Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

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Book SynopsisExamines the often graphic depictions of violence which are characteristic of many genres of Latin literature, from Plautine comedy to the Christian martyrdom narratives of Late Antiquity. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Greek and Roman literature and culture, and of cultural studies more broadly.Table of ContentsIntroduction – reading Roman violence Monica R. Gale and J. H. D. Scourfield; 1. Comic violence and the citizen body David Konstan and Shilpa Raval; 2. Contemplating violence: Lucretius' 'De rerum natura' Monica R. Gale; 3. Discipline and punish – Horatian satire and the formation of the self Paul Allen Miller; 4. Make war not love: militia amoris and domestic violence in Roman elegy Donncha O'Rourke; 5. Violence and resistance in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' Carole E. Newlands; 6. Tales of the unexpurgated (Cert PG) – Seneca's Audionasties (Controversiae 2.5, 10.4) John Henderson; 7. Dismemberment and the critics – Seneca's 'Phaedra' Duncan F. Kennedy; 8. Violence and alienation in Lucan's 'Pharsalia' – the case of Caesar Efrossini Spentzou; 9. Tacitus and the language of violence Bruce J. Gibson; 10. Cruel narrative: Apuleius' 'Golden Ass' William Fitzgerald; 11. Violence and the Christian heroine – two narratives of desire J. H. D. Scourfield.

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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 SynopsisIn this distinctive study, Nicholas Luke explores the abiding power of Shakespeare''s tragedies by suggesting an innovative new model of his character creation. Rather than treating characters as presupposed beings, Luke shows how they arrive as something more than functional dramatis personae - how they come to life as ''subjects'' - through Shakespeare''s orchestration of transformational dramatic events. Moving beyond dominant critical modes, Luke combines compelling close readings of Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear with an accessible analysis of thinkers such as Badiou, Žižek, Bergson, Whitehead and Latour, and the ''adventist'' Christian tradition flowing from Saint Paul through Luther to Kierkegard. Representing a significant intervention into the way we encounter Shakespeare''s tragic figures, the book argues for a subjectivity which is not singular or abiding, but perilous and leaping.Trade Review'The book is at its best, its most exciting and enjoyable, when focused on the texts at hand, which Luke makes new. There is a great deal to value here, especially for those who are looking for a philosophical and theoretical consideration of character as exemplified by Shakespearean tragedy. Shakespearean Arrivals is sure to excite debate and to force a reconsideration of character as dynamic and multiple, shifting and changing, and, hence, new.' Cristina León Alfar, Renaissance QuarterlyTable of Contents1. Thinking arrivals: rupture, event, subject; 2. The subject of love in Romeo and Juliet; 3. Love's late arrival: wonder and terror in Othello's 'High-Wrought Flood'; 4. The ghostly event(s) of Hamlet; 5. Macbeth: the arrival of evil; 6. The Cordelia event: seizing the vanished in King Lear; Conclusion; Index.

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Book SynopsisGreek Memories aims to identify and examine the central concepts underlying the theories and practices of memory in the Greek world, from the archaic period to Late Antiquity, across all the main literary genres, and to trace some fundamental changes in these theories and practices.Table of ContentsIntroduction Luca Castagnoli and Paola Ceccarelli; Part I. Archaic and Early Classical Configurations of Memory: 1. Women and memory: the Iliad and the Kosovo cycle Lilah Grace Canevaro; 2. Speaking in the wax tablets of memory Peter Agócs; Part II. Memory and Forgetting in the Classical Period: 3. Economies of memory in Greek tragedy Paola Ceccarelli; 4. Aristophanes and his Muses, or memory in a comic key Silvia Milanezi; 5. Memory, the orators and the public in fourth-century BC Athens Mirko Canevaro; 6. The place and nature of memory in Greek historiography Catherine Darbo-Peschanski; 7. Lyric oblivion: when Sappho taught Socrates how to forget Andrea Capra; 8. Socratic forgetfulness and Platonic irony Ynon Wygoda; 9. Memory and recollection in Plato's Philebus: use and definitions R. A. H. King; 10. Is memory of the past? Aristotle and the objects of memory Luca Castagnoli; Part III. Hellenistic Configurations of Memory: 11. Hellenistic Cultural Memory: Helen and Menelaus between heroic fiction, ritual practice and poetic praise of the royal power (Theocritus 18) Claude Calame; 12. Physics, memory, ethics: the Epicurean road to happiness Emidio Spinelli; Part IV. The Imperial Period: Continuity and Change: 13. Claudius Aelianus: memory, mnemonics, and literature in the age of Caracalla Steven D. Smith; 14. Plotinus on memory, recollection and discursive thought Riccardo Chiaradonna; 15. Plotinus: remembering and forgetting Stephen R. L. Clark; Part V. Envoi: 16. Greek philosophers on how to memorise – and learn Maria Michela Sassi.

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Book SynopsisHamlet is a characteristic intellectual more inclined to lecture actors about their craft than listen to them, and is a precursor of Enlightenment figures like Diderot and Lessing. This book is a quest for the voice of early professional actors, drawing on English, French and other European sources to distinguish the methods of professionals from the theories of intellectual amateurs. David Wiles challenges the orthodoxy that all serious discussion of acting began with Stanislavski, and outlines the comprehensive but fluid classical system of acting which was for some three hundred years its predecessor. He reveals premodern acting as a branch of rhetoric, which took from antiquity a vocabulary for conversations about the relationship of mind and body, inside and outside, voice and movement. Wiles demonstrates that Roman rhetoric provided the bones of both a resilient theatrical system and a physical art that retains its relevance for the post-Stanislavskian performer.Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Hamlet's advice to the players; 2. Rhetorical performance in antiquity; 3. Acting, preaching and oratory in the sixteenth century; 4. Baroque acting; 5. Actors and intellectuals in the Enlightenment era; 6. Emotion; 7. Declamation; 8. Gesture; 9. Training.

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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 Trade Review'Bridget Orr's British Enlightenment Theatre opens up an exciting research field full of radically important questions about British religious and social attitudes, their relationship to regional diversity, and the multiple ways these issues were debated on the eighteenth-century stage.' David Worrall, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre ResearchTable 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 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 SynopsisFor readers interested in exploring the history ofemotional responses to suffering, this volume describes the theory and practice of compassion in the context of early modern Europe's sectarian strife, and will engage those looking to make connections between early modern history and our present political moment.Trade Review'… a convincing alternative to rigorous compassion scepticism …' James Waddell, Modern Language Review'Its commendable coherence is determined by both the central theme and the well-thought-through structure, which supports the topic's conceptualization … the volume is a valuable contribution on a timely topic …' Mirosława Hanusiewicz-Lavallee, Journal of Jesuit StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Kristine Steenbergh and Katherine Ibbett; Part I. Theorizing: 1. The ethics of compassion in early modern England Bruce R. Smith; 2. The compassionate self of the Catholic Reformation Katherine Ibbett; Part II. Consoling: 3. 'Hee left them not comfortlesse by the way': grief and compassion in early modern English consolatory culture Paula Barros; 4. Friendship, counsel, and compassion in early modern medical thought Stephen Pender; Part III. Exhorting: 5. 'Compassion and mercie draw teares from the godlyfull often': the rhetoric of sympathy in the early modern sermon Richard Meek; 6. Mollified hearts and enlarged bowels: practising compassion in reformation England Kristine Steenbergh; Part IV. Performing: 7. Civic liberties and community compassion: the Jesuit drama of Poland-Lithuania Clarinda E. Calma and Jolanta Rzegocka; 8. Compassion, contingency and conversion in James Shirley's The Sisters Alison Searle; Part V. Responding: 9. Mountainish inhumanity in Illyria: compassion in Twelfth Night as social luxury and political duty Elisabetta Tarantino; 10. Standing on a beach: Shakespeare and the sympathetic imagination Eric Langley; Part VI. Giving: 11. 'To feel what wretches feel': Reformation and the re-naming of English compassion Toria Johnson; 12. Alms petitions and compassion in sixteenth-century London Rebecca Tomlin; Part VII. Racializing: 13. Pity and empire in the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552) Matthew Goldmark; 14. 'Our Black hero': compassion for friends and others in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko John Staines; Part VIII. Contemporary Compassions: 15. Contemporary compassions: interrelating in the Anthropocene Kristine Steenbergh.

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Book SynopsisMichael Hattaway''s Introduction to this bestselling edition of As You Like It accounts for what makes this popular play both innocent and dangerous. This third edition includes a new section on recent critical interpretations, including sections on ecocriticism, peace studies, and myths of gender, on recent as well as past stage productions and films of the play, as well as fresh illustrations. An appendix on an early court performance in 1599, commentary on the play''s language, the book trade, and the discursive cultures of its time, as well as an updated reading list are also included.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Textual analysis; Appendixes; 1. An early court performance?; 2. Extracts from Shakespeare's principal source, Lodge's Rosalind; 3. The songs; Reading list.

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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 SynopsisThis Element offers a first-person phenomenological history of watching productions of Shakespeare during the pandemic year of 2020. The first section of the Element explores how Shakespeare ''went viral'' during the first lockdown of 2020 and considers how the archival recordings of Shakespeare productions made freely available by theatres across Europe and North America impacted on modes of spectatorship and viewing practices, with a particular focus on the effect of binge-watching Hamlet in lockdown. The Element''s second section documents two made-for-digital productions of Shakespeare by Oxford-based Creation Theatre and Northern Irish Big Telly, two companies who became leaders in digital theatre during the pandemic. It investigates how their productions of The Tempest and Macbeth modelled new platform-specific ways of engaging with audiences and creating communities of viewing at a time when, in the UK, government policies were excluding most non-building-based theatre companiesTable of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Archival Obsessions; 2. Live Digital Shakespeare; Conclusion: When will this fearful slumber have an end?

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Book SynopsisAn up-to-date edition of one of the most widely read and performed Greek tragedies. Offers new interpretative suggestions and provides detailed guidance on problems of language and dramaturgy. Ideal for students of Greek at all levels, while also of interest to scholars of Greek literature and cultural history.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Symbols and Sigla; ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΟΥ ΒΑΚΧΑΙ; Commentary; Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis Element examines Beckett's dissidence in the face of the imperatives of nation, home and the canon, utilising Beckett's work in festival contexts to highlight in the negative the nature of the festival form and to critique the festivalisation of culture.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Upon Ruinous Foundations; 1. More Ruins: The Festival and the Author's Face; 2. Beckett as Irish Icon: A Genealogy of Festivalisation; 3. Festival Space: Staging the City ; 4. Tourist Epistemologies: The Beckett Bus ; 5. Festival Time: Carnivals of Ruin; Conclusion: Degenerate Gatherings.

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Book SynopsisMichael Hattaway''s Introduction to this bestselling edition of As You Like It accounts for what makes this popular play both innocent and dangerous. This third edition includes a new section on recent critical interpretations, including sections on ecocriticism, peace studies, and myths of gender, on recent as well as past stage productions and films of the play, as well as fresh illustrations. An appendix on an early court performance in 1599, commentary on the play''s language, the book trade, and the discursive cultures of its time, as well as an updated reading list are also included.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Textual analysis; Appendixes; 1. An early court performance?; 2. Extracts from Shakespeare's principal source, Lodge's Rosalind; 3. The songs; Reading list.

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Book SynopsisShakespeare has been dubbed the greatest psychologist of all time. This book seeks to prove that statement by comparing the playwright''s fictional characters with real-life examples of violent individuals, from criminals to political actors. For Gilligan and Richards, the propensity to kill others, even (or especially) when it results in the killer''s own death, is the most serious threat to the continued survival of humanity. In this volume, the authors show how humiliated men, with their desire for retribution and revenge, apocryphal violence and political religions, justify and commit violence, and how love and restorative justice can prevent violence. Although our destructive power is far greater than anything that existed in his day, Shakespeare has much to teach us about the psychological and cultural roots of all violence. In this book the authors tell what Shakespeare shows, through the stories of his characters: what causes violence and what prevents it.Trade Review'Whoever would have thought that William Shakespeare could help us prevent murder in the twenty-first century? In this extraordinary book, James Gilligan and David Richards shepherd their readers through a riveting and brilliantly written journey, explaining how the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon can offer unique insights into the origins of violence. I simply could not put this down!' Estela V. Welldon, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Honorary Member, American Psychoanalytic Association, UK'Were I able to persuade my political colleagues to imbibe the wisdom of one book, this is it. What Girard did with the novel, Gilligan and Richards do for Shakespeare, making him accessible and essential for understanding and responding to personal and political violence. It is both brilliant and transformational.' Lord John Alderdice, House of Lords, Westminster, UK'James Gilligan and David Richards, an eminent psychiatrist and a distinguished legal scholar with vast experience dealing with violent men, brilliantly help us explore how Shakespeare's plays are among the most insightful sources for understanding human nature and human psychology. In the course of their work, they met men who were virtual reincarnations of Macbeth, Othello, Richard III, Timon and others, who felt so overwhelmingly shamed and humiliated that they did not know how to bring their emotional pain to an end except by destroying the world around them. Shame and its opposite, pride and honor, are the central themes Shakespeare uses to describe the motivations for violence. Gilligan and Richards show how Shakespeare enables us to understand not only what causes violence, but also how we can prevent it.' Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, founder of the Trauma Research Foundation, and Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University'The depth of Jim Gilligan's knowledge of the murderous mind and his understanding of shame as a motivating force are matched only by Shakespeare's poetic insights about what drives Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and others. Psychoanalysis and great creative writing join in Holding a Mirror up to Nature and give unique insights to the problems of violence in our modern age. Gilligan's work – together with the rational voice of law scholar David Richards – offer to the practitioner of Shakespeare's theater a road map to understand the great tragic heroes. It is an exhilarating mix of scholarship and dramatic knowledge, which can only deepen our appreciation of the power and truth of the plays of William Shakespeare.' Tina Packer, Founding Artistic Director, Shakespeare & CompanyTable of ContentsIntroduction: can we learn from Shakespeare about the causes and prevention of violence?; 1. Shame and guilt in personality and culture; 2. The cycle of violence in history plays; 3. Fathers and mothers: the perversion of love in King Lear and Coriolanus; 4. Make war, not love: Anthony and Cleopatra; 5. The motives and malignity: shame and masculinity in Othello and Macbeth; 6. Moral nihilism and the paralysis of action: Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida; 7. Apocalyptic vioence: Timon of Athens; 8. Transcending morality, preventing violence: Measure for Measure, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and The Merchant of Venice; 9. The form and pressure of Shakespeare's time – and ours: what Shakespeare shows us about shame, guilt, love and violence; Acknowledgments.

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Book SynopsisGetting a play written and produced is a daunting process. From creating story ideas, formatting the script, to marketing and financing your project, and incorporating professional insights on writing, there are plenty of ins and outs that every aspiring playwright needs to know.Table of ContentsIntroduction. Part I: Catching the Playwriting Bug. Chapter 1: Introducing the Art and Craft of Playwriting. Chapter 2: Living the Life of a Playwright. Chapter 3: What Makes a Play. Chapter 4: Starting with an Idea. Chapter 5: Finding Your Play's Theme. Part II: Creating a Blueprint for Your Play. Chapter 6: Putting Your Story in Focus. Chapter 7: Creating Full and Rich Characters. Chapter 8: Dialogue: The Most Important Tool in Your Toolbox. Chapter 9: Practical Considerations: Staging, Cast, and Audience. Part III: The Nuts and Bolts of Putting Your Story Together. Chapter 10: The Beginning: Finding a Starting Point for Your Play. Chapter 11: The Middle: Developing Your Story Line. Chapter 12: The Climax: Bringing the Confl ict to a Head. Chapter 13: The Resolution: Wrapping It All Up. Chapter 14: Giving the Musical Special Consideration. Part IV: The Show Must Go On. Chapter 15: Getting Your Play Read and Making Revisions. Chapter 16: Rehearsals and Premieres: Nail Biting 101. Chapter 17: Promoting Your Play and Getting a Production. Part V: The Part of Tens. Chapter 18: Ten Things Every Playwright Should Know. Chapter 19: Ten Hallmarks of a Great Play. Chapter 20: Ten Playwrights You Should Know and Emulate. Appendix: Formatting a Script. Index.

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Book SynopsisFocusing on major and emerging playwrights, institutions, and various theatre practices this Concise Companion examines the key issues in British and Irish theatre since 1979.Trade Review“This volume provides valuable insight into the issues and practices of contemporary theater. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.” (Choice, 1 January 2014)Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Notes on Contributors x Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 Nadine Holdsworth and Mary Luckhurst Part I National Politics and Identities 5 1 Europe in Flux: Exploring Revolution and Migration in British Plays of the 1990s 7 Geoff Willcocks 2 ‘I’ll See You Yesterday’: Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and the Captivating Past 26 Claire Gleitman 3 Black British Drama and the Politics of Identity 48 D. Keith Peacock 4 Northern Irish Drama: Speaking the Peace 66 Tom Maguire Part II Sites, Cities and Landscapes 85 5 The Production of ‘Site’: Site-Specific Theatre 87 Fiona Wilkie 6 Staging an Urban Nation: Place and Identity in Contemporary Welsh Theatre 107 Heike Roms 7 The Landscape of Contemporary Scottish Drama: Place, Politics and Identity 125 Nadine Holdsworth Part III The Body, Text and the Real 147 8 The Body’s Cruel Joke: The Comic Theatre of Sarah Kane 149 Ken Urban 9 Physical Theatre: Complicite and the Question of Authority 171 Helen Freshwater 10 Verbatim Theatre, Media Relations and Ethics 200 Mary Luckhurst Part IV Science, Ethics and New Technologies 223 11 Theatre and Science 225 David Higgins 12 From the State of the Nation to Globalization: Shifting Political Agendas in Contemporary British Playwriting 245 Dan Rebellato 13 Theatre for a Media-Saturated Age 263 Sarah Gorman Index 283

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Book SynopsisThis is a unique introduction to Greek tragedy that explores the plays as dramatic artifacts intended for performance and pays special attention to construction, design, staging, and musical composition.Trade Review"A remarkable guide to recapturing the sights and sounds of Greek tragedy. David Raeburn draws on his long experience as teacher, translator and director to show in detail how a selection of famous plays can be studied – in English or the original Greek – as scripts for performance. He has plenty of thought-provoking discussion of the stage action to offer, and a special feature is his guidance on the rhythms of the original poetry, especially the choral lyrics, with audio recordings easily accessible online." - Pat Easterling, Cambridge University (Emeritus Regius) "An invaluable book written with love and detailed understanding. It is based on a lifetime’s unique experience of producing each of these classical plays as a teacher and scholar at the highest level, therefore without equal in its field. Again and again Raeburn sees what these plays need for their staging and interpretation, largely because he has faced the challenge of putting them on the stage, whereas most classical commentators have not. He goes clearly and concisely to the heart of them in a style which all who read,produce, or have to study them will appreciate. A landmark both for our theatres’ actors and directors and for those in schools and universities who want to be taken to the central issues of each play and the ways in which character, speech, movement, and setting interrelate." - Robin Lane Fox, Oxford UniversityTable of ContentsPreface ix About the Companion Website xi 1 Introduction 1 2 Aeschylus 15 3 Persae 21 4 The Oresteia 33 5 Sophocles 81 6 Antigone 87 7 Oedipus Tyrannus 105 8 Electra (Sophocles) 123 9 Euripides 137 10 Medea 143 11 Electra (Euripides) 157 12 Bacchae 173 Appendix A: Glossary of Greek Tragic Terms 189 Appendix B: Rhythm and Meter 191 Index 195

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Book SynopsisThis is a unique introduction to Greek tragedy that explores the plays as dramatic artifacts intended for performance and pays special attention to construction, design, staging, and musical composition.Table of ContentsPreface ix About the Companion Website xi 1 Introduction 1 2 Aeschylus 15 3 Persae 21 4 The Oresteia 33 5 Sophocles 81 6 Antigone 87 7 Oedipus Tyrannus 105 8 Electra (Sophocles) 123 9 Euripides 137 10 Medea 143 11 Electra (Euripides) 157 12 Bacchae 173 Appendix A: Glossary of Greek Tragic Terms 189 Appendix B: Rhythm and Meter 191 Index 195

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Book SynopsisDiscover an invigorating new perspective on the life and work of William Shakespeare TheLife of the Author: William Shakespearedeliversa fresh and exciting new take on the life of William Shakespeare,offeringreaders a biography that brings to the foreground his working life as a poet, playwright, and actor. It also explores the nature of his relationships with his friends, colleagues, and family, and asks important questions about the stories we tell about Shakespeare based on the evidence we actually have about the man himself. The book is written using scholarly citations and references,but with anapproachable style suitable for readers with little or no background knowledge of Shakespeare or the era in which he lived.TheLife of the Author: William Shakespeareasksprovocativequestions about the playwright-poet's preoccupation with gender roles and sexuality, and explores why it is so challenging toascertain hispolitical and religiousTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vi Prologue viii Chapter One 1 Chapter Two 14 Chapter Three 31 Chapter Four 49 Chapter Five 69 Chapter Six 87 Chapter Seven 106 Chapter Eight 129 Notes 149 References 160 Index 170

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Book SynopsisPART I: PERFORMANCE EFFECTS Introduction: Materializing the Immaterial Theorizing Theatrical Privilege: Rethinking Weimann's Concepts of Locus and Platea PART II: THEATRICAL WAYS OF KNOWING Staging Sight: Visual Paradigms and Perceptual Strategies in Love's Labor's Lost Imaginary Forces: Allegory, Mimesis, and Audience Interpretation in The Spanish Tragedy PART III: EXPERIENCING EMBODIED SPECTACLE Dancing and Other Delights: Spectacle and Participation in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth Artful Sport: Violence, Dismemberment, and Games in Titus Andronicus , Cymbeline , and Doctor FaustusTrade Review"Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance powerfully redirects our attention as scholars of early modern drama to the fact that the plays we discuss were performed before audiences carrying specific cultural assumptions about what it meant to engage in watching and listening to theatrical spectacle. This book is of value to scholars interested in performance theory more broadly but will also be useful to historicist scholars seeking to understand the nuances of bodies, actors, and representational drama converging in particular moments upon the early modern stage . . . Lin's analyses are sharp, provocative, and helpful for scholars seeking to approximate early modern ideological and social conditions of interpretative strategies in theater." - Journal of the Northern Renaissance "Lin's close-readings of the play are often penetrating . . . [Lin] does not overstate the claims she makes; she is cautious with numbers in particular. She is precise with her examples." - Shakespeare Jarhbuch "Lin's reading of early modern performance traditions and spectatorship serves as a valuable working model for scholars of drama seeking to marry rigorous historical investigations with critical theory. For those interested in reception theory, material studies, and early modern stage practices, Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance can be read productively alongside other studies in historical phenomenology as well as early modern audience and reception studies." - Theatre Survey ". . . Lin establishes that our theatrical experiences are radically different and how we enter into, perceive, and understand the dramatic stage has little in common with our ancestors . . . In assessing this 'theatrical language', Lin turns to the notion of materiality itself, something which she rightly points out has become a significant focus of Shakespearean studies . . . She emphasizes the role of the theatre and 'entertainment' in the construction of early modern lives, a role - and a visual vocabulary - that we need to learn in order to fully appreciate the differences, rather than the similarities of our play-words" Shakespeare Survey "In comparing [Cymbline's] representations of mutilation and dismemberment onstage with other accounts, such as the execution of criminals, accounts of martyrdom, and violent murders, Lin establishes the importance of the body, and how it (and its parts) may have been viewed by the audience." Year's Work in English Studies "...This is an important book for scholars of early modern drama in performance. It could also enrich the work of practitioners, and its examination of the psychology of audiences could benefit cognitive studies as well. Lin's work is engaging and at times even exciting: there is a sense that she is revealing hidden mysteries of the past, that the reader is entering the early modem playhouse as it once was. I wish that more scholars would engage in such meticulously informed speculation about practices that we can never fully recover through other means. Lin also provides convincing explanations for a number of puzzling spots in the plays. She is especially good at pointing out the blinders that modem scholars and practitioners wear because of their own cultural and theatrical assumptions." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England "Although Lin examines an impressive range of documents to construct historically situated interpretive paradigms, most astute are her analyses of episodes that critics have either ignored or explained through 'elaborate conjectures', such as the witches' dance in Macbeth and the irreverent stage play of bodily mutilation in Titus Andronicus (p. 157). Lin's work intervenes in the study of early modern drama and culture and shifts the conversation toward a focus on those who populated the offstage world of the play. These interpreters might well have considered Hamlet as the show with the exciting 'swordfight in the final act' and understood Doctor Faustus as a play that 'sports with severed limbs' (p. 164), and so, perhaps, should we." Theatre Research InternationalTable of ContentsPART I: PERFORMANCE EFFECTS Introduction: Materializing the Immaterial Theorizing Theatrical Privilege: Rethinking Weimann's Concepts of Locus and Platea PART II: THEATRICAL WAYS OF KNOWING Staging Sight: Visual Paradigms and Perceptual Strategies in Love's Labor's Lost Imaginary Forces: Allegory, Mimesis, and Audience Interpretation in The Spanish Tragedy PART III: EXPERIENCING EMBODIED SPECTACLE Dancing and Other Delights: Spectacle and Participation in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth Artful Sport: Violence, Dismemberment, and Games in Titus Andronicus , Cymbeline , and Doctor Faustus

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Book SynopsisWhen You Really Got Me' exploded on Swinging London in 1964, The Kinks forever changed the course of rock 'n' roll. Ray Davies and Joe Penhall's Olivier Award-winning Sunny Afternoon (2014) covers the band's formative years of 1964-7, when four working-class North London lads broke through to become one of the most unlikely and influential rock bands of the 1960s. Mixing the comic adventures of Dave the Rave' with the touching introspection of Ray's sometimes fragile psyche, Joe Penhall's script weaves Ray Davies' songs, both the hits and lesser-known works, into one of the finest jukebox musicals of the new millennium. Drawing on a wealth of background material, John Fleming examines the blend of events and songs selected, reconsidering the relationship between biography and drama to shed new light on The Kinks and the musical that tells their story.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Principal Players 2. Act One 3. Act Two Appendix A: Sunny Afternoon Fact Sheet Appendix B: The Songs of Sunny Afternoon Bibliography

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Book SynopsisShakespeare in Singapore provides the first detailed and sustained study of the role of Shakespeare in Singaporean theatre, education, and culture.This book tracks the role and development of Shakespeare in education from the founding of modern Singapore to the present day, drawing on sources such as government and school records, the entire span of Singapore's newspaper archives, playbills, interviews with educators and theatre professionals, and existing academic sources. By uniting the critical interest in Singaporean theatre with the substantial body of scholarship that concerns global Shakespeare, the author overs a broad, yet in-depth, exploration of the ways in which Singaporean approaches to Shakespeare have been shaped by, and respond to, cultural work going on elsewhere in Asia.A vital read for all students and scholars of Shakespeare, Shakespeare in Singapore offers a unique examination of the cultural impact of Shakespeare, beyond its usual footing in the Western world.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1: A Taste of Home – 1819 to 1900 Part 2: ‘A great and perceptive love’ – 1900 to 1942 Part 3: Shakespeare in the Final Days of British Rule – 1942 to 1963 Part 4: Playing Balthazar – 1963 to 1980 Part 5: ‘Not pukka’ – 1980 to 1990 Part 6: ‘If I profane with my unworthiest hand’ – 1990 to 2000 Part 7: ‘To shake the head, relent, and sigh’ – 2001 to 2019 …and exits Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance chronicles the history and development of theatre from the Roman era to the present day. As the most public of arts, theatre constantly interacted with changing social, political, and intellectual movements and ideas, and Robert Leach's masterful work restores to the foreground of this evolution the contributions of women, gay people, and ethnic minorities, as well as the regional theatres of Wales and Scotland.Highly-illustrated chapters trace the development of theatre through major plays from each period; evaluations of playwrights; contemporary dramatic theory; acting and acting companies; dance and music; the theatre buildings themselves; and the audience, while also highlighting enduring features of British theatre, from comic gags to the use of props. 

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Book SynopsisTragedy: The Basics is an accessible and up-to-date introduction to dramatic tragedy. A comprehensive guide for anyone undertaking a study of the genre, it provides a chronological overview and history of tragic theory. Covering tragedy from the classics to the present day, it explains the contextual and theoretical issues which affect the interpretation of tragedy, examining popularly studied key plays in order to show historical change. Including a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, Tragedy: The Basics is an ideal starting point for anyone studying tragedy in literature or theatre studies.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Greeks and Romans: Classical Tragedy Contexts: The Festival of Dionysus at Athens Aeschylus, The Oresteia Sophocles, Oedipus the King Sophocles, Antigone Euripides, Medea Euripides, Bacchae Contexts: Seneca and Roman Tragedy Seneca, Phaedra 2. ‘When the bad bleed’ ? Early Modern English Tragedy Contexts: Elizabethan Tragedy Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy and Revenge Tragedy Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus William Shakespeare, Hamlet Contexts: Jacobean Tragedy William Shakespeare, Othello William Shakespeare, King Lear William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi 3. Neo-Classicism, Restoration Tragedy and Sentimentality Contexts Jean Racine, Phaedra John Dryden, All for Love Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d 4. ‘From Hero to Victim’: Romantic Tragedy and After Contexts Heinrich von Kleist, The Prince of Homburg Georg Büchner, Woyzeck Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler 5. Modernism and Tragedy Contexts Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and her Children Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot 6. The Survival of Tragedy Contexts Edward Bond, Lear Howard Barker, Victory Tony Kushner, Angels in America Caryl Churchill, The Skriker Sarah Kane, Blasted.Conclusion Glossary References Index

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Book Synopsis''Everyone''s an abyss. You get dizzy if you look down.'' -- WoyzeckGeorg Büchner's Woyzeck was left unfinished at the time of its author's death in 1837, but the play is now widely recognised as the first modern' drama in the history of European theatre. Its fragmentary form and critical socio-political content have had a lasting influence on artists, readers and audiences to this day. The abuse, exploitation, and disenfranchisement that Woyzeck's titular protagonist endures find their mirror in his own murderous outburst. But beyond that, they also echo in the flux and confusion of the various drafts and versions in which the play has been presented since its emergence.In this fresh engagement with a modern classic, Gritzner examines the revolutionary dimensions of Büchner's political and creative practice, as well as modern approaches to the play in performance.Table of Contents1 Woyzeck the open wound2 History, politics, tragedy3 The fragmentary demand4 Woyzeck in performanceReferences Index

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Book SynopsisFor this updated edition of one of Shakespeare's most problematic plays, Tom Lockwood has added a new introductory section on the latest scholarly trends, performance and adaptation practices which have occurred over the last two decades.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Supplementary note; Textual analysis; Appendix: Shakespeare's use of the Bible in The Merchant of Venice; Revised reading list.

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Book SynopsisThe basic history of the Shakespearean editorial tradition is familiar and well-established. For nearly three centuries, men most of them white and financially privileged ensconced themselves in private and hard-to-access libraries, hammering out ''their'' versions of Shakespeare''s text. They produced enormous, learnèd tomes: monuments to their author''s greatness and their own reputations. What if this is not the whole story? A bold, revisionist and alternative version of Shakespearean editorial history, this book recovers the lives and labours of almost seventy women editors. It challenges the received wisdom that, when it came to Shakespeare, the editorial profession was entirely male-dominated until the late twentieth century. In doing so, it demonstrates that taking these women''s work seriously can transform our understanding of the history of editing, of the nature of editing as an enterprise, and of how we read Shakespeare in history.Trade Review'Fascinating insights into a hitherto unacknowledged contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare.' Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the RSC'I have read Molly Yarn's book with much pleasure and profit. It is full of interesting insights and sidelights and revealing sociological commentary. It is diligently and scrupulously researched, with a compelling narrative that brings together biography and bibliography (I love the phrase 'bio-bibliography') and foregrounds many hard working women editors, some of them leading multiple lives, who have been hitherto overlooked in the history of Shakespeare editing and criticism. She is not afraid, in her own word, to disclose the 'intimate' discoveries she has made, about herself and her subjects while working on this timely topic. It's an important and very readable contribution to Shakespeare studies.' Margaret Drabble'This is much more than a biography of forgotten and undervalued female editors of Shakespeare in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a biography of what we value (or decide not to value ) in textual studies; it is a gripping account of female education in the United States and the United Kingdom; it is a chronicle of social circles and patronage; and it is a collection of deftly-told stories. Together these ingredients make for a compelling and illuminating read.' Laurie Maguire, University of Oxford'Few scholarly studies combine original research that opens a whole new field of enquiry and fascinates the non-specialist reader with a topic that is both relatable and deeply moving. Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors' is one of them. Molly Yarn embarked on her search for women editors of Shakespeare, assuming she would find a handful beyond the few 'household' names known to Shakespeare specialists. In fact, her careful archival work has revealed the names, biographies, and editorial achievements of sixty-nine women who edited Shakespeare in the UK and the US before 1950. Readers of Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors' will find in this book the first sustained critical assessment of a small army of women, whose editorial labour was quite literally lost, due to the disqualifying effect of their gender. Yarn does not only recover their labour but shows how influential it is in complementing and redefining our understanding of the official editorial tradition of Shakespeare.' Sonia Massai, King's College London'Shakespeare's 'Lady Editors' is a quite wonderful book. With extraordinary skill Molly Yarn has retrieved the history of the work of generations of women editors of Shakespeare, the story of whose labours has largely been lost to scholarly history. Yarn's scholarship is deeply impressive, but it is worn lightly and her book is energetically written, immensely readable and deeply engaging. The volume is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history of Shakespeare editing and the over-looked role of generations of women scholars in helping to construct and reframe the Shakespeare text. A thoroughly excellent volume.' Andrew Murphy, Trinity College Dublin'Molly G. Yarn's meticulously researched monograph considers the numerous women who edited Shakespeare in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and thus shaped the history of Shakespearian transmission.' Georgina Wilson, Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsPrologue: The Mystery of Mrs Valentine; 1. 'We Have Lost Our Labour': Recovering Women Editors of Shakespeare; 2. 'It is My Lady's Hand': Female Collaborators and Ambiguous Literary Labour; 2a. Sidenote: On Women Editing Not-Shakespeare (or Not Editing); 3. 'Give Ear, Sir, to My Sister': Women Editors and Scholarly Networks in America; 3a. Sidenote: A Primer on Early Student Editions of Shakespeare; 4. 'This Story the World May Read in Me': Biography and Bibliography; 5.'We Happy Few': Women and the New Bibliography; Epilogue.

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Book SynopsisWhat is the nature of romantic love and erotic desire in Shakespeare''s work? In this erudite and yet accessible study, David Schalkwyk addresses this question by exploring the historical contexts, theory and philosophy of love. Close readings of Shakespeare''s plays and poems are delivered through the lens of historical texts from Plato to Montaigne, and modern writers including Jacques Lacan, Jean-Luc Marion, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou and Stanley Cavell. Through these studies, it is argued that Shakespeare has no single or overarching concept of love, and that in Shakespeare''s work, love is not an emotion. Rather, it is a form of action and disposition, to be expressed and negotiated linguistically.Trade Review'Schalkwyk's arguments are closely reasoned and insightful … Essential.' C. Baker, ChoiceTable of ContentsIntroduction. 1. Shaping fantasies; 2. Love's troubled consummations; 3. The impossible gift of love; 4. The finality of the you; 5. Is love an emotion?

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Book SynopsisFor this updated critical edition of King Lear, Lois Potter has written a completely new introduction, taking account of recent productions and reinterpretations of the play, with particular emphasis on its afterlife in global performance and adaptation. The edition retains the Textual Analysis of the previous editor, Jay L. Halio, shortened and with a new preface by Brian Gibbons. Professor Halio, accepting that we have two versions of equal authority, the one derived from Shakespeare''s rough drafts, the other from a manuscript used in the playhouses during the seventeenth century, chooses the Folio as the text for this edition. He explains the differences between the two versions and alerts the reader to the rival claims of the quarto by means of a sampling of parallel passages in the Introduction and by an appendix which contains annotated passages unique to the quarto.Trade Review'Only Lois Potter is capable of writing an introduction like this: she combines her vast experience of performance history with her unparalleled ability to read plays dramaturgically. As a result the introduction is as penetratingly astute on theme and structure as it is stimulating and eye-opening about theatre. No mere performance history, the introduction uses moments from production choices across the centuries to illustrate precise critical points, from the play's tragic crises to its general tone, from individual character to political atmosphere. Using her encyclopaedic knowledge of drama in performance, Lois Potter provides a brilliant hands-on guide to the play and an effortless introduction to theatre history.' Professor Laurie Maguire, University of Oxford'Lois Potter combines her unparalleled knowledge of Shakespeare in theatrical performance and her scrupulously scholarly attention to detail in the NCS King Lear. Her new introduction provides up-to-the-minute accounts of the play in performance while also offering a clear historical perspective. Potter describes the way productions of King Lear have changed over the course of the centuries and especially how current efforts to create more diverse theatrical casts have valuably added further dimension to the key issues of the play. Invaluably too, she provides an account of recent developments both critical, imaginative, and political, including eco-criticism and feminist criticism, re-writings of Shakespeare, as well as Lear in the global context. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the play.' Dympna C. Callaghan, University Professor and William L. Safire Professor in Modern Letters, Syracuse University'The updated New Cambridge critical edition of The Tragedy of King Lear provides a sensitive analysis of the afterlife of the play in a brand-new Introduction written by Lois Potter. There is … plenty in this Introduction to inspire new work on Lear … Potter's Introduction brings the edition and the play into the twenty-first century, and Gibbons' preface to Halio's 'Textual Analysis' helps to translate an edition ideal for graduate students and scholars of the play into an edition that will also appeal to readers approaching textual criticism for the first time.' Emma Depledge, Shakespeare SurveyTable of ContentsIntroduction; Textual Analysis; Preface by Brian Gibbons; Textual Analysis, Part 1; A Note on the Text; List of Characters; The Play; Textual Analysis, Part 2; Appendix: Passages Unique to the First Quarto; Reading List.

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Book SynopsisDavid Christenson is Professor of Classics at the University of Arizona, USA.Trade ReviewPlautus: Casina is an exceptional and extraordinary book. It exceeds my high hopes. I recommend it warmly to every teacher, student, library, and director interested in teaching, reading, or staging Plautus’ play. * The Classical Outlook *Christenson's reading of Casina justifies the popularity of this highly entertaining yet provocative comic drama of Plautus and illustrates its allure to audiences and actors across time. * CJ Online *This accessible and smart companion includes deft accounts of comic performance and nuanced discussions of social and historical context that bring Plautus’ play vividly to life for modern audiences. -- Catherine Connors, Professor of Classics, University of Washington, USAChristenson offers a clear, thoroughly informative explication of the Casina in translation, including figures of speech, cultural references, and even key Latin terms. Students will find a readable and reliable guide to the play’s historical and literary context. -- Ariana Traill, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USAAn engaging and accessible introduction to one of Plautus’ most unusual and entertaining comedies ... [This] book is a valuable resource for both students and scholars alike. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *This little book is a marvelous introduction to Plautus’ Casina that has much to offer undergraduates reading the play in the original or in translation. Its bibliography and synthesis of existing scholarship also make this text useful for graduate students looking to orient themselves in the discourse ... does what it sets out to do very well indeed.'' * Gnomon *Table of ContentsList of Titles and Abbreviations: Plautus’s Plays Preface 1. Introduction to Plautine Comedy 2. The Social-Historical Context 3. Casina in Performance 4. Main Themes 5. Reception Appendix: The Structure of Casina Notes Guide to Further Reading and Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisMark Ravenhill is one of the most distinctive contemporary UK playwrights. He burst on to the theatre scene in 1996 with the huge hit Shopping and Fucking. He has continued to garner critical acclaim for plays that include Some Explicit Polaroids, Mother Clap's Molly House, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, The Cut, Product, pool (no water), Citizenship, Ten Plagues, The Coronation of Poppea, Candide, Faust is Dead, Handbag, A Life in Three Acts, A Life of Galileo and Over There.Trade ReviewAn omen of the new century * Evening Standard *Harshly, wittily, Shopping and Fucking connects commerce and pleasure in graphic modern terms ... Ravenhill is one of the most arresting talents to have arrived in the British theatre during the 1990s * Financial Times *Plunges you into a world of disposability, disconnection and dysfunction, where relationships to be trusted have to be reduced to transactions ... Strong stuff * Independent *A contemporary classic * Sunday Telegraph *A theatrical phenomenon * Daily Telegraph *

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