Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

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Book Synopsis"The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer." -Geoffrey O'Brien, New York Review of Books A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author, this book is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. Preeminent literary critic-and ultimate authority on the western literary tradition, Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships: that Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.Trade Review"The most original literary critic in America." --The New York Times"No critic in the English language since Samuel Johnson has been more prolific." --The Paris Review"Bloom is all literature, (he) positively lives it." --Alfred Kazin

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Book SynopsisAt Work in the Early Modern English Theater: Valuing Labor explores the economics of the theater by examining how drama seeks to make sense of changing conceptions of labor. With the growth of commerce and market relations in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England came the corresponding degradation and exploitation of workers, many of whom made their frustrations known through petitions and pamphlets. Poverty affected all sectors of society in early modern England and many laborers, even London citizens from more prosperous trades, could expect to experience periods of impoverishment. This group of precarious laborers included actors and playwrights, many of whom had direct connections to London’s more established trades and occupations. Scholars have argued that dispossessed laborers turned to other forms of labor in lieu of their traditional livelihoods, including brigandage, piracy, begging, and cozening. To this list of alternative communities and applications of labor in the early modern period, Matthew Kendrick’s scholarship adds the London theaters. Each chapter is guided by the central premise that anxiety over the objectification and dispossession of labor in its various forms is enacted on stage, and that drama helps to formulate, by merit of the theater’s socioeconomic identity, an emerging laboring subjectivity engendered by the violent development of capitalism. As the nexus of a declining feudal social structure and an emerging capitalist regime of commodity production, a location in which dispossessed labor intersected with traditions of skilled labor and the unwieldy consumerist energies of the marketplace, the space of the theater was uniquely situated to channel and give dramatic form to the growing antagonisms and tensions that shaped labor. The stage offers a space in which to negotiate the value and meaning of labor in an increasingly exploitative society.Trade ReviewKendrick is willing to go father and be more explicitly in his Marxist analysis than has been typical of scholars writing on similar topics. Though this study is not the first to argue that the early modern period is more than simply a precursor to the development of oppositional classes during the industrial era, it makes a particularly thoughtful and often refreshingly polemical case that the absence of a fully formed bourgeoisie and proletariat during the period should not be confused with laborers' passivity to the commodification and alienation of their labor. * Comparative Drama *Kendrick’s book provides the reader with a clear outlook about labor and laborers in the early modern English theatre. * Sixteenth Century Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: The Theater between Craft and Commodity Chapter Two: Crafty Performance in City Comedy: Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour and Chapman, Jonson, and Marston’s Eastward Ho! Chapter Three: Casting Apprentices in Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle Chapter Four: Thinking with the Feet in Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday and Rowley’s A Shoemaker, A Gentleman Chapter Five: Labor and Theatrical Value on the Shakespearean Stage: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest Afterword: Performing Laboring Subjectivity Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe hundreds of biblical references in Shakespeare's plays give ample evidence that he was well acquainted with Scripture. Not only is the range of his biblical references impressive, but also the aptness with which he makes them. Hamlet and Othello each have more than fifty biblical references. No study of Shakespeare's plays is complete that ignores Shakespeare's use of scripture. The Bibles that Shakespeare knew, however, were not those that are in use today. By the time the King James Bible appeared in 1611, Shakespeare's career was all but over, and the Anglican liturgy that is evident in his plays is likewise one that few persons are acquainted with. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of the English Bibles of Shakespeare's day, notes their similarities and differences, and indicates which version the playwright knew best. The thorny question of what constitutes a valid biblical reference is also discussed. This study of Shakespeare's biblical references is not based on secondary sources. The author owned one of the world's largest collections of early English bibles, including over one hundred copies of the Geneva bible and numerous editions of other Bibles, prayer books, and books of homilies of Shakespeare's day. To be of real worth, a study of Shakespeare's biblical references should also enable the reader to determine which references Shakespeare borrowed from his plot sources and which he added from his own memory as part of his design for the play. The author studies every source that Shakespeare is known to have read or consulted before writing each play and has examined the biblical references in those sources. Shaheen then points out which biblical references in his literary sources Shakespeare accepted, and how he adapted them in his plays. This information is especially valuable when assessing the theological meanings that are sometimes imposed on his plays, meanings that often go beyond what Shakespeare intended or what his audience must have understood. Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays is considerably broader in scope than any other study of its kind and provides the scholarly checks and balances in dealing with the subject that previous studies lacked.

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Book SynopsisNo Laughing Matter is a wide-ranging collection of new studies of the comic theatre of Athens, from its origins until the 340s BCE. Fifteen international scholars employ an array of approaches and methodologies that will appeal to Classics and Theatre scholars while still remaining accessible to students. By including discussions of fragmentary authors alongside Aristophanes, the collection provides a broad understanding of the richness of Athenian comedy. The collection showcases the best of the new scholarship on Old and Middle Comedy, using the most up-to-date texts and tools. No Laughing Matter has been prepared in tribute to Professor Ian Storey of Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario), whose work on Athenian comedy will continue to shape scholarship for many years to come.Table of ContentsIntroduction - George Kovacs and C.W. Marshall Part I: Comedy and Athens 'From the Wagons', 'Parade Abuse' and the Ritual Context of Old Comic Invective - Eric Csapo (University of Sydney) Was Crates Criticizing Philosophy? The Case of the Thêria - David Konstan (Brown University) Will the Real Socrates Please Stand Up? - Hallie Rebecca Marshall (University of British Columbia) From Paracomedy to Metacomedy: Storey versus Sidwell on the Interaction between Aristophanes and Eupolis - - Keith Sidwell (University College, Cork/University of Calgary) Father-beaters and Avian Justice in Aristophanes' Birds - Judith Fletcher (Wilfred Laurier University) Politics and the City in Aristophanes' Lysistrata - S. Douglas Olson (University of Minnesota) Playing on Remorse: Arginousai, Theramenes and Aristophanes' Frogs - Arlene Allan (University of Otago) Part II: Comedy and Tragedy Pursuing Nemesis: Cratinus and Mythological Comedy - Jeff Henderson (Boston University) The Paratragic Muse: Aristophanes and Genre - Greg Dobrov (Loyola University of Chicago) The Eleusinian Mysteries and the Public Status of Comedy in Aristophanes' Frogs - Donald Sells (University of Toronto) Notes on Aristophanes' Frogs - Alan Sommerstein (University of Nottingham) The Slave's Tale: Cario's Narrative in Aristophanes' Wealth - Robert Tordoff (York University) Axionicus, The Euripides Fan - Elizabeth Scharffenberger (Columbia University) Timocles fr. 6 and the Consolations of Tragedy - Ralph M. Rosen (University of Pennsylvania) Index

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Book SynopsisWhen the seemingly perfect Tartuffe ingratiates himself with the wealthy Orgon and his mother Madame Pernelle, he is soon welcomed into their home and into their lives. His combination of charm, respectability and religious authority proves so irresistible that he is eventually promised the hand of Orgon’s daughter in marriage. But the rest of Orgon’s family have grave doubts – is there more to Tartuffe than meets the eye? When the threat of eviction for the family and imprisonment for Orgon become apparent, is it all too late to find out? This hilarious and irreverent whirlwind of lies, religious hypocrisy and family feuds features one of theatre’s most perfect comedy creations, the beguiling Tartuffe.

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Book SynopsisOntroerend Goed is a Belgian, Ghent-based theatre performance group of international renown. The group is made of young creators who explore the space between theatre and performance, writing their own texts from a strong basic concept and adapting familiar formats from various media. From sensorial experiences with blindfolded, individual audience members, over anarchistic teenage performances up to shows that profoundly explore what it means to be a theatre-goer, the group continues to create work that is equally challenging and treacherously shallow. A lot of contemporary plays cannot be experienced unless you’ve attended them and many of those performances are hard to transcribe on paper, because of their visual and physical nature. Of course, it’s always possible to make a video recording, but watching that is a diminished experi­ence. Although Ontroerend Goed embrace the ‘nowness’ of theatre and its visual and physical possibilities, the group wanted to take an extra step to share its work. In this book, Ontroerend Goed explore different forms to convey a theatrical experience on paper. Each performance has its own way of approaching the audience, so each text has its own way to address the reader. This book is not made to turn the page and docu­ment the performances as a past experience, but for people to use it as a tool. A tool to play, adapt, oppose, relive, challenge and inspire.Trade ReviewCovers similar territory to Tim Crouch's The Author in its examination of the role and responsibilities of the audience - undoubted power - fascinating and slippery. * Guardian on The Audience *This isn't a lecture, it doesn't have a message: and yet it looks very like the networked future of political theatre: cool, determined and inside the nerve centre of political thought. * Exeunt Magazine on All That Is Wrong *

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Book SynopsisTwo hapless understudies occupy their time backstage, trying to understand art, life, theatre and their precarious existence within it. Described as “delectable” by The New York Times and “gleefully absurd” by Time Out New York this hilariously witty comedy ponders Beckett, showbiz and just what on earth it’s all about. Turns out, the only people who truly understand Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, are the understudies.

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