Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

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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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Book SynopsisFor this third edition of Julius Caesar Jeremy Lopez has written a completely new Introduction and has also revised the textual commentary with an eye, and ear, to the contemporary student reader. The list of further readings has been updated to reflect the latest developments in scholarly criticism.Table of ContentsIntroduction Jeremy Lopez; Note on the text; Note on the commentary; List of characters; The play; Textual analysis; Appendix: excerpts from Plutarch; Reading list.

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Book SynopsisBringing together recent scholarship on religion and the spatial imagination, Kristen Poole examines how changing religious beliefs and transforming conceptions of space were mutually informative in the decades around 1600. Supernatural Environments in Shakespeare's England explores a series of cultural spaces that focused attention on interactions between the human and the demonic or divine: the deathbed, purgatory, demonic contracts and their spatial surround, Reformation cosmologies and a landscape newly subject to cartographic surveying. It examines the seemingly incongruous coexistence of traditional religious beliefs and new mathematical, geometrical ways of perceiving the environment. Arguing that the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century stage dramatized the phenomenological tension that resulted from this uneasy confluence, this groundbreaking study considers the complex nature of supernatural environments in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare's Othello, Hamlet, Trade Review"Poole navigates herself deftly though the minefield of ambiguities of literal and metaphorical language of the early modern supernatural....Supernatural Environments certainly succeeds in bringing to attention the important role of cartographic and mathematical developments in changing concepts of supernatural spaces and how these conflicting ideas are addressed in the theater. While much of the book’s introductory material on the need to reevaluate “the decline of magic” sounds all too familiar, the arguments that Poole follows with are significant as the implications of Clark’s monumental study have yet to be fully addressed in a theatrical context. Poole writes engagingly and the argument is fascinating. Supernatural Environments is an ambitious project and Poole quite rightly reveals the possibility of more research in the area. It will be interesting to see what follows." --Marlowe Society of America Newsletter"This is an important, clever, and well-written book that makes a striking contribution to early modern studies, and its epilogue offers a vision of a ‘‘reenchanted geography’’ (219) that is richly suggestive and should inspire new thinking about the period." --Renaissance Society of AmericaTable of ContentsPrologue: setting – and unsettling – the stage; Introduction: the space of the supernatural; 1. The devil's in the archive: Ovidian physics and Doctor Faustus; 2. Scene at the deathbed: Ars Moriendi, Othello, and envisioning the supernatural; 3. When hell freezes over: the fabulous Mount Hecla and Hamlet's infernal geography; 4. Metamorphic cosmologies: the world according to Calvin, Hooker, and Macbeth; 5. Divine geometry in a geodetic age: surveying, God, and The Tempest; Epilogue: re-enchanting geography.

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Book SynopsisWhat did childhood mean in early modern England? To answer this question, this book examines two key contemporary institutions: the school and the stage. The rise of grammar schools and universities, and of the professional stage featuring boy actors, reflect the culture''s massive investment in children. In this collection, an international group of well-respected scholars examines how the representation of children by major playwrights and poets reflected the period''s educational and cultural values. This book contains chapters that range from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson to the contemporary plays of Tom Stoppard, and that explore childhood in relation to classical humanism, medicine, art, and psychology, revealing how early modern performance and educational practices produced attitudes to childhood that still resonate to this day.Trade Review'Childhood, Education, and the Stage in Early Modern England, edited by Richard Preiss and Deanne Williams, was one of the best collections of essays I read this year, drawing on recent critical interest in children's literature, and in the cultural history of children more broadly, to write new chapters on the theatrical history of the period, to redirect attention to the place of education in early modern society, and in this way to illuminate the complex thematic place that children occupy in the dramatic imagination of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.' SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900'This volume makes a valuable contribution to the field of early modern childhood studies generally, and Renaissance drama more specifically, and paves the way for further work.' Katie Knowles, The Review of English Studies'… a rounded, impressively researched picture of children's varying roles in the realities and imaginaries of the period, shining a welcome light into several unchecked corners of this increasingly crowded field. Taken either separately or as a whole, the contributors pave the way for countless areas of future scholarly endeavour, establishing new directions and initiating conversations which, like the early modern children on whom they centre, are filled to the brim with exciting potential.' Harry R. McCarthy, Early Theatre'The diversity of perspectives gives the volume multiple points of entry, which should appeal to readers from different disciplinary backgrounds. Students interested in the history of childhood in the early modern period, as well as those interested in the history of performing children more directly, will find much to admire here.' Marlis Schweitzer, Childhood in the Past'[This] wonderful edited collection brings together three major discourses - childhood, education, and theater - to demonstrate how these concepts 'grew up together in the early modern period' and to provide a 'new view of the literary and the social meaning of the young in early modern England'.' Edel Lamb, Renaissance Quarterly'The essays in the volume are consistently excellent. Each is learned, meticulous, and original, making the volume as a whole a substantial contribution to scholarship, and individual essays offer valuable interventions in a range of fields including Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell studies, and the history of the theater. … scholars with many different preoccupations will find it repays their attention.' Elizabeth Hanson, Journal of the History of Childhood and YouthTable of ContentsPart I. Shakespearean Childhoods: 1. Hamlet's boyhood Seth Lerer; 2. The traffic in children: shipwrecked Shakespeare, precarious Pericles Joseph Campana; 3. Incapable and shallow innocents: mourning Shakespeare's children in Richard III and The Winter's Tale Charlotte Scott; Part II. Beyond the Boy Actor: 4. Speaking like a child: staging children's speech in early modern drama Lucy Munro; 5. Shakespeare versus Blackfriars: satiric comedy, domestic tragedy, and the boy actor in Othello Bart Van Es; 6. Cupid's metamorphosis: John Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis and the return of the children's playing companies Bastian Kuhl; Part III. Girls and Boys: 7. The further adventures of Ganymede Stephen Orgel; 8. Chastity, speech, and the girl masquer Deanne Williams; 9. Milton and female perspiration Douglas Trevor; Part IV. Afterlives: 10. 'Too green/yet for lust, but not for love': Andrew Marvell and the invention of children's literature Blaine Greteman; 11. All Macbeth's sons James J. Marino; 12. Modern retrospectives: childhood and education in Tom Stoppard's Shakespearean plays Elizabeth Pentland.

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Book SynopsisThis book explains the nature of Roman comedy's music and provides musical analyses of songs, scenes and whole plays. This book will be of interest to students of ancient theatre and Latin literature, scholars and students working on the history of music and theatre, and performers working with ancient plays.Trade Review'Awesome in scope and ambition …' Greek and Roman Musical Studies'This excellent book is essential for all serious readers of Plautus and Terence, and for anyone interested in ancient music. Scholars of Atic comedy and tragedy will also greatly benefit from its methodologies.' Timothy Power, Phoenix'This book is well-organized and thorough. Its depth and breadth are remarkable, demonstrating equal comfort with nitty-gritty particularities of Latin elision or hiatus, with comparative evidence and supplementation of textual or evidentiary lacunae. Moore's book enhances its reading of comedy's performance conditions by drawing on Latin oratory and rhetoric, lexicography, Greek musical theory, and Roman historiography, plus a bevy of outside material including Japanese kyōgen, Broadway musicals, Western opera, Yugoslavian epic, Javanese gamelan shadow-puppet theater, and folk-music traditions of Greece, Sicily, Turkey, North Africa, and the Middle East. This breadth is matched by careful, cautious use of sources.' T. H. M. Gellar-Goad, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Tibiae and tibicines; 2. Song; 3. Dance; 4. Melody and rhythm; 5. Meters; 6. Arrangement of verses and variation within the verse; 7. Musical structure; 8. Polymetry; 9. Pseudolus; 10. Adelphoe; Conclusion; Appendix I. The meters of Roman comedy; Appendix II. Characters and meters; Appendix III. Musical features by play; Appendix IV. Exceptions to the ABC pattern; Appendix V. Polymetric passages.

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Book SynopsisIn his introduction to this 1924 edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, T. G. Tucker addresses key issues including the publication history of the Sonnets, the question of whether they are autobiographical and factors of punctuation, spelling and misprints. The edition contains detailed commentary and notes to assist the reader.Table of ContentsPreface; 1. Introduction; 2. Abbreviations; 3. Sonnets; 4. Commentary; Index.

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Book SynopsisThis one-volume collection contains five editions of poems and verse dramas from the final years in the life of the radical and visionary Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822). These are Prometheus Unbound (1820), Hellas (1822); The Cenci (second edition, 1821), Rosalind and Helen (1819), and Posthumous Poems (1824).Table of ContentsPreface; Prometheus Unbound; Miscellaneous poems; Hellas: A Lyrical Drama; The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts; Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue; Lines written among the Euganean hills; Hymn to intellectual beauty; Ozymandias; Posthumous poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley; Alastor; Translations.

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Book SynopsisThe Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen provides a lively guide to film and television productions adapted from Shakespeare''s plays. Offering an essential resource for students of Shakespeare, the companion considers topics such as the early history of Shakespeare films, the development of ''live'' broadcasts from theatre to cinema, the influence of promotion and marketing, and the range of versions available in ''world cinema''. Chapters on the contexts, genres and critical issues of Shakespeare on screen offer a diverse range of close analyses, from ''Classical Hollywood'' films to the BBC''s Hollow Crown series. The companion also features sections on the work of individual directors Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, and Vishal Bhardwaj, and is supplemented by a guide to further reading and a filmography.Trade Review'… it includes both entirely new content and a more inclusive definition of screen adaptations.' A. Tureen, Choice'… an excellent starting point for any analytical exploration of the manifestations of Shakespeare on Screen. This is evidently a timely volume that both demonstrates that there is still analytical work to be done on established or older productions of Shakespeare on screen.' Sarah Carter, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies'… extensive and immensely useful' Sarah Carter, Cahiers ElisabethainsTable of ContentsIntroduction; Part I. Adaptation and its Contexts: 1. Shakespeare and the film industry of the pre-sound era Judith Buchanan; 2. Adaptation and the marketing of Shakespeare in classical Hollywood Deborah Cartmell; 3. Shakespeare 'live' Peter Holland; 4. Shakespearean cinemas/global directions Mark Thornton Burnett; Part II. Genres and Plays: 5. The comedies on screen Ramona Wray; 6. The environments of tragedy on screen: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth Peter Kirwan; 7. Two tragedies of love: Romeo and Juliet and Othello Victoria Bladen; 8. 'Sad stories of the death of kings': The Hollow Crown and the Shakespearean history play on screen Kinga Földváry; 9. The Roman plays on film Peter J. Smith; 10. Screening Shakespearean fantasy and romance in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest Antony Guy Patricia; Part III. Critical Issues: 11. Questions of racism: The Merchant of Venice and Othello Russell Jackson; 12. 'A wail in the silence': feminism, sexuality, and final meanings in King Lear films by Grigorii Kozintsev, Peter Brook, and Akira Kurosawa Courtney Lehmann; 13. Violence, tragic and comic, in Coriolanus and The Taming of the Shrew Patricia Lennox; Part IV. Directors: 14. The Shakespeare films of Orson Welles Emma Smith; 15. Kurosawa's Shakespeare: mute heavens, merging worlds, or the metaphors of cruelty Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornède; 16. Zeffirelli's Shakespearean motion pictures: living monuments Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin; 17. Kenneth Branagh: mainstreaming Shakespeare in movie theatres Sarah Hatchuel; 18. Remaking Shakespeare in India: Vishal Bhardwaj's films Poonam Trivedi; Further reading; Filmography; Index.

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Book SynopsisJapan boasts one of the world's oldest, most vibrant and most influential performance traditions. Written by eminent international scholars, this history spans the full range of dance-theatre genres over the past fifteen hundred years. This accessible and complete history is beautifully illustrated and includes interviews with key modern directors.Trade Review'… a massive undertaking and a much-needed addition to current scholarship on Japanese theater … this is a wonderful overview of a rich theatrical world, a book with something for both specialists and generalists …' C. Lanki, Choice'A History of Japanese Theatre edited by the kyôgen scholar Jonah Salz is a comprehensive reference book covering the development of the major classical, modern and contemporary theatres in Japan … Working with a team of eight contributing editors and fifty-eight individual contributors, Salz has produced a diversely situated guide to theatre in Japan that is more comprehensive than any previous volume of this kind … A History of Japanese Theatre is a considerable achievement. It features detailed yet succinct discussions on the key forms and periods of theatre and, through interludes, it opens the reader to diverse commentaries and reflections. It offers key examples and discussions of representative works that expand our understanding and will be helpful in teaching. I especially enjoy the diversity of approaches that offer a way to think about history in the plural.' Peter Eckersall, Asian Theatre Journal'There have been numerous articles and books on Japanese theatre, but this is the book to own. Even if Japanese theatre is not an individual's area of research, the reader will value this book's interesting presentations of the development of performance, and the relationship between performance and society. If Japanese theatre is one's primary research area, the reader will be delighted with the depth and breadth found in A History of Japanese Theatre.' Deidre Onishi, Theatre Topics'The accessibility of information, the breadth of coverage, and the variations in style make this an ideal reference work for anyone seeking to comprehend the basics (and then some) of the Japanese dramatic tradition.' Erik R. Lofgren, Japanese Studies'… Salz has succeeded in choreographing a delicate balance between scholarly innovation and sophistication on the one hand, and convenient structure and accessibility on the other.' William D. Fleming, TDR: The Drama ReviewTable of ContentsForeword James R. Brandon; Timeline Rachel Payne; Editor's introduction Jonah Salz; Part I. Traditional Theatres: Preface to Part I Laurence Kominz; 1. Ancient and early medieval performing arts Terauchi Naoko; Interlude: katari narrative traditions: from storytelling to theatre Alison Tokita; 2. Noh and Muromachi culture Shinko Kagaya and Miura Hiroko; Interlude: noh and kyogen costumes and masks Monica Bethe; 3. Kyogen: classical comedy Jonah Salz; Interlude: iemoto: the family head system Eric C. Rath; 4. Kabuki: superheroes and femmes fatales Julie Iezzi; Interlude: nihonbuyô: classical dance Paul Griffith and Okada Mariko; Interlude: Okinawan theatre: boundary of Japanese theatre Suzuki Masae; 5. Bunraku: puppet theatre Goto Shizuo; Interlude: misemono and rakugo: sideshows and storytelling Matthew W. Shores; Interlude: kamigata geinō: Kyoto-Osaka style Gondo Yoshikazu; Interlude: traditional theatre tomorrow: interview with Takemoto Mikio Shinko Kagaya; Part II. Modern Theatres: Preface to Part II Brian Powell; 6. Birth of modern theatre: Shimpa and shingeki Brian Powell; Interlude: new comedy, Asakusa opera, OSK musicals Nakano Masaaki; Interlude: Takarazuka: all-girls' revue and musicals Yamanashi Makiko; 7. Rise of shingeki: western-style theatre Guohe Zheng; Interlude: manzai and yoshimoto comedy vaudeville Joel Stocker; 8. Wartime colonial and traditional theatre Samuel L. Leiter; Interlude: kami-shibai: picture-card storytelling Washitani Hana; 9. Maturing shingeki theatre Guohe Zheng; Interlude: post-war musicals and commercial theatre Kevin Wetmore; 10. Sixties theatre Kan Takayuki; Interlude: butoh: dance of darkness and light Bruce Baird; 11. Contemporary theatre M. Cody Poulton; Interlude: Tokyo: world theatre capital Iwaki Kyoko; Interlude: charting Tokyo theatre today: 24 November 2012 Iwaki Kyoko; Interlude: modern theatre tomorrow: interview with Hirata Oriza Iwaki Kyoko; Part III. Arcs and Patterns: 12. Pre-modern playwriting practices Laurence Kominz; 13. Traditional meta-patterns Jonah Salz; 14. Modern drama as literature J. Thomas Rimer; 15. Modern meta-patterns Mari Boyd; Interlude: Dōjōji: the lady and the bell Laurence Kominz; Part IV. Theatre Architecture: Preface to Part IV Jonah Salz; 16. Pre-modern patterns of spectatorship and space Shimizu Hiroyuki; 17. Modernization of theatrical space, 1868–1940 Samuel L. Leiter and Nagai Satoko; 18. Post-war theatres: development and diversification Otsuki Atsushi; Interlude: national theatres and funding Barbara E. Thornbury; Part V. Theatre Criticism: 19. Practitioner principles, Zeami to Chikamatsu William Lee; 20. Pre-modern criticism, research, and training Nakano Masaaki; 21. English language scholarship: a critical overview David Jortner; Interlude: university scholarship and training Nakano Masaaki; Part VI. Intercultural Influences: 22. Seven stages of Shakespeare reception Daniel Gallimore and Minami Ryuta; 23. Traditional training internationally Jonah Salz; 24. Intercultural theatre: fortuitous encounters Jonah Salz; Interlude: early influence from Europe Yoshihara Yukari; Interlude: interview with Ninagawa Yukio: Asian energy vs. European rationality Mika Eglinton; Epilogue: frozen words and mythology Eugenio Barba.

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Book SynopsisAddressing early modern scholars, classicists, historians, literary critics and scholars of imitation and adaptation of all levels, this book reveals how the work of Ovid, poet-philosopher of literary innovation and the liberty of speech, catalysed the extraordinary rise of new and audacious poetic forms during the English Renaissance.Trade Review'This is a truly excellent study. I am not sure there is anyone else who has Heather James's particular combination of critical gifts: here we see reading and writing with great purpose and freshness, clear and flexible thinking shedding new light on well-known texts and connections, and a strong and original argument that proceeds so smoothly and generously that it changes your mind decisively almost without you realising it.' Raphael Lyne, University of Cambridge'An erudite, pathbreaking achievement … Highly recommended.' N. Lukacher, Choice ConnectTable of Contents1. Flower power: political discontents in Spenser's flowerbeds; 2. Loving Ovid: Marlowe and the liberties of erotic elegy; 3. Shakespeare's Juliet: the Ovidian girlhood of the boy actor; 4. In pursuit of change: the Metamorphoses in A Midsummer Night's Dream; 5. The trial of Ovid: Jonson's defense of poetic liberty.

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Book SynopsisIn this ground-breaking work, Bridget Orr shows that popular eighteenth-century theatre was about much more than fashion, manners and party politics. Using the theatre as a means of circulating and publicizing radical Enlightenment ideas, many plays made passionate arguments for religious and cultural toleration, and voiced protests against imperial invasion and forced conversion of indigenous peoples by colonial Europeans. Irish and labouring-class dramatists wrote plays, often set in the countryside, attacking social and political hierarchy in Britain itself. Another crucial but as yet unexplored aspect of early eighteenth-century theatre is its connection to freemasonry. Freemasons were pervasive as actors, managers, prompters, scene-painters, dancers and musicians, with their own lodges, benefit performances and particular audiences. In addition to promoting the Enlightened agenda of toleration and cosmopolitanism, freemason dramatists invented the new genre of domestic tragedy, a Table of ContentsIntroduction: dramatizing enlightenment; 1. Addison, Steele and enlightened sentiment; 2. Fair captives and spiritual dragooning: Islam and toleration on stage; 3. The black legend, noble savagery and indigenous voice; 4. The Masonic Invention of domestic tragedy; 5. Local savagery: the Enlightenment countryside on stage; Afterword.

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Book SynopsisThis book analyses the cultural and theatrical intersections of early modern temporal concepts and gendered identities. Through close readings of the works of Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood and others, across the genres of domestic comedy, city comedy and revenge tragedy, Sarah Lewis shows how temporal tropes are used to delineate masculinity and femininity on the early modern stage, and vice versa. She sets out the ways in which the temporal constructs of patience, prodigality and revenge, as well as the dramatic identities that are built from those constructs, and the experience of playgoing itself, negotiate a fraught opposition between action in the moment and delay in the duration. This book argues that looking at time through the lens of gender, and gender through the lens of time, is crucial if we are to develop our understanding of the early modern cultural construction of both.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Virtuous delay: the enduring patient wife; 2. Transgressive action: the impatient prodigal husband; 3. Waiting and taking: the temporally conflicted revenger; 4. The delay's the thing: patience, prodigality and revenge in Hamlet; Conclusion. Echoes.

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Book SynopsisChallenges standard accounts of Ibsen's career by introducing a wealth of new material about his Scandinavian contexts, as well as exploring and questioning ideas about literary systems, cultural asymmetries and world literature. The volume will appeal to scholars of Ibsen as well as historians of literature and theatre more widely.Trade Review'In this exceptionally informative study, Fulsås and Rem map the remarkable ascending trajectory of Scandinavian literature in general and of Henrik Ibsen in particular that began in the pivotal year 1850 and reached its zenith in the closing decade of the nineteenth century. Recommended.' ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroduction; 1. From stage to page; 2. No escape; 3. Open futures; 4. Nora's exit; 5. The sphinx; 6. European breakthrough; 7. Copyright and circulation; 8. The many Ibsens; 9. The provincial world poet.

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Book SynopsisThis edition of Shakespeare's complete works aims to combine accessibility with scholarship. Each play or poetry collection has an introduction which includes textual and literary-historical issues and there are same-page notes for ease of reference.Trade Review"Here is an elegant and clear text for either study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them, and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel, who understand that these are plays for performance as wellas great texts for contemplation." —Patrick Stewart“The perfect companion to enjoy the most profound stories of the human condition that Shakespeare has given us and that I have had the privilege to perform, from Othello to King Lear. "—James Earl Jones “Orgel and Braunmuller’s editions of the Pelican Shakespeare are an indispensable part of my library. These introductions by great Shakespearean scholars are erudite yet accessible, and the individual editions of the plays are perfect for the rehearsal room. They combine scholastic precision with an inspiring energy that fuels everyone making Shakespeare live today.” —Simon Godwin, Shakespeare Theatre Company and the National Theatre“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course–it’s invaluable.”—Marjorie Garber, Harvard University Table of ContentsEditorsAcknowledgmentsPublisher's NoteThe Opening Pages of the Folio of 1623The QuartosGeneral IntroductionThe Shakespearian Theater WorldWilliam Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, GentlemanThe Texts of ShakespeareA Comparative TableNondramatic PoetryThe Narrative Poems - edited by Jonathan Crewe:Venus and AdonisLucreceThe Phoenix and the TurtleThe Passionate PilgrimA Lover's ComplaintThe Sonnets - edited by Stephen Orgel with an Introduction by John HollanderIndex of First Lines to The SonnetsComediesThe Two Gentlemen of Verona - edited by Mary Beth RoseThe Taming of the Shrew - edited by Stephen OrgelThe Comedy of Errors - edited by Frances E. DolanLove's Labor's Lost - edited by Peter HollandA Midsummer Night's Dream - edited by Russ McDonaldThe Merchant of Venice - edited by A.R. BraunmullerThe Merry Wives of Windsow - edited by Russ McDonaldMuch Ado About Nothing - edited by Peter HollandAs You Like It - edited by Frances E. DolanTwelfth Night, or, What You Will - edited by Jonathan CreweThe History of Troilus and Cressida - edited by Jonathan CreweMeasure for Measure - edited by Jonathan CreweAll's Well That Ends Well - edited by Claire McEachernPericles Prince of Tyre - edited by Stephen OrgelCymbeline - edited by Peter HollandThe Winter's Tale - edited by Frances E. DolanThe Tempest - edited by Peter HollandHistoriesGenealogical ChartMonarchs of EnglandThe First Part of Henry the Sixth - edited by William Montgomery with an Introduction by Janis LullThe Second Part of Henry the Sixth - edited by William Montgomery with an Introduction by Janis LullThe Third Part of Henry the Sixth - edited by William Montgomery with an Introduction by Janis LullThe Tragedy of King Richard the Third - edited by Peter HollandThe Tragedy of King Richard the Second - edited by Frances E. DolanThe Life and Death of King John - edited by Claire McEachernThe First Part of King Henry the Fourth - edited by Claire McEachernThe Second Part of King Henry the Fourth - edited by Claire McEachernThe Life of King Henry the Fifth - edited by Claire McEachernThe Life of King Henry the Eighth - edited by Jonathan CreweTragediesTitus Andronicus - edited by Russ McDonaldRomeo and Juliet - edited by Peter HollandThe Tragedy of Julius Caesar - edited by William Montgomery with an Introduction by Douglas TrevorThe Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark - edited by A.R. BraunmullerThe Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice - edited by Russ McDonaldThe Life of Timon of Athens - edited by Frances E. DolanKing Lear: The 1608 Quarto and 1623 Folio Texts - edited by Stephen OrgelKing Lear: A Conflated Text - edited by Stephen OrgelMacbeth - edited by Stephen OrgelAntony and Cleopatra - edited by A.R. BraunmullerThe Tragedy of Coriolanus - edited by Jonathan CreweIndex of Songs

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Book SynopsisArthur Miller’s penultimate play, Resurrection Blues, is a darkly comic satirical allegory that poses the question: What would happen if Christ were to appear in the world today? In an unidentified Latin American country, General Felix Barriaux has captured an elusive revolutionary leader. The rebel, known by various names, is rumored to have performed miracles throughout the countryside. The General plans to crucify the mysterious man, and the exclusive television rights to the twenty-four-hour reality-TV eventhave been sold to an American network for $25 million. An allegory that asserts the interconnectedness of our actions and each person’s culpability in world events, Resurrection Blues is a comedic and tragic satire of precarious morals in our media-saturated age.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Gorgeous new Shakespeare paperbacks.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course--it's invaluable, the best individual-volume series available for students.”—Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Gorgeous new Shakespeare paperbacks.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course--it's invaluable, the best individual-volume series available for students.”—Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Gorgeous new Shakespeare paperbacks.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings“I have been using the Pelican Shakespeare for years in my lecture course--it's invaluable, the best individual-volume series available for students.”—Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisShakespeare for Every Day of the Year is not just for Christmas, but for all time. —Helena Bonham CarterA magnificent collection of 365 passages from Shakespeare's works, for the Shakespeare scholar and neophyte alike.Make Shakespeare a part of your daily routine with Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, a yearlong collection of passages from Shakespeare's greatest works. Drawing from the full spectrum of plays and sonnets to mark each day of the year, whether it's a scene from Hamlet to celebrate Christmas or a Sonnet in June to help you enjoy a summer's day. There are also passages to mark important days in the Shakespeare calendar, both from his own life and from his plays: You'll read a pivotal speech from Julius Caesar on the Ides of March and celebrate Valentine's day with a sonnet. Every passage is accompanied by an enlightening note to teach you its significance and help you better appreciate the timelessness and p

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Book SynopsisThe Annotated Shakespeare series enables readers to fully understand and enjoy the plays of the world’s greatest dramatistTrade ReviewNamed a 2005 Outstanding Academic title by the Association of American University Presses“Raffel’s glossings are almost without exception accurate and scholarly and some of them will be downright revelatory. The attention he pays to sound and rhythm in his notes will remind students they should be reading Shakespeare aloud and that there is pleasure in doing so.”—Dale Richardson, University of the South“Burton Raffel is surely one of the profession’s top linguists and scholars, and the application here of his vast knowledge of linguistics to Romeo and Juliet provides any reader (whether specialist or not) with the best glimpse available of the great range of Shakespeare’s stunning use of the English language.”—Tita French Baumlin, Southwest Missouri State University

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSelected as a 2007 AAUP University Press Book for Public and Secondary School Libraries"We live and die, in the spirit, in solitude, and the true strength of Iceman is its intense dramatic exemplification of that somber reality . . . life, in Iceman, is what it is in Schopenhauer: illusion."—from the foreword by Harold Bloom

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Book SynopsisThese contemporary translations of four Greek tragedies speak across time and connect readers and audiences with universal themes of war, trauma, suffering, and betrayal. Under the direction of Bryan Doerries, they have been performed for tens of thousands of combat veterans, as well as prison and medical personnel around the world. Striking for their immediacy and emotional impact, Doerries brings to life these ancient plays, like no other translations have before.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the Lambda Literary AwardIn this stunning work of theater, Moises Kaufman turns the trials of Oscar Wilde into a riveting human and intellectual drama. In April 1895 Oscar Wilde brought a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his youthful lover, who had publicly maligned him as a sodomite. In doing so, England''s reigning man of letters set in motion a series of events that would culminate in his ruin and imprisonment. For within a year the bewildered Wilde himself was on trial for acts of gross indecency and, implicitly—for a vision of art that outraged Victorian propriety. Expertly interweaving courtroom testimony with excerpts from Wilde''s writings and the words of his contemporaries, Gross Indecency unveils its subject in all his genius and human frailty, his age in all its complacency and repression. The result is a play that will be read and studied for decades to come.

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Book SynopsisThe greatest sonnets ever written, by the greatest poet and playwright in the English language

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Book SynopsisDerived from interviews with a wide range of  people who experienced or observed New York's 1991  Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The  Mirror is as distinguished a work of  commentary on black-white tensions as it is a  work of drama.  In August 1991 simmering tensions in the racially polarized Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Crown Heights exploded into riots after a black boy was killed by a car in a rabbi's motorcade and a Jewish student was slain by blacks in retaliation.  Fires in the Mirror is dramatist Anna Deavere Smith's stunning exploration of the events and emotions leading up to and following the Crown Heights conflict.  Through her portrayals of more than two dozen Crown eights adversaries, victims, and eyewitnesses, using verbatim excerpts from their observations derived from interviews she conducted, Smith provides a brilliant, Rashoman-like documentary portrait of contempo

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Book SynopsisFew writers have transformed literature and theater so dramatically. Based on Henry J. Schmidt’s translations of The Hessian Messenger, Danton’s Death, Lenz, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction Acknowledgments The Texts of Büchner’s Major Works The Hessian Messenger Danton’s Death Lenz Leonce and Lena Woyzeck A Reconstruction The Drafts Introduction to On Cranial Nerves (translated by Matthew Wilson Smith) Contexts Selected Letters Karl Vogt • [Impression of the Giessen Student Georg Büchner] Wanted Poster Johann Friedrich Oberlin • From Pastor Oberlin’s Diary Johann Christian August Clarus • From The Legal Accountability of the Murderer Johann Christian Woyzeck Caroline Schulz • From Diary Account of Büchner’s Last Days Criticism GENERAL Herbert Lindenberger • Forebears, Descendants, and Contemporary Kin: Büchner and Literary Tradition Laura Ginters • Georg Büchner—A Selective Stage History The Hessian Messenger Hans Magnus Enzensberger • [The Hessian Messenger in the Political Context of 1964] Victor Brombert • [Büchner and Rhetoric] Danton’s Death Bertolt Brecht • [On Danton’s Death] Edward McInnes • Skepticism, Ideology, and History in Büchner’s Dantons Tod Henry J. Schmidt • Women, Death, and Revolution Accounts of Three Productions Ernst Stern • [On Max Reinhardt’s Danton’s Death] John Houseman • [On Orson Welles’s Danton’s Death] Richard Thomas • Wilson, Danton, and Me Lenz Erika Swales • Büchner, Lenz Leonce and Lena Thomas Bernhard • Leonce and Lena: Tragic Comedy by Georg Büchner Andrew Webber • Büchner, Leonce und Lena Woyzeck Rainer Maria Rilke • [On Woyzeck] George Steiner • [Woyzeck and Lear] John A. McCarthy • Some Aspects of Imagery in Büchner’s Woyzeck John Reddick • Natur and Kunst Peter J. Schwartz • Clarus, Woyzeck, and the Politics of Accountability Four Georg Büchner Prize Talks Paul Celan • The Meridian Christa Wolf • Speaking of Büchner Heiner Müller • The Wounded Woyzeck Durs Grünbein • Breaking the Body Georg Büchner: A Chronology Selected Bibliography

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Book SynopsisFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences comes Joe Turner's Come and Gone—Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.   “The glow accompanying August Wilson’s place in contemporary American theater is fixed.”—Toni Morrison   When Harold Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh boardinghouse after seven years' impressed labor on Joe Turner's chain gang, he is a free man—in body. But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of inescapable alienation oppress his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable rooming house seethes with tension and distrust in the presence of this tormented stranger. Loomis is looking for the wife he left behind, believing that she can help him reclaim his old identity. But through his encounters with the other residents he begins to realize that what he really seeks is his rightful place in a new world—a

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Book SynopsisThe newly revised, wonderfully authoritative First Folio of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works, edited by acclaimed Shakespearean scholars and endorsed by the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company Skillfully assembled by Shakespeare’s fellow actors in 1623, the First Folio was the original Complete Works—arguably the most important literary work in the English language. But starting with Nicholas Rowe in 1709 and continuing to the present day, Shakespeare editors have mixed Folio and Quarto texts, gradually corrupting the original Complete Works with errors and conflated textual variations. The second edition of the Complete Works features annotations and commentary from Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen—two of today’s preeminent Shakespeare scholars—as well as cutting-edge textual design, on-page glossaries for contemporary readers, stage directions from RSC directors, a sixteen-page ins

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Book Synopsis Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies were written in a remarkably short period of time, between 1598 and 1606. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear are each so singular an achievement that any rereading of them reinforces the awe and almost idolatrous worship that this most uncanny of the world’s great writers invariably inspires. In these four plays, Shakespeare engages the problem that is central to tragedy and crucial to any human community—the problem of violence and revenge—on an unprecedented scale. No other literary texts have been more instrumental in deepening our knowledge of ourselves as individuals and as a civilization. This authoritative edition of the plays is supplemented with footnotes, bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in context.

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Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeare’s last four plays carry us across space and time—from classical antiquity to Roman Britain to pagan Sicily to a remote island—and they move as well into a wilder geography of the imagination, one dominated by the wondrous and fantastical, and by reconciliation and renewal. Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest are famously fraught with shipwrecks and adventures, magic and disguise, speaking statues and ethereal spirits, tragic deceptions and moving reunions, and they number among the most enduringly delightful of Shakespeare’s works. The texts of the plays, authoritatively edited by Sylvan Barnet, are supplemented here with textual notes, a bibliography, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times, and a substantial introduction in which acclaimed scholar Tony Tanner discusses each play individually and in the context of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. 

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Book SynopsisHere are Lorraine Hansberry's last three plays--Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers?--representing the capstone of her achievement. Includes a new preface by Jewell Gresham Nemiroff and a revised introduction by Margaret B. Wilkerson.

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Book SynopsisBronwen Wallace Memorial Award-winning poet Sonnet L'Abbé returns with her third collection, in which a mixed-race woman decomposes her inheritance of Shakespeare by breaking open the sonnet and inventing an entirely new poetic form.DOROTHY LIVESAY POETRY PRIZE FINALISTRAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD FINALISTHow can poetry grapple with how some cultures assume the place of others? How can English-speaking writers use the English language to challenge the legacy of colonial literary values? In Sonnet's Shakespeare, one young, half-dougla (mixed South Asian and Black) poet tries to use the master's tools on the Bard's house, attempting to dismantle his monumental place in her pysche and in the poetic canon.In a defiant act of literary patricide and a feat of painstaking poetic labour, Sonnet L'Abbé works with the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets as a space she will inhabit, as a place of power she will occupy. Letter by letter, she sits her

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Book SynopsisIn the late nineteenth century hundreds of clubs formed across the United States devoted to the reading of Shakespeare. From Pasadena, California, to the seaside town of Camden, Maine; from the isolated farm town of Ottumwa, Iowa, to Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf coast, Americans were reading Shakespeare in astonishing numbers and in surprising places. Composed mainly of women, these clubs offered the opportunity for members not only to read and study Shakespeare but also to participate in public and civic activities outside the home. In She Hath Been Reading, Katherine West Scheil uncovers this hidden layer of intellectual activity that flourished in American society well into the twentieth century. Shakespeare clubs were crucial for women's intellectual development because they provided a consistent intellectual stimulus (more so than was the case with most general women's clubs) and because women discovered a world of possibilities, both public and private, inspired by theiTrade ReviewIn She Hath Been Reading, Scheil exhaustively chronicles the existence and practices of women's Shakespeare clubs in the United States. Her book also presents an alternate narrative of literacy and American life beginning in the late nineteenth and continuing into the twentieth century.... Thus Scheil’s book makes the convincing and valuable argument that Shakespeare was a driving force in the formation of American culture at this time. -- Katherine Fredlund * Cithara *Scheil offers a fascinating study of American communities of women (1880s–1940s) who read Shakespeare. She has uncovered previously neglected historical records, exploring the origins of these clubs (including those of black women), their range of literary practices, their effects on domestic life, and their outreaches from urban to isolated rural areas.... Using direct quotes from some of the women involved, Scheil follows the lives ofthese club members and reveals how their readings also translated into 'civic, cultural, and educational improvement.'. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Origins Chapter 1. Reading Chapter 2. The Home Chapter 3. The Outpost Chapter 4. Shakespeare and Black Women's Clubs Conclusion

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Book SynopsisBradley's century-old Shakespearean Tragedy.Trade ReviewProfessor Kottman has written a thoughtful and thought-provoking book. It addresses very major issues, in what is for the most part quite an original way, and I found much of what I read illuminating. -- Joost Daalder Review of English Studies 2010 Calm, methodical, yet urgent humanist philosophy. -- Emma Smith Comparative Drama 2010 Reading this book is like following an intensely intellectual yet personal lecture... Essential. Choice 2010Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Disinheriting the Globe1. On As You Like It2. On Hamlet3. On King Lear4. On The TempestNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisGoethe said that all his works were "one long confession," and certainly into Faust, this greatest masterwork of German literature, on which he worked sixty years, he welded his own search for meaning of existence and of the soul.Trade Review"Certainly the most usable and most appealing Faust translation in English." -- Victor Lange"Goethe is generally recognized as the greatest German of all time, and Faust as his most important single work." -- Walter Kaufmann

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Book SynopsisA stunning, controversial work that immediately outraged audiences with its scatological references during the 1896 premiere, Ubu Roi satirizes the tendency of the successful bourgeois to abuse his authority and become irresponsibly complacent.Trade Review"What more is possible? After us, the Savage God." -- W.B. Yeats

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Book SynopsisThis portrait of Molière, by Mikhail Bulgakov, goes far beyond mere biography. The Russian master brings a kindred spirit vividly to life in this novelistic story of art and the struggle it demands.

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Book SynopsisThe evil that men do has been chronicled for thousands of years on the European stage, and perhaps nowhere else is human fear of our own evil more detailed than in its personifications in theater.Trade ReviewDraws on an unusually wide range of background materials to make an important and original contribution to the scholarship of the drama. - Stanton J. Linden, author of Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration

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