Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

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Book SynopsisThis edition of As You Like It reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by four sets of primary documents and illustrations. Including pastoral poetry, ballads, diatribes, jest books, maps and woodcuts, the documents contextualizes a variety of themes exploring the joys and trials of rural life.Table of ContentsTo be confirmed.

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

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Book SynopsisA unique book of criticism that brings both theatre and film studies within a single theoretical framework

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Book SynopsisBased on the real events that took place in the ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria in 1946, this play tells how Simon Pilkings, a district officer, intervenes to prevent the ritual suicide demanded by the death of the King. There follow drastic repercussions in both indigenous and colonial communities.Trade Review'This rich turbulent piece, which starts as folk comedy and ends as Greek tragedy, takes on board an abundance of ideas: identity, tradition, the passage from life to death... Soyinka's play is as much philosophical as political.' Michael Billington, Guardian, 9.4.09 'Based on events in 1940s Nigeria, the story attains a more classically tragic power in showing two forces unable to understand each other. On one side there is the Yoruba culture, in which the death of a king is followed by the suicide of his favoured liegeman...on the other, the powers that be with their contrary code that suicide is illegal and to be prevented, even if it costs more lives.' Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 13.4.09 'Wole Soyinka's play is one of the great creations of twentieth-century theatre: it has the fire, grandeur, cruelty and humanity of Greek tragedy, the moral cutting edge of modern political thinking, and the African writer's take on his own people's values: loving mocking, ironical and ruthlessly observant... Soyinka writes with the moral ambivalence and relentless questioning of Shakespeare' John Peter, Sunday Times, 19.4.09

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Book SynopsisMartin McDonagh's first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was nominated for six Tony awards, of which it won four, and the Laurence Olivier Award. In 2003, his play The Pillowman had its world premiere at the Royal National Theatre and received the 2004 Olivier Award. In 2006, Martin McDonagh won an Oscar for his short film Six Shooter.Trade Review'The play combines manic energy and physical violence in a way that is both hilarious and viscerally exciting' Daily Telegraph 'Martin McDonagh is both a powerful writer of staying power and an individual talent within a powerful tradition ... His is a voice you will want to hear again.' The Sunday Times

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Book SynopsisThe Student Edition of Frayn's multi-award winning play includes a full commentary and notes.Trade Review"I think it's probably the best play about science ever written in English drama, because what it does is explicate science, the nuclear process, and relate it to a highly volatile emotional situation and more." The Guardian {Review}, May 31 2008 'It's [the] newborn sense of uncertainty - of strangeness, subjectivity and mystery at the heart of mathematics and science - that drives Michael Frayn's magnificent 1998 play Copenhagen.' Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 23.4.09 'Forget the physics. The greatest experiment in Michael Frayn's threehander is the dramatic form itself.' Mark Fisher, Guardian, 27.4.09 'Michael Frayn is one of the great playwrights of our time.' Play Collections- Contemporary Dramatists (December 2010)

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 2004. English stage comedy has weathered centuries of social and theatrical change. How did it survive? English Stage Comedy 1490â1990 is a unique and beautifully written study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late twentieth century. Organized thematically, it shows how this remarkably enduring genre has dealt with the tensions of social life, using its conventions as tools for social inquiry. Through an examination of comedy Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an approach through genre, neglected in recent criticism, can have much to say about our current concerns with the relations between literature and society. English Stage Comedy 1490â1990 surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as: Shakespeare, Jonson, Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Coward, Orton, Ayckbourn and many lesser-known figures.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Five centuries of a genre, 1 Getting control, 2 Watching society, 3 Loners, 4 Other places, 5 Parents and children, 6 Negotiations, 7 Comedy against itself, Conclusion

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 2002. This is Volume II of the collected works of G.Wilson Knight and this revised looks at the Shakespearian Tempest and includes a Chart of Shakespeare's Dramatic Universe.Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 The Histories, Early Tragedies, and Poems; Chapter 3 The Romantic Comedies; Chapter 4 The Tragedies; Chapter 5 The Final Plays; Chapter 6 Conclusion;

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Book SynopsisThis part of the G. Wilson Knight collected works, Volume VI looks at his view on Shakespearian production with special reference to the Tragedies.Table of ContentsPreface to the Third Edition [1963] Preface to the First Edition [1936] Part I [ 1936] I The Shakespearian Play II The Theory of Production III Some Actual Productions IV The Ideal Production With a 1963 addition V Shakespeare and Ritual Part II [1949 and1963] VI The Body Histrionic VII Timon of Athens and Shylock VIII Tree and Craig; Poel and Barker IX Contemporary Presentations With notes on the Filming of Shakespeare (1936;1963) X Afterthoughts, Postscript: The Stratford Ontario Festival

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Book SynopsisShakespeare's potent use of garden imagery has captivated successive generations of readers and inspired the making of gardens across the globe. Laced with quotations and abounding with illustrations drawn from sources including Elizabethan gardening books, embroidered fabrics and hand-coloured herbals, The Quest for Shakespeare's Garden tells the story of the Bard's own garden at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, revealing its place in garden history.Trade Review'This elegant little book takes on the character of a detective story as Strong […] uncovers the way Shakespeare became a gateway for early gardening historians' - Daily Telegraph'Artily produced [with] an unmissable text by Sir Roy Strong' - Robin Lane Fox, Financial Times'A total delight, rich with quotations and sumptuous images' - Birmingham Mail'Wholly original … thoughtfully illustrated' - Archives of Natural History

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Book SynopsisDr Tom Lockwood, Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.His article The Sheridans at Work' was awarded The Review of English Studies Essay Prize and his book Ben Jonson in the Romantic Age is published by Oxford University Press.

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Book SynopsisAuthoritative, surprising, evocative and original, Shakespeare: staging the world offers a completely new approach to one of the most exceptional creative imaginations in history.

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Book SynopsisThis book is new in the way it tackles the problem of imagining performances of Shakespeare as you read his plays.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; A note on style; Chronology; Introduction; How Shakespeare's works come down to us; Part One. Dramatic Genres; Chapter One. Comedies: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598); Transformation, translation, and plays to pass the time; Much Ado About Nothing; Soldiers turned lovers; Determining genre; Dirty jokes and sexual mores; Chapter Two. Histories: Richard 2 and Henry 5; This England; Providence; Serialized history and the Tudor Myth; The order of composition; What kind of king is Henry 5?; Chapter Three. Tragedies: Hamlet and Othello; Large and small affairs in Hamlet; Sex, suicide, and scepticism; Testing the supernatural; The character of Othello in isolation; The character of Othello in the world; Racial difference -- cultural difference -- multiculturalism; Chapter Four. Problem plays and Romances: All's Well that Ends Well and The Winter's Tale; Not Hamlet in a dress, nor Helen in breeches; Choosing among the men; Helen's quest; Unsuitable husbands; Do Hermione and Polixenes paddle palms?; The Winter's Tale as proto-novel; Summer/Winter -- Man/Woman -- Land/Class; Part Two. Critical Approaches; Chapter Five. Authority and authorship: Measure for Measure; History: Then; Proposing to Isabella; Being a nun; Meaning: Now; Recovering Shakespeare's version; Chapter Six. Performance: Macbeth; The witches; The timing of exits and entrances; The bipolar stage; The apparitions; Indeterminacy; Chapter Seven. Identities: The Tempest; The identity of Caliban; Nature/Nurture; The New World; Colonialism in general; Ariel as subaltern; Chapter Eight. Materialism: Timon of Athens; Base and superstructure; Timon as unaccommodated man; Money, gold, and g(u)ilt: Shakespearian alchemy; The second law of thermodynamics; The new materialism versus Gaia; Conclusion; Student Resources; Electronic Resources and Reference Resources; Glossary; Guide to Further Reading.

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Book SynopsisThis study looks at the epistemological significance of maternity in early modern England.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Note on the Text; List of Illustrations; Introduction: Constructing Maternal Knowledge; 1. Flesh and Stone: Dissecting Maternity in the Theatre of Anatomy; 2. The Cabinet of Wonders: Monstrous Conceptions in the Theatre of Nature; 3. Strange Labours: Maternity and Maleficium in the Theatre of Justice; 4. Speaking Stones: Memory and Maternity in the Theatre of Death; Postscript; Selected Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the development of contemporary theatre in the United States in its historical, political and theoretical dimensions. It focuses on representative plays and performance texts from the 1940s to the present that experiment with both form and content.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Chronology; Introduction; Chapter 1: Experimental Innovations After World War II; Chapter 2: Revisiting the American Dream; Chapter 3: African-American Theater: Voices from the Margins; Chapter 4: Avant-Garde Theater Groups: Revolutions in Performance; Chapter 5: Postmodern Presentations: Questioning Boundaries of Representation; Chapter 6: The Politics of Identity and Exclusion; Chapter 7: Fragmented Representations of American Identity in the Theater of the Vietnam War; Chapter 8: The 'NEA Four' and Performance Art: Making the Invisible Visible; Conclusion; Guide to Further Reading; Glossary.

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Book SynopsisIn these essays, brought together here for the first time, world-renowned critic Catherine Belsey puts theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction.Trade ReviewThese are essays of love, as well as about love, and this makes them unusually sensitive...Belsey's insistence on the anarchy of desire seems both timely and genuinely radical. -- Peter Holbrook Times Literary Supplement 'All of the essays attest to Belsey's career-long commitment to theory and its ability to deliver new ways of reading ! Her attention in this collection to materiality and wordplay is indicative of her considerable skills as a close reader. Shakespeare Survey These are essays of love, as well as about love, and this makes them unusually sensitive...Belsey's insistence on the anarchy of desire seems both timely and genuinely radical. 'All of the essays attest to Belsey's career-long commitment to theory and its ability to deliver new ways of reading ! Her attention in this collection to materiality and wordplay is indicative of her considerable skills as a close reader.Table of ContentsPreface; 1. Introduction: Practising with Theory; 2. Psychoanalysis and Early Modern Culture: Lacan with Augustine and Montaigne; 3. Love as Trompe-l'oeil: Taxonomies of Desire in Venus and Adonis; 4. Tarquin Dispossessed: Expropriation and Consent in The Rape of Lucrece; 5. Antinomies of Desire and the Sonnets; 6. Peter Quince's Ballad: Shakespeare, Psychoanalysis, History and A Midsummer Night's Dream; 7. The Illusion of Empire: Elizabethan Expansionism and Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy; 8. Making Histories Then and Now: Shakespeare from Richard II to Henry V; 9. The Case of Hamlet's Conscience; 10. Iago the Essayist; Notes; Index.

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Book SynopsisWithin a theoretical framework that makes use of history, psychoanalysis and anthropology, The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare''s Theatre explores the relationship of the public theatre to the question of what constituted the ''dead'' in early modern English culture.Susan Zimmerman argues that concepts of the corpse as a semi-animate, generative and indeterminate entity were deeply rooted in medieval religious culture. Such concepts ran counter to early modern discourses that sought to harden categorical distinctions between body/spirit, animate/inanimate - in particular, the attacks of Reformists on the materiality of ''dead'' idols, and the rationale of the new anatomy for publicly dissecting ''dead'' bodies. Zimmerman contends that within this context, theatrical representations of the corpse or corpse/revenant - as seen here in the tragedies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries - uniquely showcased the theatre''s own ideological and performative agency.Trade ReviewSusan Zimmerman delivers an elegant and concise reading of what it meant to be, or to present, or to observe, a dead body on the early modern Englih stage. -- Bruce Boehrer Zimmerman performs a tour de force of interpretation in this important book ... Advanced scholars will find it an indispensable contribution to the growing scholarship interrogating the significance of dead bodies on stage and page. A powerful demonstration of how Protestantism, anatomy, and drama were engaged in a struggle over the meaning to be attached to the material body...an illuminating exposition of theories of the corpse with an historical account of its shifting status...an outstanding project. -- Professor Peter Stallybrass, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania An ambitious project that represents a genuine extension of our understanding of the historical and theatrical contexts of these plays - Zimmerman provides a new and exciting theoretical framework in Walter Benjamin's treatment of tragedy. -- Professor John Drakakis, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling The considerable strengths of this book lie in its analysis of the effect of reformation ideology on the theater's representation of the corpse and Zimmerman's subtle invocation of pschoanalytic theory as a way of understanding early modern culture. Renaissance Quarterly ...a provocative and careful study ... it is clear from Zimmerman's considerable efforts in this study that there is a lively and far-reaching cultural life in the dead bodies she considers. The Sixteenth Century Journal An ambitious historicist combination of anthropology, medical history, religious and folk beliefs, and literary theory and criticism. Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance Susan Zimmerman delivers an elegant and concise reading of what it meant to be, or to present, or to observe, a dead body on the early modern Englih stage. Zimmerman performs a tour de force of interpretation in this important book ... Advanced scholars will find it an indispensable contribution to the growing scholarship interrogating the significance of dead bodies on stage and page. A powerful demonstration of how Protestantism, anatomy, and drama were engaged in a struggle over the meaning to be attached to the material body...an illuminating exposition of theories of the corpse with an historical account of its shifting status...an outstanding project. An ambitious project that represents a genuine extension of our understanding of the historical and theatrical contexts of these plays - Zimmerman provides a new and exciting theoretical framework in Walter Benjamin's treatment of tragedy. The considerable strengths of this book lie in its analysis of the effect of reformation ideology on the theater's representation of the corpse and Zimmerman's subtle invocation of pschoanalytic theory as a way of understanding early modern culture. ...a provocative and careful study ... it is clear from Zimmerman's considerable efforts in this study that there is a lively and far-reaching cultural life in the dead bodies she considers. An ambitious historicist combination of anthropology, medical history, religious and folk beliefs, and literary theory and criticism.Table of Contents; Chapter 1; Dead Bodies; (theoretical introduction: Bataille, Douglas, Kristeva, Lacan, Benjamin); Chapter 2; Body Imaging and Religious Reform: The Corpse as Idol; (historicist analysis of shifts in sacramental, iconographic, and theological imaging of the corpse from the late medieval to the early modern periods in England); Chapter 3; Animating Matter: The Corpse as Idol in The Second Maiden's Tragedy and The Duke of Milan; (includes analysis of English public theatre);; Chapter 4; Invading the Grave: Shadow Lives in The Revenger's Tragedy; and The Duchess of Malfi; (includes analysis of English funerary customs and the practice of anatomical dissection); Chapter 5; Killing the Dead: Duncan's Corpse and Hamlet's Ghost; Epilogue: Last Words.

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Book SynopsisThis authoritative and innovative volume explores the place of Shakespeare in relation to a wide range of artistic practices and activities, past and present.Trade ReviewThis remarkable collection is the most comprehensive and up-to-date Companion to Shakespeare ever assembled. With thirty essays all by distinguished or cutting-edge scholars, covering every significant mode of Shakespearean production and adaptation from the early modern period to the present, such as in music, comics, television, dance, visual arts, radio, film, as well as on the stage, there is no better book for undergraduate Shakespeare courses to contextualize and complement the Bard's own work. -- Professor Bryan Reynolds, University of California, Irvine This is a capacious book on a capacious subject: Shakespearean culture. From comic books to sculpture, poetic language to silent film, the Renaissance stage to the internet, this book shows the ways in which Shakespeare inhabits myriad art forms across time and space. Not only do the thirty topics covered by the contributors illuminate Shakespeare's use for novelists, poets, musicians, artists, dancers and filmmakers but they also locate Shakespeare in his own age and on his own stage. There is no Companion like this! -- Laurie Maguire, University of Oxford This remarkable collection is the most comprehensive and up-to-date Companion to Shakespeare ever assembled. With thirty essays all by distinguished or cutting-edge scholars, covering every significant mode of Shakespearean production and adaptation from the early modern period to the present, such as in music, comics, television, dance, visual arts, radio, film, as well as on the stage, there is no better book for undergraduate Shakespeare courses to contextualize and complement the Bard's own work. This is a capacious book on a capacious subject: Shakespearean culture. From comic books to sculpture, poetic language to silent film, the Renaissance stage to the internet, this book shows the ways in which Shakespeare inhabits myriad art forms across time and space. Not only do the thirty topics covered by the contributors illuminate Shakespeare's use for novelists, poets, musicians, artists, dancers and filmmakers but they also locate Shakespeare in his own age and on his own stage. There is no Companion like this!Table of ContentsIntroduction Mark Thornton Burnett, Adrian Streete and Ramona Wray Part 1: Shakespeare and the Book 1 Textual Shakespeare Sonia Massai 2 Shakespeare and Poetry Peter Holbrook 3 Shakespeare and the Novel Marianne Novy 4 Shakespeare and Translation Alexander C. Y. Huang 5 Shakespeare Anthologized Kate Rumbold 6 Shakespeare and Biography David Bevington Part 2: Shakespeare and Music 7 Shakespeare and Early Modern Music Christopher R. Wilson 8 Shakespeare and Opera Adrian Streete 9 Shakespeare and Classical Music Julie Sanders 10 Shakespeare and Musical Theatre Fran Teague 11 Shakespeare, Ballet and Dance Rodney Stenning Edgecombe 12 Shakespeare and Popular Music Adam Hansen Part 3: Shakespeare on Stage and in Performance 13 Shakespeare and Drama Lucy Munro 14 Shakespeare and the Renaissance Stage Edel Lamb 15 Shakespeare and the Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Stage Fiona Ritchie 16 Shakespeare and the Victorian Stage Richard Foulkes 17 Shakespeare and the Modern Stage Christie Carson 18 Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance Spaces Andrew James Hartley Part 4: Shakespeare and Youth Culture 19 Shakespeare for Children Amy Scott-Douglass 20 Shakespeare and Teenagers Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 21 Shakespeare and the Comic Book Michael P. Jensen Part 5: Shakespeare, Visual and Material Culture 22 Shakespeare, Portraiture, Painting, and Prints Erin C. Blake 23 Shakespeare, Sculpture and the Material Arts Balz Engler 24 Shakespeare Exhibition and Festival Culture Mark Thornton Burnett Part 6: Shakespeare, Media and Culture 25 Shakespeare and Silent Film Judith Buchanan 26 Shakespeare on Film, 1930-1990 Anne-Marie Costantini-Cornede 27 Shakespeare on Film, 1990-2010 Ramona Wray 28 Shakespeare on Television Stephen Purcell 29 Shakespeare and Radio Susanne Greenhalgh 30 Shakespeare on the Internet and in Digital Media Michael Best Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn these essays, brought together here for the first time, world-renowned critic Catherine Belsey puts theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction.Trade ReviewAll of the essays attest to Belsey's career-long commitment to theory and its ability to deliver new ways of reading ! Her attention in this collection to materiality and wordplay is indicative of her considerable skills as a close reader. Shakespeare Survey These are essays of love, as well as about love, and this makes them unusually sensitive...Belsey's insistence on the anarchy of desire seems both timely and genuinely radical. -- Peter Holbrook Times Literary Supplement All of the essays attest to Belsey's career-long commitment to theory and its ability to deliver new ways of reading ! Her attention in this collection to materiality and wordplay is indicative of her considerable skills as a close reader. These are essays of love, as well as about love, and this makes them unusually sensitive...Belsey's insistence on the anarchy of desire seems both timely and genuinely radical.Table of ContentsPreface; 1. Introduction: Practising with Theory; 2. Psychoanalysis and Early Modern Culture: Lacan with Augustine and Montaigne; 3. Love as Trompe-l'oeil: Taxonomies of Desire in Venus and Adonis; 4. Tarquin Dispossessed: Expropriation and Consent in The Rape of Lucrece; 5. Antinomies of Desire and the Sonnets; 6. Peter Quince's Ballad: Shakespeare, Psychoanalysis, History and A Midsummer Night's Dream; 7. The Illusion of Empire: Elizabethan Expansionism and Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy; 8. Making Histories Then and Now: Shakespeare from Richard II to Henry V; 9. The Case of Hamlet's Conscience; 10. Iago the Essayist; Notes; Index.

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Book SynopsisCombines historical rigour with an analysis of dramatic contexts, themes and formsThe 17 contributors explore the longstanding and vibrant Scottish dramatic tradition and the important developments in Scottish dramatic writing and theatre, with particular attention to the last 100 years.The first part of the volume covers Scottish drama from the earliest records to the late twentieth-century literary revival, as well as translation in Scottish theatre and non-theatrical drama. The second part focuses on the work of influential Scottish playwrights, from J. M. Barrie and James Bridie to Ena Lamont Stewart, Liz Lochhead and Edwin Morgan and right up to contemporary playwrights Anthony Neilson, Gregory Burke, Henry Adams and Douglas Maxwell.Table of ContentsIntroduction Ian Brown 1 Scottish drama until 1650 Sarah Carpenter 2 Public and private performance: 1650-1800 Ian Brown 3 Folk Drama in Gaelic Scotland Michael Newton 4 The National Drama and the Nineteenth Century Barbara Bell 5 Twentieth-Century Popular Theatre Paul Maloney 6 Drama, Language, and Late Twentieth-Century Literary Revival Randall Stevenson 7 History in Contemporary Scottish Theatre David Archibald 8 Translated Drama in Scotland John Corbett 9 J.M. Barrie R.D.S. Jack 10 The Mid-Century Dramatists Donald Smith 11 James Bridie, Theatre and Scotland Gerard Carruthers 12 Poets in the Theatre: Ure, Kay, Conn, Morgan Anne Varty 13 Women playwrights from the 1970s and 1980s Tom Maguire 14 The Traverse, 1985-1997: Arnott, Clifford, Hannan, Harrower, Greig and Greenhorn Steve Cramer 15 Liz Lochhead Ksenija Horvat 16 Identity and Difference in Post-Devolutionary Drama Trish Reid 17 The Experience and Contexts of Drama in Scotland David Hutchison Endnotes Further Reading Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisHow is it that biographies of Shakespeare can continue to appear when so little is known about him, and what is known has been in the public domain for so long? Why is it that a majority of the biographies published in the last decade have been written by distinguished Shakespeareans who ought to know better? This book aims to solve this puzzle.

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Book SynopsisIntroduces and analyses stage performances of texts by Italian Modernist writer Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italy's own Joyce. Includes the Italian texts (with English translation) and the dvd of the Italian performance (with English subtitles).

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Book SynopsisA study that examines the representation of gesture in modernist writing, performance and cinema. It provides close readings of major and neglected work by Kafka, Joyce, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Nabokov and Beckett, revealing their complex relations with both theatre and cinema.

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Book SynopsisThe book focuses on a philosophical trajectory that not only had a profound impact on critical thought of the 20th and now 21th centuries, but on cosmopolitan, contemporary culture more broadly and on artistic experiment and expression in particular.

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Book Synopsis Of the many dynamic, young playwrights to be associated with the In-Yer-Face burst of creative talent on the British stage in the mid-1990s, Joe Penhall has challenged Britain''s status quo the most. Penhall believes his plays should constantly provoke and enrage not only the institutions he targets, but also his audience. This critical book discusses the argumentative nature of Penhall''s plays, while also placing them within the context of contemporary British society and the modern dramatic tradition. His eight plays are discussed in detail, and particular attention is paid to male identity, the nature of grief, the variety of females, domestic drama, and the role of autobiography in his work.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisThis book reveals the philosophy which enabled Shakespeare to write of such universal themes as the harmony and disharmony between nations and princes, and the inner conflicts of mind and soul in men and women whose natures and desires are not confined to any particular age.

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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 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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Book SynopsisThis powerful anthology brings together reflective and raw plays by American playwrights surrounding the psychic and political boundaries of the many faces and shadows of terrorism. Allan Havis's introduction addresses a variety of terrorism cases from the last 25 years, examines several theories of the root causes of modern terrors, and underscores how theatre forms a unique contour to social and philosophical thought on terrorism. With a foreword from Robert Brustein, the anthology features: Break of Noon by Neil LaBute7/11 by Kia CorthronOmnium Gatherum by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-VassilarosColumbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen KaramWhy Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them by Christopher DurangTable of ContentsForeword by Robert Brustein Introduction by Allan Havis Break of Noon by Neil LaBute 7/11 by Kia Corthron Omnium Gatherum by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gestern-Vassilaros Columbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them by Christopher Durang

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Book SynopsisWith the recent turn to science studies and interdisciplinary research in Shakespearean scholarship, Shakespeare and Science: A Dictionary, provides a pedagogical resource for students and scholars. In charting Shakespeare's engagement with natural philosophical discourse, this edition shapes the future of Shakespearean scholarship and pedagogy significantly, appealing to students entering the field and current scholars in interdisciplinary research on the topic alongside the non-professional reader seeking to understand Shakespeare's language and early modern scientific practices.Shakespeare's works respond to early modern culture's rapidly burgeoning interest in how new astronomical theories, understandings of motion and change, and the cataloging of objects, vegetation, and animals in the natural world could provide new knowledge. To cite a famous example, Hamlet's letter to Ophelia plays with the differences between the Ptolemaic and Copernican notions of the earth's movemenTable of ContentsSeries Editor's Preface Abbreviations Introduction A-Z Bibliography Index

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