchemy & Witchcraft in The Drama of Ben Jonson; Magic in the Tempest: Shakespeare's Critique of Rough Art & Harsh Reason.

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Book SynopsisLooks at the lives, challenges and contributions of African women from across the continent to making and participating in theatre in the 21st century. Drawing on expertise from across the African continent this collection reflects the realities for women working and making theatre: how Egyptian director Dalia Basiouny has documented the "Tahrir Stories" of the Egyptian Revolution; how in Uganda women have used various theatrical devices, such as oral poetry, to seek common ground in a rural-urban inter-generational theatre project; and the use of physical theatre to examine disavowed memory in South Africa. The contributors also look at how practitioners are re-thinking performance space and modes of performance for gendered advocacy in Botswanan theatre, and how women are addressing gender-based violence and rape culture, comparing performance and street-based activism in South Africa and India. A particular strength of the volume is its interviews: with Jalila Baccar of Tunisia, by Marvin Carlson; six Ethiopian actresses are interviewed and introduced by Jane Plastow and Mahlet Solomon; and Ariane Zaytzeff explores "Making art to reinvent culture" with Odile Gakire Katese of Rwanda. The new play to be published is The Sentence by Sefi Atta, introduced and contextualized by Christine Matzke. Volume Editors: JANE PLASTOW & YVETTE HUTCHISON Guest Editor: CHRISTINE MATZKE Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor of Drama at the University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of WarwickTrade ReviewThe geographical span of the work under discussion is impressive, moving through Egypt, Tunisia, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa, France, the UK, U.SA and Germany. * STUDIES IN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE *The book shoulders the responsibility of bringing to light the theatre-making efforts of African artists within their local contexts. * THEATRE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL *This book should be seen as a necessary guide that should enable others to pursue the conversation on how to improve accessibility and the work of African women in theatre. * LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS BLOG *Table of ContentsForeword - Jane Plastow and Yvette Hutchison and Christine Matzke Introduction - Sandra Richards The work of Dalia Basiouny: an artist's account - Dalia Basiouny Performativities as activism: addressing gender-based violence and rape culture in South Africa & beyond - Nicola Cloete Performativities as activism: addressing gender-based violence and rape culture in South Africa & beyond - Sara Matchett Exploring poetic voice in the Uganda Women's Intergenerational Theatre Project - Susan Nalugwa Kiguli and Jane Plastow 'After images': impressions of the 'after' by South Africa performer-choreographer Mamela Nyamza's - Alude Mahali Jallila Baccar of Tunisia: a portrait of an artist - Marvin Carlson In conversation: interrogating and shifting societal perceptions of women in Botswana through theatre - Lebogang Disele Binti Leo: women in the arts in Tanzania - Vicensia Shule Odile Gakire Katese: making art & reinventing culture with women: interview - Ariane Zaytzeff Contemporary Ethiopian actresses - Jane Plastow and Mahlet Solomon Introduction to Sefi Atta's The Sentence - Christine Matzke Playscript: The Sentence by Sefi Atta - Sefi Atta Book reviews

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Book SynopsisExtends the study of China's "soft power" into theatre studies and looks more widely at syncretic traditions evolving in other long-term historic exchanges between Asia and Africa. China is the main focus of this volume, and articles consider the way it is using "soft power" in its extensive engagement with South Africa, and, through its support for theatre festivals, with Lusophone countries in Africa. China's involvement with the construction of theatres, opera houses and cultural facilities as part of its foreign aid programmes in such countries as Algeria, Cameroon, Mauritius, Ghana and Senegal, provides the background to the playscript from this volume, Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) by Daniel Schauf, Philipp Scholtysik & Jonas Alsleben, that explores Chinese impact in Somalia. Issues also emerge around what China is "importing" culturally fromAfrica. In 2012, Soyinka's The Lion & the Jewel was produced there, and a season of Fugard's work was enjoyed in Beijing during 2014. During 2016 Brett Bailey's Macbeth Opera will be performed in Macao. In recent years courses in African theatre have been started in Beijing by Biodun Jeyifo, and also taught by Femi Osofisan whose well-known Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels and Once Upon Four Robbers have been translatedinto Mandarin, along with Soyinka's The Lion & the Jewel. The volume also includes contributions on exchanges between other Asian countries and Africa such as articles on the production of African plays in Bangladesh and onthe persistence of African performance traditions among African migrants in India. Attention is paid to the syncretic theatre traditions that have evolved wherever African and Asian populations have been in close and extended contact, as in Mauritius and Durban. Unusual exchanges and globalized theatre surfaces in the course of the volume. For example, while the Guangdong Provincial Puppet Art Theatre Group performed at the 41st Grahamstown Festival (2015), Chinese puppeteers are being trained to manipulate the War Horse for a Beijing production. Volume Editors: JAMES GIBBS & FEMI OSOFISAN FEMI OSOFISAN Thalia Laureate of the International Association of TheatreCritics 2016 Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor ofDrama, University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick.Table of ContentsIntroduction - James Gibbs I AFRICA'S DISCOVERY OF CHINESE THEATRE China in Ghana: an interview with Mohammed Ben Abdallah about the National Theatre, built by the Chinese Government in Accra; introduced & annotated by James Gibbs - Awo Mana Asiedu The Orphan of Chao: A Chinese Play at a Nigerian University, 1979 - Tony Humphries II CHINA'S DISCOVERY OF AFRICA: TEXTS, FESTIVALS & BUILDINGS Theatre in China in 1965, with a focus on War Drums Along the Equator - an interview with Robert Bolt, with an introduction by James Gibbs - James Gibbs The post-colonial imaginary & politics of representation in the Macao SAR: the Teatrau & the (re) emergence of 'lusofonia' under Chinese stars - Isabel Maria Da Costa Morais China-Africa relations at the Mindelact Theatre Festival, Sao Vicente, Cabo Verde - Rita M. Rufino Valente China meets South Africa in the theatre: some recent South African work about China & in China, & The Year of China in South Africa - Ying Cheng A checklist of African playscripts translated into Chinese - Wang Shang Introducing Blickakte - (Acts of Viewing): 'Do I see what I see, do I know what I know, do I hear what I hear' - Christine Matzke Playscript: Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) based on an idea by Ahmed Jama Aden - Daniel Schauf Playscript: Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) based on an idea by Ahmed Jama Aden - Philipp Scholtysik Playscript: Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) based on an idea by Ahmed Jama Aden - Jonas Alsleben III INDIAN THEATRE EXCHANGES WITH EAST & SOUTH AFRICA: HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS Indians of African descent: Sidis, Bava Gor & spiritual practices - Beheroze Shroff Jay Pather, South African artist of Indian ancestry: Transforming society in post-apartheid South Africa through his theatre-dance works - Ketu H. Katrak IV CONTESTED SPACES: Asian & African theatre in Mauritius: A report from the front line - Michael Walling Hidden under a black veil in Terra Incognita: representations of Africa in Bangladesh theatre, with a checklist of African playscripts performed in Bangladesh - Syed Jamil Ahmed Book Reviews

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Book SynopsisPyramus: ‘Now die, die, die, die, die.’ [Dies] A Midsummer Night’s Dream 'Shakespeare’s Dead' reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for thinking about early modern death, with particular reference to the plague which ravaged Britain during his lifetime, and against the divisive background of the Reformation. But it also shows how death on stage is different from death in real life. The dead come to life, ghosts haunt the living, and scenes of mourning are subverted by the fact that the supposed corpse still breathes. Shakespeare scripts his scenes of dying with extraordinary care. Famous final speeches – like Hamlet’s ‘The rest is silence’, Mercutio’s ‘A plague o’ both your houses’, or Richard III’s ‘My kingdom for a horse’ – are also giving crucial choices to the actors as to exactly how and when to die. Instead of the blank finality of death, we get a unique entrance into the loneliness or confusion of dying. 'Shakespeare’s Dead' tells of death-haunted heroes such as Macbeth and Hamlet, and death-teasing heroines like Juliet, Ophelia, and Cleopatra. It explores the fear of ‘something after death’, and characters’ terrifying visions of being dead. But it also uncovers the constant presence of death in Shakespeare’s comedies, and how the grinning jester might be a leering skull in disguise. This book celebrates the paradox: the life in death in Shakespeare.

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Book SynopsisThe locations of Shakespeare’s plays range from Greece, Turkey and Syria to England, and they range in time from 1000 BC to the early Tudor age. He never set a play explicitly in Elizabethan London, which he and his audience inhabited, but always in places remote in space or time. How much did he – and his contemporaries – know about the foreign cities where the plays took place? What expectations did an audience have if the curtain rose on a drama which claimed to take place in Verona, Elsinore, Alexandria or ancient Troy? This fully illustrated book explores these questions, surveying Shakespeare’s world through contemporary maps, geographical texts, paintings and drawings. The results are intriguing and sometimes surprising. Why should Love’s Labour’s Lost be set in the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre? Was the Forest of Arden really in Warwickshire? Why do two utterly different plays like The Comedy of Errors and Pericles focus strongly on ancient Ephesus? Where was Illyria? Did the Merry Wives have to live in Windsor? Why did Shakespeare sometimes shift the settings of the plays from those he found in his literary sources? It has always been easy to say that wherever the plays are set, Shakespeare was really writing about human psychology and human nature, and that the settings are irrelevant. This book takes a different view, showing that many of his locations may have had resonances which an Elizabethan audience would pick up and understand, and it shows how significant the geographical and historical background of the plays could be.

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Book SynopsisWithin Shakespeare’s lifetime there was already some curiosity about what the writer of such brilliant poems, sonnets and plays looked like. Yet like so much else about him, Shakespeare’s appearance is mysterious. Why is it so difficult to find images of him that were definitely made during his life? Which images are most likely to have been made by those close to Shakespeare, and why do these differ from each other? Also, why do newly ‘discovered’ images claimed as representations of the playwright emerge with such regularity? Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones examines these questions, beginning with an analysis of the tradition of the ‘author portrait’ before, during, and after Shakespeare’s life. She provides a detailed critique of the three images of Shakespeare likeliest to derive from life-time portrayals: the bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon; the ‘Droeshout engraving’ from the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623; and the ‘Chandos portrait’, painted in oil on canvas in the early seventeenth century. Through a fresh exploration of the evidence and groundbreaking research, she identifies a plausible new candidate for the painter of ‘Chandos’. This also throws new light on the last years of Shakespeare’s life. This generously illustrated book also examines the afterlife of these three images, as memorials, in advertising and in graphic art, together with their adaptation in later commemorative statues: all evidence of a continuing desire to put a face to one of the most famous names in literature.

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Book SynopsisAn assessment of the life, work and reputation of Spain's leading Golden Age dramatist A Companion to Lope de Vega brings together essays by leading international scholars on the life and works of Lope de Vega Carpio, the 'fénix de los ingenios', or, as his rival Miguel de Cervantes dubbed him, 'monstruo de la naturaleza'. Spain's foremost Golden Age playwright excelled in all literary genres, including prose and poetry, also covered here. The contributors evaluate current critical debates and issues in Lope de Vega studies, as well as providing new readings of key texts. It has been the aim of the editors to do justice to the variety, profusion and originality of Lope's work, placing the writer and his output firmly in their historical context as well asassessing his reputation in literary history. The wide variety of critical perspectives found in the volume reflects the liveliness of the debate surrounding this enduringly popular figure whose drama is enjoying a renaissance intheatres around the globe. Alexander Samson lectures in Golden Age literature at University College London. Jonathan Thacker is Fellow in Spanish at Merton College, Oxford. Other Contributors: Elaine Canning, Geraldine Coates, Frederick A de Armas, Victor Dixon, Geraint Evans, Tyler Fisher, Edward H. Friedman, Alejandro Garcia Reidy, David Johnston, Arantza Mayo, David McGrath, Barbara Mujica, Ali Rizavi José Maria Ruano de la Haza,Isabel Torres, Xavier Tubau, Duncan Wheeler.Trade Review[U]n acierto de la editorial Tamesis . Con la presente publicación, el estudioso de Lope de Vega cuenta ahora con una sólida referencia no sólo como objeto de estudio sino también como herramienta docente... Samson y Thacker han editado, así, un utilísimo libro que logra lo que muy pocos estudios consiguen hoy en día, a saber, el sentir a un Lope vivo, moderno y relevante, cuya trayectoria palpita con una claridad y una coherencia modélicas. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *A Companion to Lope de Vega es una obra que se mantendrá vigente en el estudio del dramaturgo español por mucho tiempo ya que presenta ideas fundamentales e innovadoras para el conocimiento del teatro en España y la comprensión del mundo, la obra y el hombre que fue Lope Félix de Vega Carpio. * ASSOCIATION OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE HISTORICAL STUDIES BULLETIN *Those who take or teach a Golden Age literature course should have this book at hand. [.] All contributors offer interesting, up-to-date information and abundant critical analysis of the author's work. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Lope's Life and Work Lope's Knowledge - Victor Dixon Lope de Vega and Theatre in Madrid - José María Ruano de la Haza From Stage to Page: Editorial History and Literary Promotion in Lope de Vega's Partes de Comedias - Alejandro Garcia Reidy Imagining Lope's Lyric Poetry in the 'Soneto primero' of the Rimas - Tyler Fisher 'Quien en virtud emplea su ingenio...': Lope de Vega's Religious Poetry - Arantza Mayo Outside In: The Subject[s] at Play in Las rimas humanas y divinas de Tomé de Burguillos - Isabel Torres The Arte nuevo de hacer comedias: Lope's dramatic statement - Jonathan W. Thacker Three Canonical Plays - Alexander Samson Lope de Vega, the Chronicle-Legend Plays and Collective Memory - Geraldine Hazbun Sacred Souls and Sinners: Abstinence and Adaptation in Lope's Religious Drama - Elaine Canning Lope, the Comedian - Jonathan W. Thacker Lope de Vega's Speaking Pictures: Tantalizing Titians and Forbidden Michelangelos in La quinta de Florencia - Frederick A de Armas Performing Sanctity: Lope's Use of Teresian Iconography in Santa Teresa de Jesús - Barbara Mujica Masculinities and Honour in Los comendadores de Córdoba - Geraint Evans El castigo sin venganza and the Ironies of Rhetoric - Edward H Friedman Life's Pilgrim: El peregrino en su patria - Alexander Samson Novelas a Marcia Leonarda - Ali Rizavi La Dorotea: a Tragicomedy in Prose - Xavier Tubau Lope as Icon - David McGrath A Modern Day Fénix: Lope de Vega's Cinematic Revivals - Duncan Wheeler Lope in Translation: Opening the Closed Book - David Johnston Translations of Titles Guide to Further Reading Bibliography

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Book SynopsisFeted by his contemporaries, Federico García Lorca's status has only grown since his death in 1936. This book shows just why his fame has endured, through an exploration of his most popular works: Romancero Gitano, Poeta en Nueva York and the trilogy of tragic plays - Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba.Trade ReviewFederico García Lorca: The Poetry in All Things provides a well-balanced and critically acute reappraisal of some of Lorca's most important works, reminding us of the enduring relevance of the Spanish poet in speaking into our modern world. * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Lorca, the Gitano Chapter 2. Lorca, the Modern Chapter 3. Lorca, the Feminist Conclusion Suggested Further Reading Bibliography

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Book SynopsisBased on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos, this book provides the most detailed reconstruction ever of one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history. Winner of the 2019-20 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize On 18 June 1933, one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history took place before an audience of 3,000 spectators in the ruins of the Roman Theatre in Mérida. Translated into Spanish by philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, staged by the renowned Xirgu-Borràs Company and funded by the government, the performance of Seneca's Medea was a triumph of republican culture and widely hailed for its new dramatic and scenic languages. This book provides the most detailed reconstruction of this pivotal production to date, setting it in context and analysing its origin and legacy. Early twentieth-century intellectuals considered Seneca, 'the philosopher from Córdoba', the epitome of Spanishness and the first in an illustrious line of playwrights stretching from Spain's Roman Antiquity to its Silver Age. His play was seen as the ideal vehicle to showcase the Second Spanish Republic's cultural, social and educational agenda but provoked a furious backlash from opponents to the government's progressive programme. The book shows how the performance became a cultural ritual which stood at the centre of critical discussions on national identity, politics, secularism, women's rights and new European aesthetics of theatre-making. Based on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos, it will be of interest to theatre historians, scholars of Classical Reception and historians of the Second Spanish Republic.Table of ContentsList of illustrations Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction: A Spanish Medea in Republican Spain I. Seneca's Medea in Mérida: A reconstruction II. Seneca and Hispania III. Republica nunc sum: Building a Republic IV. Medea and the social revolution V. Hispano-Roman tragedy on a reformed stage Conclusion: The Republican Medea that was in Mérida Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFocusing on dramatic works by contemporary British and American playwrights, in conjunction with feminist political and theoretical texts, this book discusses feminist constructions of the category "Woman".Trade Review"With a shrewd grasp of theory and a comprehensive knowledge of British and American plays, Mary Brewer homes in on controversial issues among women - pornography, rape, mothering, domesticity and work, and debates about the butch/fem model and gender-bending among lesbians." -- From the Foreword by Alan Sinfield, Professor of Literature, University of Sussex.Table of ContentsContents: Foreword by Alan Sinfield; Introduction: Women and Representation; Contemporary Women's Theatre: The Plays; Feminist Constructions of Difference; Defining Race Organisation; Representations of Motherhood; And Who Would Call Her Mother?: Carers Without Control; Courts of Flaw: Representations of Lesbians and the Rights of Lesbian Mothers; Fortunes at Low Tide; The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood: Strategies for Resistance; Conformity or Rebellion: Lesbian Families at Risk; OtherMothers; The Sexgender/Racegender System; Survival as Resistance: Black Women and the Family; Black Women and the Race: Lifting as We Climb'; Re-constructing the Chitlin-Circuit': Race, Representation, and OtherMothers; Friedan's Daughters: Representations of Woman' at Work; The Return of the Happy Housewife: Feminists Re-forming Woman'; Resurrecting the Cult of Domesticity; Who's On Top? White Women, Work, and the Family; Power Feminism: The Genderquake; Working Across the Racial Divide: Imitating Anita; Woman' as Object; Universal Woman': The Trojan Horse of Feminism; Colourising Joan of Arc: Radicalised Femininity and the Politics of Appearance; The Pornography of Representation: Sex, Gender, Race, and Rape; Erotophobes; Black Women and the Sexual Politics of Rape; Woman' as Subject: Negotiating Multiple Identities; A Movement Out of Step With Itself; Women on the Borders of Womanhood': Negotiating Race, Sex, and Gender(s); Difference: What Makes a House a Home; Learning to Dance as Sisters; Infiltrating Woman': Butch/Fem Lesbian Subjectivity; Woman as Discursive Subject; The Butch/Fem Debate; Signs and Seduction; Butch, Fem, and the Mask of Womanliness; Performing Gender(s); Conclusion: Toward a Progressive Feminist Politics; A House of Difference; Index.

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Book SynopsisSamuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama - The Sensitive Chaos, 2nd EditionTrade Review"... the book's principal value lies in Levy's penetrating observations about the ontology of the plays in performance, the reflexive, prism-like conundrums in them that fascinate and frustrate intelligent and attentive spectators and theater practitioners alike... Among the main virtues of this revised and enlarged edition is the addition of production anecdotes and performer-interviews that set Levy's critical ideas in newly illuminating practical context..." -- Journal of Beckett Studies."An intelligent, often fascinating analysis of Beckett's work." -- Choice."This current collection of essays is divided almost equally between theory and performance, but as often Shimon Levy treats the two as a single field as he explores the possibilities of chaos theory as a model for the theatrical experience, where 'even the tiniest detail may influence the presentation,' and moves on to explore the implications of Logical Positivism and Existentialism, all under the umbrella of the Cartesian Cogito. The essay on 'The Poetics of Offstage' is exemplary and should be required reading for theater directors." -- S. E. Gontarski, Sarah Herndon Professor of English, Florida State University; Editor, Journal of Beckett Studies.Table of ContentsContents: Preface; Introduction: Self-Organisation in the Middle of Chaos; Philosophical Notions; The Message of the Medium -- Theatrical Techniques; The Poetics of Offstage; The Radioplays; "Spirit Made Light" -- Film and TV Plays; Godot -- Resolution or Revolution?; I's and Eyes: A Hermeneutical Circle; Epilogue: Six She's and other Not I Proxies; Index.

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Book SynopsisSamuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama - The Sensitive Chaos, 2nd EditionTrade Review"... the book's principal value lies in Levy's penetrating observations about the ontology of the plays in performance, the reflexive, prism-like conundrums in them that fascinate and frustrate intelligent and attentive spectators and theater practitioners alike... Among the main virtues of this revised and enlarged edition is the addition of production anecdotes and performer-interviews that set Levy's critical ideas in newly illuminating practical context..." -- Journal of Beckett Studies."An intelligent, often fascinating analysis of Beckett's work." -- Choice."This current collection of essays is divided almost equally between theory and performance, but as often Shimon Levy treats the two as a single field as he explores the possibilities of chaos theory as a model for the theatrical experience, where 'even the tiniest detail may influence the presentation,' and moves on to explore the implications of Logical Positivism and Existentialism, all under the umbrella of the Cartesian Cogito. The essay on 'The Poetics of Offstage' is exemplary and should be required reading for theater directors." -- S. E. Gontarski, Sarah Herndon Professor of English, Florida State University; Editor, Journal of Beckett Studies.Table of ContentsContents: Preface; Introduction: Self-Organisation in the Middle of Chaos; Philosophical Notions; The Message of the Medium -- Theatrical Techniques; The Poetics of Offstage; The Radioplays; "Spirit Made Light" -- Film and TV Plays; Godot -- Resolution or Revolution?; I's and Eyes: A Hermeneutical Circle; Epilogue: Six She's and other Not I Proxies; Index.

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Book SynopsisEight leading contemporary interpreters of Classical Greek tragedy here explore its relation - convergence and divergence - with ideas of the Archaic Period. Prominent are the nature and possibility of divine justice, the influence of the gods on humans, fate and human responsibility, the instability of fortune, the principle of alternation, hybris and ate , the inheritance of guilt and suffering. Other themes are tragedy's relation with Presocratic philosophy, and the interplay between 'Archaic' features of the genre and fifth-century ethical and political thought. Here is a powerful case for the importance of Archaic thought not only in the evolution of the tragic genre but also for developed features of the Classical tragedians' art. Along with three papers on Aeschylus, four on Sophocles, and one on Euripides, there is an extensive introduction by the editor.Trade Review"...of these papers are useful and interesting...[...]The volume is attractive and cleanly produced..." -- Jennifer Starkey, University of Colorado Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.08.37

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Book SynopsisThe plays of Seneca the Younger, minister and philosopher under Nero, are today increasingly studied, appreciated - and performed. Here, in a collection of papers from an international cast, scholars explore both established questions, such as the playwright's subtleties of characterisation, his relation to contemporary Roman spectacle and art - and the problems arising in translating him to modern text or stage.Table of ContentsIntroduction Seneca on the Ancient Stage 1. Playing Seneca? - John G. Fitch 2. Production of Seneca's Trojan Women, Ancient and Modern - Elaine Fantham 3. Location! Location! Location! Choral Absence and Theatrical Space in the Troades - C.W. Marshall 4. Nothing Within Which Passeth Show: Character and Color in Senecan Tragedy - Brian S. Hook Contemporary Roman Social Influences on Seneca 5. A New Look at Seneca's Phaedra - Hanna M. Roisman 6. The Spectacle of Death in Seneca's Troades - Jo-Ann Shelton 7. Grotesque Vision: Seneca's Tragedies and Neronian Art - Eric R. Varner 8. Semper Ego Auditor Tantum?: Performance and Physical Setting of Seneca's Plays - George W.M. Harrison Modern Translation and Staging 9. Seneca and Chaucer: Translating Both Poetry and Sense - Frederick Ahl 10. Seneca's Trojan Women: Identity and Survival in the Aftermath of War - Gyllian Raby 11. Putting Andromacha on Stage: A Performer's Perspective - Katharina Volk 12. Going for Baroque: Seneca and the English - Sander M. Goldberg Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisShakespeare, who wrote at the beginning of the long period in which the Catholic faith as violently suppressed in the British Isles, has long enjoyed an iconic status. Some readers have interpreted him as an early agnostic, expressing modern angst about whether anything exists besides ""this mortal coil"" that seems to be merely ""full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."" In recent years, however, thanks largely to the work of Peter Milward, close study of Shakespeare's plays has raised the question: Was Shakespeare in fact a believing Catholic? To this question, which radically changes the way that Shakespeare's plays should be read, Milward here offers, in his definitive study of the topic, a resounding ""Yes.

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Book SynopsisThe first-ever English translation of this dramatic work by Nikolai Evreinov. In the 1910s the Russian theater director and theorist Nikolai Evreinov (1879–1953) insisted on the theatricalization of life. Twenty years later, Evreinov, who had left Russia in 1924, was in exile in Paris when Stalin staged three elaborate political show trials in Moscow. Evreinov then meticulously read the transcripts of the trials in the Russian-language press, collected material on Nikolai Bukharin and the other defendants, consulted with experts, and finally wrote a play, his response to the staging of a judicial farce. With this response, he also wanted to rehabilitate his idea of the theatricalization of life. After all, the theatricalization of life does not mean performing false confessions, constructing conspiracies, fabricating facts, or casting hired witnesses. In his theatrical theory, Evreinov was careful not to make the theater of life invisible. His play is therefore not a historical reconstruction, but an imaginary look behind the scenes, in which the Stalinist perpetrators confess to the real crime in the end: the theater. Expertly translated into English for the first time by Zachary King, The Steps of Nemesis brings a fascinating play to a whole new world.

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Book SynopsisTheatre is traditionally considered a live medium but its ‘liveness’ can no longer simply be taken for granted in view of the increasing mediatisation of the stage. Drawing on theories of intermediality, Liveness on Stage explores how performances that incorporate film or video self-reflexively stage and challenge their own liveness by contrasting or approximating live and mediatised action. To illustrate this, the monograph investigates key aspects such as ‘ephemerality’, ‘co-presence’, ‘unpredictability’, ‘interaction’ and ‘realistic representation’ and highlights their significance for re-evaluating received notions of liveness. The analysis is based on productions by Gob Squad, Forkbeard Fantasy, Station House Opera, Proto-type Theater, Tim Etchells and Mary Oliver. In their playful approaches these practitioners predominantly present such media combination as a means of cross-fertilisation rather than as an antagonism between liveness and mediatisation. Combining an original theoretical approach with an in-depth analysis of the selected productions, this study will appeal to scholars and practitioners of theatre and performance as well as to those researching intermedial phenomena.

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Book SynopsisThe category of theatrical character has been swiftly dismissed in the academic reception of no-longer-dramatic texts and performances. However, claims on the dissolution of character narrowly demarcate what a subject is and how it may appear. This volume unmoors theatre scholarship from the regulatory ideals of liberal humanism, stretching the notion of character to encompass and illuminate otherwise unaccounted-for subjects, aesthetic strategies and political gestures in recent theatre works. To this aim, contemporary philosophical theories of subjectivation, European theatre studies, and experimental, script-led work produced in Britain since the late 1990s are mobilised as discussants on the question of subjectivity. Four contemporary playtexts and their performances are examined in depth: Sarah Kane’s Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, Ed Thomas’s Stone City Blue and Tim Crouch’s ENGLAND. Through these case studies, Delgado-García demonstrates alternative ways of engaging theoretically with character, and elucidating a range of subjective figures beyond identity and individuality. Alongside these analyses, the book traces a large body of work that has experimented with speech attribution since the early twentieth-century. This is a timely contribution to contemporary theatre scholarship, which demonstrates that character remains a malleable and politically-salient notion in which understandings of subjectivity are still being negotiated.

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Book SynopsisIt is a fact that today’s British stages resound with powerfully innovative voices and that, very often, these voices have been those of young women playwrights. This collection of essays gives visibility and pride of place to these fascinating voices by exploring the vitality, inventiveness and particularly strong relevance of these poetics. These women playwrights sometimes invent radically new forms and sometimes experiment with conventional ones in fresh and unexpected ways, as for example when they re-energize naturalism and provide it with new missions. The plays that are addressed are all concerned with the necessity to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world and to further investigate what it means to be human. Intimate or epic, and sometimes both at once, visionary or closer to everyday life, these plays approach the contemporary world through a multitude of prisms – historical, scientific, political and poetic – and open different and visionary perspectives.

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Book SynopsisThe seventh volume in this series treats the major works of six award-winning counterculture playwrights of the 1960s. Miyamoto Ken's ""Meiji Coffin"" is a biographical play about the Christian socialist Tanaka Shozo and his involvement in the Ashio copper mine pollution problem of the early Meiji period. Fukuda Yoshiyuki's ""Oppekepe"" is a fictionalized treatment of Kawakami Otojiro's shinpa theater company that performed soshi plays, a New Wave theater form that arose in the early modernization period of Japan. Comedy Duo in ""Hibernation"" by Akihama Satoshi is a delightful absurdist piece about two family members stuck together in the snow. Akimoto Matsuyo's ""Our Lady of the Scabs"" depicts how a cult captures the hearts of its naive followers while ignoring or exploiting the truly devout. Shimizu Kunio's ""Such a Serious Frivolity"" uses the image of a queue to illustrate the docility of citizens and the defiance of youth. At ""Play with a Lion"" by Yamazaki Mazakazu treats the complex relations between the seventeenth-century ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the consummate tea artist Sen no Rikyu.

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Book SynopsisThis book is a collection of articles written for Professor Marta Gibinska by her colleagues and friends, from universities both in Poland and abroad. The texts presented in this volume cover a wide spectrum of topics. Part I, devoted to Shakespeare, comprises wide-ranging work from renowned specialists in the field: studies on historical background, sources, theatrical, screen and literary reception, as well as translation. Part II contains articles which deal with multiple authors, genres and perspectives, but are uniformly passionate and insightful.The title Eyes to Wonder, Tongue to Praise, a poetic phrase borrowed from Shakespeare, conveys what seems to be a defining quality of both the contributors to this volume and its recipient: namely, the ability to translate keen appreciation of literature not into speechless awe but eloquent praise, combined with the generosity to share it with others.

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Book SynopsisThe essays included in this volume attempt to answer, directly or indirectly, the following questions connected with Shakespeare’s popularity worldwide. Can we appropriate Enobarbus’s fascination with Cleopatra, borrowed for the motto of this volume: “age cannot wither Shakespeare, or custom stale”? What makes it so that his works do not “cloy” their recipients’ appetite, but instead constantly whet it for more? Can we still talk about Shakespeare’s “infinite variety” and how are we to understand this epithet in the twenty-first century? Does this opinion hold in the context of the international reception of his works? Why does he still enjoy such an exciting career—with his works still in active circulation—even though he died in 1616? How is it possible for works written with a quill over four hundred years ago by a man in ruffs and tights to resonate with the hearts and minds of contemporary recipients all over the world?Trade ReviewIt might appear that everything has been already said about Shakespeare, and yet new theatrical productions show how well Shakespeare’s plays function in new contexts and surprising interpretations. The great asset of Shakespeare: His Infinite Variety is its wide historical and geographical range – that is, from the time of the Bard himself to the latest metamorphoses of meanings that new electronic media has made available. Every reader, depending on his/her age and prior experience with Shakespeare, is at a different moment of this great historical-theoretical continuum of world culture. Everyone can also begin one’s own intellectual journey through cultural history – any time, any place. Despite the once popular but now outdated claim, history has not ended. This volume testifies to the benefits of combining historical perspective in its fairly elementary version, which is a linear sequence of events, with an in-depth analysis of the transformations in understanding, exhibiting, and using (appropriating) Shakespeare’s works in our rapidly changing reality. -- Marta Wiszniowska-Majchrzyk, professor emerita, Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw

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Book SynopsisIbsen has often been considered as the most important source, besides Goethe, of Western influence in modern Chinese literary thinking and remains influential in both the modern Chinese theatre and the Chinese women's movement. This bibliography charts how modern Chinese culture has developed.

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Book SynopsisUna Marson's work embodied anti-colonialism, anti-racism, feminism, class politics and pan-Africanism in the first half of the twentieth century. Her poetry and dramatic work symbolically ushered in a new era in Jamaica's literary landscape and her efforts in championing early Jamaican literature, as well as her avid support for Caribbean writers in Britain and the region, made her a key proponent of the development of a nationaland West Indian literary canon. She challenged racial inequality, affirmed standards of black beauty and black identity, and explored the complexities of gender, religious discrimination and class/economic exploitation. She did not frame her work around a single cause but, instead, she was mindful of the multiple intersections of oppression. Britain's hold on Jamaica's cultural imagination would finally be challenged by artists like Marson who were eager to free their nation of colonial authority and cultural dominance. In the end, through her advocacy and pioneering work, Marson achieved a voice for the oppressed.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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