Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisBreaking Free from Death examines how Russian writers respond to the burden of living with anxieties about their creative outputs, and, ultimately, about their own inevitable finitude. What contributes to creative death are not just crippling diseases that make man defenseless in the face of death, and not just the arguably universal fear of death but, equally important, the innumerable impositions on the part of various outsiders. Many conflicts in the lives of Rylkova's subjects arose not from their opposition to the existing political regimes but from their interactions with like-minded and supporting intellectuals, friends, and relatives. The book describes the lives and choices that concrete individuals and—by extrapolation—their literary characters must face in order to preserve their singularity and integrity while attempting to achieve fame, greatness, and success.Trade Review"Rylkova’s meticulous study is full of original insights and new interpretations of famous literary works, delivered in a lucid and accessible writing style, with numerous references to primary sources; it is a joy to read. Furthermore, she supplies her readers with a clear road map throughout the book, explaining her next steps and intentions at every turn." - Russian ReviewTable of Contents Acknowledgements Prologue: Breaking Free from Death Part One: Beginnings and Endings 1. Leo Tolstoy and the Privilege of Formidable Hypochondria 2. In Chertkov's Grip 3. Uncle Vanya: The Drama of Sustainability 4. "Homo Sachaliensis": Chekhov's "Character" as a Strategy 5. The Steppe as a Story of Humble and Spectacular Beginnings Part Two: Transcending Death 6. Reading Chekhov through Meyerhold's Eyes 7. Living with Tolstoy and Dying with Chekhov: Ivan Bunin's Liberation of Tolstoy (1937) and About Chekhov (1953) as Two Modes of Auto/Biographical Writing 8. "There is a way out": The Cherry Orchard in the Twenty-First Century 9. A Boring Story: Chekhov's Trip to Germany in 1904 Epilogue: Oyster Fever: Chekhov and Turgenev Index

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Book Synopsis'This book gives some of the very best of Shakespeare’s twenty-first-century colleagues an opportunity to share insights that can only come from playing him' Nicholas Hytner, from his Foreword Twelve leading actors take us behind the scenes of landmark Shakespearean productions, each recreating in detail their memorable performance in a major role. Roger Allam on his Falstaff in both Henry IV plays at Shakespeare’s Globe Eileen Atkins on Viola in two productions of Twelfth Night seventeen years apart Simon Russell Beale on Cassius in Deborah Warner’s modern-dress Julius Caesar Chiwetel Ejiofor on his Donmar Warehouse Othello, directed by Michael Grandage Sara Kestelman on Hippolyta and Titania in Peter Brook’s iconic white-box Dream Ian McKellen on one of Shakespeare’s most demanding of roles: King Lear Michael Pennington on stepping in at the eleventh hour as Timon of Athens Alan Rickman on re-evaluating the melancholic Jaques in As You Like It Fiona Shaw on Shakespeare’s Shrew, Katherine, in Jonathan Miller’s production Patrick Stewart on his Las Vegas-set Shylock, a role he has played many times Harriet Walter on Imogen in Shakespeare’s late romance, Cymbeline, at the RSC Zoë Wanamaker on her National Theatre Beatrice, directed by Nicholas Hytner Each actor leads us through the choices they made in rehearsal, and how the character works in performance, shedding new light on some of the most challenging roles in the canon. The result is a series of individual masterclasses that will be invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare – and fascinating for audiences of the plays. Shakespeare On Stage: Volume 2 was shortlisted for the 2018 Theatre Book Prize. ‘Absorbing and original… Curry’s actors are often thinking and talking as that other professional performer, Shakespeare himself, might have done.’ TLS on Shakespeare On Stage: Vol. 1Trade Review'A remarkably rich collection... as well as the thoughtful step-by-step analyses of rehearsal and performance, the interviews abound in striking perceptions of the plays as a whole' * Shakespeare Survey *'[Gives the reader] that amazing, engrossing feeling of listening to someone who is an expert in their field… one of the other joys of this book is the reminder that it brings of how intellectual acting is. These actors talk about the roles with great knowledge and affection… give [it] to a student to read and be inspired' * Drama Magazine *'These thorough and penetrating interviews are greatly illuminating' * Word Matters - Journal of the Society of Teachers of Speech and Drama *'[This] is becoming a fascinating series... a good read for fans of the performers, Shakespeare or acting in general' * British Theatre Guide *

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Book SynopsisThe author's guide to Kindertransport, an invaluable and uniquely authoritative resource for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play. Since it was first staged by the Soho Theatre Company in London in 1993, Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport has enjoyed huge success around the world, has been revived numerous times, and is widely studied in schools and colleges. The play tells the story of how nine-year-old Eva, a German Jewish girl, is sent by her parents on the Kindertransport to start a new life with a foster family in Britain just before the outbreak of World War Two. Over forty years later, she has changed her name to Evelyn and denied her roots. When her own daughter discovers some old letters and photos in the attic, she is forced to confront the truth about who she really is and to reveal a dark secret that she has done everything to keep hidden. In this author’s guide to the play, Diane Samuels investigates the historical background, drawing on the personal testimony of those whose lives were transformed by the Kindertransport. She explores the creative process that shaped the play through successive drafts. And she presents detailed accounts from the actors, directors, a composer and designer who have contributed to the play’s most notable productions.Trade Review'Such a wonderful companion to the play... incredibly helpful... lends itself for so many different types of student' * Teaching Drama *'Illuminating... It's a refreshing change for a study guide to come from the pen of the person who created the text being studied... an informative, enlightening contribution to textual study and performance' * The Stage *

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Book SynopsisIn The Quality of Mercy, one of the world's most revered theatre directors reflects on a fascinating variety of Shakespearean topics. In this sequence of essays, Peter Brook debates such questions as who was the man who wrote Shakespeare's plays, why Shakespeare is never out of date, and how actors should approach Shakespeare's verse. He also revisits some of the plays which he has directed with notable brilliance, such as King Lear, Titus Andronicus and, of course, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Taken as a whole, this short but immensely wise book offers an illuminating and provocative insight into a great director's relationship with our greatest playwright. 'An invaluable gift from the greatest Shakespeare director of our time... Brook's genius, modesty, and brilliance shine through on every page' James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William ShakespeareTrade Review'Should be required reading for any aspiring young directors and actors but also all serious theatregoers... the writing is a model of clarity, the ideas challenging but sensible... it should be on every reader's bookshelf' * British Theatre Guide *'Each new page you turn is a delight. And all written in such an unpretentious, gentle, often amusing style. A joy' * ReviewsGate.com *'This volume positively seethes and sparkles with ideas... provides not only acute insights into the texts, but intriguing details of performance history, and a few morsels of grand theatrical gossip' * Scotsman *'Exquisite... enthralling... This short, modest and brilliant book does more than many more grandiose tomes to renew the reader's fascination with the plays, and the theatre-goer's wonder at the extraordinary and diverse sensations locked up inside the First Folio. It should be required reading at all universities and drama clubs.' * Guardian *'If you want a gift for an actor, look no further than this educative, engrossing, entertaining book' * The Stage *'Contains within its scintillating reflections the essence of all that Peter Brook has learned over a lifetime. Whoever imagined that a book about Shakespeare could also be such fun?' * Wall Street Journal *

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Book SynopsisEveryday life in the teeming metropolis during William Shakespeare's time in the city. Shakespeare's London was a bustling, teeming metropolis that was growing so rapidly that the government took repeated, and ineffectual, steps to curb its expansion. From contemporary letters, journals and diaries, a vivid picture emerges of this fascinating city, with its many opportunities and also its persistent problems. By far the largest city in the country, it was the centre of government, the law and the church, the focus of politics and culture. It had a vigorous economy, with a range of industries and a lucrative trade in luxury goods for the courtiers and wealthy citizens. Growth produced overcrowding and high mortality, with shockingly high death tolls during the periodic plague epidemics, yet London attracted an endless stream of people, who were absorbed into its diverse communities and economic structures. Here the first playhouses were built, patronised by large audiences, who were treated to a rich and varied diet of plays to keep them, and the court, entertained. The London that Shakespeare knew was an expanding, changing and exciting city.Trade ReviewA meticulous recreation of a vibrant world - echoes with the living voices of Londoners' -- GILLIAN TINDALLA lucid and cogent narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare's place of work' * SHAKESPEARE BIRTHPLACE TRUST *A vivid account' * THES *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. A Little World in Itself 2. A Great Multitude of People 3. The Greatest City of the Christian World 4. The World Runs on Wheels 5. The Whole Trade of Merchandise 6. The Time of Life is Short 7. A Quick Eye & a Nimble Hand 8. A World of People References Bibliography List of Illustrations Index

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Book SynopsisThis entertaining collection gathers together William Shakespeare's wisest and wittiest quotations. Quotable Shakespeare proves that brevity is the soul of wit and is sure to delight all lovers of the Bard's uniquely perceptive and influential works.

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Book SynopsisThe Nick Hern Books Page to Stage series – highly accessible guides to the world's best-known plays, written by established theatre professionals to show how the plays come to life on the stage. Director Stephen Unwin takes you scene by scene through the action of Ibsen's play A Doll's House, analysing moment by moment what is actually said and done, and how the staging of these moments affects our understanding of them. Also included in this volume: a concise introduction to Ibsen and the historical background of the play; a discussion of the characters and setting; and an exploration of the possibilities for staging, lighting, costumes, props and furniture, and the sound and music. Ideal for anyone studying, teaching or performing A Doll's House, as well as anyone interested in how the play works on stage.

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Book Synopsis'Like so much of Renaissance Art, Shakespeare's work bears an open secret. The esoteric spiritual content is undisguised, though it may be unexpected and not always immediately recognized. And, like all the great artistic achievements...this work remains incomplete until we recognize and respond to its open invitation that we become active participants.' - from the IntroductionThe perennial universal appeal of Shakespeare's work is well established. His core themes explore the challenges of the human condition whilst celebrating the potential of human beings to achieve and develop in earthly life. But what is it that enables Shakespeare's characters to live and breathe beyond the confines of their written roles, some 400 years after the plays were first performed? In these collected lectures, edited with an extensive introduction by Andrew Wolpert, Rudolf Steiner throws new light on the Bard's work, describing the on-going life that flows from it, and the profound spiritual origins of Shakespeare's inspirations. He shows how Shakespeare can enliven us in our longing for contemporary ideals and truths; indeed, in our goal of becoming fully human. Our engagement with the plays, not just as actors and directors, but also as students and members of an audience, can thus become a co-creative participation in the redemptive potential of Shakespeare's enduring legacy. Steiner speaks about Shakespeare in connection with the evolution of the arts of poetry and drama, and the transitions between cultural epochs. He reminds us of the sources and characteristics of classical Greek drama, recalling Aristotle's definition of drama as catharsis, and pointing to Shakespeare's connection to these cultural and historical wellsprings.

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Book SynopsisIn their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that very few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeare's strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as 'kingmaker'. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of both performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.

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Book SynopsisSuzanne Gossett offers a full and critical performance history, with an introduction showing how the play's performance history has paralled the criticism. It then gives an interpretation of this two-generation romance, with its successive male and female central characters, based on a reading 'through the family', and influenced by the feminist and new historicist criticism of the last two decades. The edition integrates cumulative research on Shakespeare's collaborative authorship and the transmission of the text without rewriting the play or ignoring years of emendations.

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Book SynopsisTwo Gentlemen of Verona is commonly agreed to be Shakespeare's first comedy, and probably his first play. A comedy built around the confusions of doubling, cross - dressing and identity, it is also a play about the ideal of male friendship and what happens to those friendships when men fall in love.William Carroll's engaging Introduction focuses on the traditions and sources that stand behind the play and explores Shakespeare's unique and bold treatment of them. Special attention is given to the strong female figure of Julia and the controversial final scene.

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Book SynopsisTimon of Athens has struck many readers as rough and unpolished, perhaps even unfinished, though to others it has appeared as Shakespeare's most profound tragic allegory. Described by Coleridge as 'the stillborn twin of King Lear', the play has nevertheless proved brilliantly effective in performance over the past thirty or forty years.This edition accepts and contributes to the growing scholarly consensus that the play is not Shakespeare's solo work, but is the result of his collaboration with Thomas Middleton, who wrote about a third of it. The editors offer an account of the process of collaboration and discuss the different ways that each author contributes to the play's relentless look at the corruption and greed of society. They provide, as well, detailed annotation of the text and explore the wide range of critical and theatrical interpretations that the play has engendered. Tracing both its satirical and tragic strains, their introduction presents a perspective on the play's meanings that combines careful elucidation of historical context with analysis of its relevance to modern-day society. An extensive and well-illustrated account of the play's production history generates a rich sense of how the play can speak to different historical moments in specific and rewarding ways.Trade Review'...a critical introduction that...could scarcely be better...an admirable edition of Shakespeare and Middleton's challenging collaberative play.' Shakespeare Quarterly (2009)

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Book SynopsisIn All’s Well That Ends Well, Helen, a lowly ward, risks her life to satisfy her boundless love for Bertram, a count and ward to the King of France. Following him to Paris, she concocts an endangering plan to win the King of France’s favour and induce Bertram’s hand in marriage. In the comprehensive introduction to this new, fully-illustrated Arden edition, Suzanne Gossett takes a transformative look at the play’s critical and performance history by offering fresh perspectives on the conundrum of genre, sexuality and moral dilemmas with masculinity and the structures of family. The authoritative play text is amply annotated to clarify its language and allusions, and two appendices debate the play’s authorship and review its casting. Offering students and scholars alike a wealth of insight and new research, this edition maintains the rigorous standards of the Arden Shakespeare.Trade ReviewThe best edition available with a particularly thoughtful and undogmatic introduction. * Paul Hartle, University of Cambridge, UK *Table of ContentsList of illustrations General editors’ preface Preface Introduction ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL Appendix 1: Casting All's Well That Ends Well Appendix 2: The Authorship Debate Abbreviations and references Index

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Book SynopsisSue Glover (1943 - ) began writing plays in the 1970s, making her stage debut at the Little Lyceum in 1980 with The Seal Wife, her first full-length play, in which many of the recurring features and concerns of her work are to be found: the influence of oral culture and folklore, and the re-examination of history, legend and myth from a female perspective. John Hodgart''s Scotnote examines two of Sue Glover''s plays, Bondagers and The Straw Chair. Both plays can be seen in the context of a very strong tradition of modern Scottish feminist drama which includes the work of Ena Lamont Stewart, Joan Ure, Liz Lochhead, Rona Munro and others. Bondagers is a powerful and moving drama about a band of brave, vulnerable women struggling to survive hardship, exploitation and injustice. The Straw Chair is set on St Kilda, and tells the story of Lady Grange''s exile on that distant island. In both plays, Glover gives voices to exploited or alienated women whose identity has been determined by their domestic or working role or their social status in a hypocritical patriarchal society. Issues of set and staging are explored as well as the themes of the plays.This guide is suitable for senior school pupils and students at all levels.

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Book SynopsisRona Munro's 1991 play Bold Girls is a tale of four Belfast women during the Troubles, exploring personal and communal history, and what it means when aspects of a community ideologies, relationships, and spaces, for example are threatened. Despite being set in a very specific time and place, the themes are universal: how societies are warped by male violence, dominance, and social privilege, and female subservience to that behaviour. Bold Girls is a case-study of the victims rather than the perpetrators of conflict: an unsentimental portrait of women's lives under psychological siege.Gillian Sargent's Scotnote Study Guide provides a comprehensive overview to the characters and themes of Munro's play, as well as its artistic and cultural influences, and is an excellent guide for senior school pupils and teachers alike.

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Book SynopsisIn his first tetralogy of history plays (Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, and Richard III), Shakespeare offered the most extensive dramatic sequence since the great days of ancient Greek drama in Athens.                  Critics have sometimes disparaged this first tetralogy as episodic and amateurish. There are various lively scenes, and some characters radiate vitality – in Richard III, Shakespeare (defying historical fact) created a superbly memorable monster, the grotesque and arrogant villain whom audiences love to hate. But if the Shakespeare of the first tetralogy blithely embarrasses his modern fans by the abundance of jingoistic propaganda, his second tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V) is much more sophisticated and ambiguous. Indeed, in view of the problems of censorship which he faced, Shakespeare provides remarkably incisive insights into the beh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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