Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books
Edinburgh University Press ShakespeareS Body Parts
Book SynopsisThis book provides a sustained, formalist reading of the multiple body parts that litter the dialogue and action of Shakespeare's history plays.
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press Is Shylock Jewish
Book SynopsisIs Shylock Jewish' studies Shakespeare's extensive use of stories from the Hebrew Bible in 'The Merchant of Venice', and argues that Shylock and his daughter Jessica draw on recognizably Jewish ways of engaging with those narratives throughout the play.
£27.54
Edinburgh University Press VolponeS Bastards
Book SynopsisThrough studying Volpone's three bastard children, this book discusses how Jonson's comedies are built upon the tension between death, castration and nothingness on one hand, and the comic slippage of identities in the city on the other.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama
Book SynopsisThis revised edition examines how the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatise the Renaissance preoccupation with cosmetics.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama
Book SynopsisThis revised edition examines how the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatise the Renaissance preoccupation with cosmetics.
£22.79
Edinburgh University Press Reading the Road from Shakespeare to Bunyan
Book SynopsisThis book brings together thirteen essays, by both established and emerging scholars, which examine the most influential meanings of roads in early modern literature and culture.
£90.25
Edinburgh University Press Crime and Consequence in Early Modern Literature
Book SynopsisTraces the ways in which changing ideas about criminal sanction were reflected in and engaged with in early modern English society.Trade Review"A probing study of criminal law, punishment, and the narratives that seek to justify or challenge them. Hudson considers crimes such as perjury and counterfeiting, which raise questions about invention and imagination, and examines them in relation to a wide range of legal, literary, and theological works that pose similar questions." -Simon Stern, University of Toronto
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press Russian Futurist Theatre
Book SynopsisRussian Futurist Theatre exploresis the first book to comprehensively uncover the Russian futurist theatre in all its virtuosity and diversity.
£35.15
Edinburgh University Press The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism
Book SynopsisThe Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism presents a fresh perspective on received understandings of Irish modernism.
£153.00
Edinburgh University Press Immateriality and Early Modern English Literature
Book SynopsisExamines literary engagement with immateriality since the ?material turn? in early modern studiesProvides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine, and theologyEmploys an innovative organization around three major areas in which problem of immaterial was particularly pitched: Ontology, Theology, and Psychology (or Being, Believing, and Thinking)Includes wide-ranging references to early modern literary, philosophical, and theological textsDemonstrates how innovations in natural philosophy influenced thought about the natural world and how it was portrayed in literatureEngages with current early modern scholarship in the areas of material culture, cognitive literary studies, and phenomenologyImmateriality and Early Modern English Literature explores how early modern writers responded to rapidly shifting ideas about the interrelation of their natural and spiritual worlds. It provides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine and theology. Building on the importance of addressing material culture in order to understand early modern literature, Knapp demonstrates how the literary imagination was shaped by changing attitudes toward the immaterial realm.
£29.45
Edinburgh University Press Shakespeare and Montaigne
Book SynopsisIntroduces and explores a wide range of fresh approaches to comparative study of Shakespeare and Montaigne.Trade Review"Describing books as 'this world's theatre', Montaigne admitted his curiosity to read and thereby 'discover and know the mind of my authors'. This book's dynamic discoveries about the shared literary, historical and psychological sympathies of Shakespeare and Montaigne illuminates the mind and work of both. It is a field-changing collection. " -Emma Smith, University of Oxford
£28.49
Edinburgh University Press ShakespeareS Essays
Book SynopsisThrough sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives.
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press Irish Studies Now
Book SynopsisThis volume reflects on the pressing questions for Irish literary studies now. Contributors challenge assumptions within the field, seek to displace the canon, and define alternative paths. The collection reflects on where we have come from and the development of Irish studies both in the Irish University Review and internationally.
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press The Gentle Shepherd
Book SynopsisThe first full and consistent edition of Allan Ramsay's most influential text, The Gentle Shepherd.
£147.25
Edinburgh University Press Variable Objects
Book SynopsisDrawing on new materialism and object-oriented ontology, Variable Objects proposes that Shakespeare is a vibrant object replete with a variable energy that accounts for its infinite meaning-making capacity.Trade Review"This extraordinary collection will have a profound impact on Shakespeare and appropriation studies. Using object-oriented methodology, the authors develop a speculative approach that refigures Shakespeare as a vibrant, multifarious thing" that actively participates in the creation of limitless interpretations and appropriations. The volume opens up new possibilities for the field. "" -Lisa S. Starks, University of South Florida
£24.69
Edinburgh University Press Performing Conversion
Book SynopsisThis volume asks, how did theatrical practice shape the multiplying forms of conversion that emerged in early modern Europe?
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Performing Conversion
Book SynopsisThis volume asks, how did theatrical practice shape the multiplying forms of conversion that emerged in early modern Europe?
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press Samuel Beckett and Translation
Book SynopsisProvides valuable insight into one of the most exciting developments in Beckett Studies in recent years.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Reanimating Shakespeares Othello in PostRacial
Book SynopsisTraces the history of Othello's contemporary citations, adaptations, and appropriations across genres?Trade Review"Brilliant, stunning and illuminating, Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America provides vital interventions in Shakespeare studies and adaptation studies. Corredera's argumentation and prose are clear, compelling and very convincing. You will never read or see Othello in the same way again. A must read for all scholars and students of Shakespeare!" -Ayanna Thompson, Arizona State University
£80.75
Edinburgh University Press Sexual Desire and Romantic Love in Shakespeare
Book SynopsisAnalyses how far Shakespeare succeeds in reconciling two polarised areas in the early modern period: sexual desire, or will, and idealised approaches to romantic love.Trade Review"Joan Lord Hall opens a kaleidoscope in this riveting book, which combines sharp historical focus with a vista onto the endlessly moveable erotic possibilities in the poems and plays. This is a true labour of love, the distillation of a lifetime thinking through Shakespeare in his time and our own." -Richard Wilson, Kingston University
£29.45
Edinburgh University Press Hazarding All
Book SynopsisDemonstrates how theatre and theatricalisation serve as the indispensable means for creating a kind of consciousness that exits as an unmediated encounter with actuality.
£76.00
Edinburgh University Press Hazarding All
Book SynopsisDemonstrates how theatre and theatricalisation serve as the indispensable means for creating a kind of consciousness that exits as an unmediated encounter with actuality.Trade Review"In this brilliant pairing of plays, Sanford Budick demonstrates how Shakespeare achieves genuine intersubjectivity by negating the theatricalizing impulses of the ego. On every page of this profound and moving book, knowledge ripens into wisdom, which Budick has earned in a lifetime of serious dialogue with philosophy and literature." -Julia Reinhard Lupton, The University of California, Irvine
£19.94
Edinburgh University Press The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in
Book SynopsisExplores modernism's complex relationship with contemporary theatreTrade Review"The playful spirit of modernism is alive and well in this multi-faceted consideration of that movement's aftershocks on the contemporary stage. If modernism was a provocation and a rupture, this impressive assemblage makes it clear that it is one that is with us still, as theatre artists the world over continually strive to 'make it new'." -David Kornhaber, The University of Texas at Austin
£135.00
Edinburgh University Press Cormac Mccarthy Philosophy and the Physics of the
Book SynopsisExplains Cormac McCarthy's consistent philosophical preoccupations across the span of his literary output.
£85.50
Edinburgh University Press Cormac Mccarthy Philosophy and the Physics of the
Book SynopsisExplains Cormac McCarthy's consistent philosophical preoccupations across the span of his literary output.Trade Review"O'Connor's navigation of the sea of philosophical themes across McCarthy's corpus is exactly the intervention McCarthy studies needed. This lucid, path-breaking book does more than simply codify our sense of McCarthy's personal philosophy. It also helps to clarify what it means for any writer to write philosophical literature." -Chris Eagle, Editor of Beyond Reckoning: Philosophical Approaches to Cormac McCarthy
£18.99
Edinburgh University Press Touching at a Distance
Book SynopsisStudies the capacity of Shakespeare's plays to touch and think about touchTrade Review"Many distances are touched on in Johannes Ungelenk's brilliant new book: distances between actors onstage, between actors and audiences, between men and women, between political authorities and political minorities, between scholars and texts, between control and openness within one's self. Ungelenk's philology of touch" offers an inviting new approach to the practices of contemporary academic writing."" -Bruce R. Smith, University of Southern California
£85.50
West Margin Press All's Well That Ends Well
Book SynopsisAll’s Well That Ends Well (1607) is a comedy by William Shakespeare. All’s Well That Ends Well was likely inspired by the tale of Giletta di Narbona from Boccaccio’s Decameron. Unpopular during Shakespeare’s lifetime, the play remains one of his least staged works to this day. Despite this, scholars praise All’s Well That Ends Well for its moral ambiguity. “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues.” For his wit and wordplay alone, William Shakespeare is often considered the greatest writer to ever work in the English language. Where he truly triumphs, however, is in his ability to portray complex human emotions, how these emotions contribute to relationships, and how these relationships interact with politics, culture, and religion. In All’s Well That Ends Well, as in so many of Shakespeare’s works, love is the center of attention. When Helena heals the King of France, who had been suffering from a persistent illness, he allows her to choose a husband from among his closest advisors. She selects the handsome Bertram, who disdains her for her lowborn social status. Although they marry, he leaves for Italy before consummating their union, failing to suspect the lengths to which Helena will go to get what she desires. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.
£14.69
Hodder & Stoughton Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of
Book Synopsis'Invigorating ... engaging ... thrilling' Samantha Ellis, GUARDIAN'An astonishing tour-de-force . . . Juliet has found the biographer she deserves' Marion TurnerA cultural, historical, and literary exploration of the birth, death, and legacy of the ultimate romantic heroine - Shakespeare's Juliet CapuletJuliet Capulet is the heartbeat of the world's most famous love story. She is an enduring romantic icon. And she is a captivating, brilliant, passionate teenage girl who is read and interpreted afresh by each new generation.Searching for Juliet takes us from the Renaissance origin stories behind William Shakespeare's child bride to the boy actor who inspired her creation onstage. From enslaved people in the Caribbean to Italian fascists in Verona, and real-life lovers in Afghanistan. From the Victorian stage to 1960s cinema, Baz Luhrmann, and beyond.Sophie Duncan draws on rich cultural and historical sources and new research to explore the legacy and reach of Romeo and Juliet far beyond the literary sphere. With warmth, wit, and insight, she shows us why Juliet is for now, for ever, for everyone.'Deeply researched and wryly written, Searching for Juliet makes us think again about a character and a story we thought we knew' Robert Douglas-Fairhurst'Original, stylish, and compelling . . . It's a marvellous book, and one that delivers a powerfully inspiring message to the young Juliets of our own troubled times' Miranda Seymour'A powerful, witty, and provocative exploration of sex and gender, youth and age, love and death' Anna BeerTrade ReviewWitty and scholarly -- Jonathan Bate * Sunday Telegraph *Roving, animated . . . Duncan approaches her subject from all angles, turning Juliet like a gem in the light . . . [and] remains passionately alive to her subject, driven by a genuine affection for a teenager who has survived many attempts at clumsy marketing -- Sophie Elmhirst * Sunday Times *Invigorating . . . Duncan is an engaging guide to Juliet's complex afterlives . . . This book is crammed with interesting nuggets . . . What makes Searching for Juliet so thrilling is the way Duncan weaves all these threads into a compelling history of a singular heroine -- Samantha Ellis * Guardian *Witty and illuminating . . . Duncan is a genial guide and an excellent storyteller with an obvious devotion to her subject . . . Duncan's verve and curiosity, combined with her intimate knowledge of Shakespeare's play, carry the reader along. She has written a history of Juliet that is as vital and provocative as the character herself -- Kirsten Tambling * Literary Review *A buoyant account of Juliet's varied presence on stage and screen but also in real-life contexts as unlikely as Afghan warzones and Jamaican plantations . . . "We each see our own Juliet", Duncan maintains, and her book is richly informed by the ideological, commercial, political and personal motivations behind the many viewpoints she uncovers -- Margreta de Grazia * Times Literary Supplement *Deft, compelling and thoroughly researched * Prospect *I love the combination of authority, research, anger, and dry wit. Sophie Duncan shows us that Juliet has created templates for young women that are both enabling and stifling - and traces that paradox unflinchingly across slave plantations, teenage mental health, and the erotics of the beautiful dead girl. Searching for Juliet offers the play and its reception a fresh kind of attention: a sort of tough love which avoids sentimentality without becoming cynical. Really eye-opening -- Emma Smith, author of This Is ShakespeareShakespeare's Juliet represents far more than passionate but doomed teenage love, and in her brilliant new book Sophie Duncan shows us why. Deeply researched and wryly written, Searching for Juliet makes us think again about a character and a story we thought we knew -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, author of The Turning PointSophie Duncan's wonderful new book tells the story of the most famous love story of Western literature as you've never seen it before. This story is an astonishing tour-de-force . . . Duncan does not shy away from the dark side of this story but her absolute passion for the subject shines through on every page. Juliet has found the biographer she deserves -- Marion Turner, author of The Wife of Bath: A BiographyIn Verona, an office answers letters posted to Juliet from all over the world. At college, Romeo and Juliet is the top Shakespeare pick by students for their studies. Tracing Juliet's afterlife through many an enthralling by-way, Sophie Duncan begins this original, stylish and compelling narrative with the enthralling and sometimes poignant story of the boy actors and young women who first took on the role of Shakespeare's first eponymous - and wonderfully spirited - heroine. It's a marvellous book, and one that delivers a powerfully inspiring message to the young Juliets of our own troubled times -- Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean RhysBreathtaking in its range, this is far more than a deep dive into an ocean of Juliets (although it is, gloriously, that): it is a powerful, witty, and provocative exploration of sex and gender, youth and age, love and death -- Dr Anna Beer, author of Eve Bites Back: An Alternative History of English LiteratureBursting with energy, wit, and page-turning satisfaction, Sophie Duncan's book unpacks the rich, and sometimes uncomfortable cultural history of Shakespeare's Juliet -- Gilli Bush-Bailey, author of Treading the Bawds: Actresses and Playwrights on the Late Stuart StageSophie Duncan uses her expertise in theatre history to give us both a biography of Shakespeare's Juliet and a capacious cultural study of people and politics. Duncan takes us from Shakespeare's stage through plantation slaves to Mussolini's Italy. She writes with wit and acumen, so that the story of Juliet across the centuries is imbued with personality and compassion. This is an extraordinary achievement -- Laurie Maguire, author of The Rhetoric of the Page
£22.50
Theatre Communications Group Inc.,U.S. Thinking Shakespeare: A working guide for actors,
Book Synopsis
£21.84
Africa World Press Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Drama And The Kamiriithu
Book SynopsisAn in-depth study of the African activist theater and the context of the Ngugi plays.
£29.71
Africa World Press African Women And Representation: From
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Africa World Press Emerging Perspectives On Akinwumi Isola
Book SynopsisAn in-depth examination of one of Nigeria's leading creative writers - Akinwumi Isola.
£31.96
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc How and Why Stories for Readers Theatre
Book SynopsisHow did the bee get his bumble? How do birds get their feathers? Why is the bluebird blue? Curious first through fifth graders want to know how and why things happen! Judy Wolfman has created 40 Readers Theatre scripts based on imaginative and creative porquoi stories that stem from multicultural folktales as well as Native American Indian legends that attempt to give the answers to these how and why questions. An introduction explains what Readers Theatre is, where, and when it may be used, and suggestions for using it. The 40 scripts are short, with appropriate vocabulary and sentence structure for young readers.
£25.00
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 'What May Words Say . . . ?': A Reading of the
Book Synopsis"What May Words Say…?" A Reading of The Merchant of Venice contains, in a form resembling a running commentary, a comprehensive and in many respects unconventional interpretation of The Merchant of Venice. The play's development of ideas is unfolded in a literary analysis that focuses on the poet's words in their philological, historical, and philosophical contexts. What the words say is that the play is dominated by the three Delphic maxims, Know thyself, Nothing too much, and Give surety and harm is at hand. Within the intellectual and ethical compass of these tenets the two-stranded action of the play is developed, and the question why Shakespeare added the story of the caskets to the story of the bond is answered by the words law and choice, which are as closely connected semantically as the two stories are interrelated in the dramatic structure. The self-knowledge achieved in the musical cadence of the play is everyone's seeing God's image in the other person, and the law finally chosen is forgiveness.Trade ReviewAsks political and moral questions useful for students. * American Behavioral Scientist *Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Beginning to read Chapter 3 Act 1. The Merchant and the Maxims Chapter 4 Act 2. Departure Chapter 5 Act 3. The Choice Chapter 6 Act 4. The Trial Chapter 7 Act 5. Homecoming Chapter 8 Retrospect Chapter 9 Bibliography Chapter 10 Index
£87.00
Rowman & Littlefield Reading What's There: Essays on Shakespeare in
Book SynopsisStephen Booth has, for over forty years, proposed a distinct understanding of how Shakespeare’s plays and poems work upon us and a unique and rigorous way of reading them. The essays here reflect his insights and method and are meant both to recognize his monumental achievements as a critic and to suggest the enduring value of his work to Shakespeare scholarship. The first chapter explains both the method and the strengths of Booth’s approach to Shakespeare. The next two—on Romeo and Juliet and The Rape of Lucrece—demonstrate Booth’s way of reading Shakespeare. The following four chapters develop Booth’s contention that Shakespeare often sets “audiences to watch—or, rather, to try to watch—a play other than the one he shows them.” The next two chapters look at textual problems from Booth’s perspective and explore the challenges editors face in their attempts to establish authentic texts for modern readers. The last three chapters focus on teaching and include a description of Stephen Booth’s teaching practices and his own renown explanation, through a commentary on Philip D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go!, of the way poetry works upon its readers and the reasons they value it highly. The book concludes with a bibliography of Stephen Booth’s work.Table of ContentsIntroduction Michael J. Collins The Interpretive Fallacy Mark Womack What Passed wasn’t Prologued: False Advertising in Romeo and Juliet Brett Gamboa Mutatis Non Mutandis: The Reading Mind and Its Autocorrect Function in The Rape of Lucrece Nicholas Nace On the Final Songs in Love’s Labors Lost Michael Goldman The Second Part of Henry IV: Expectation and Disappointment James Hirsh Naughty Orators: the Knotty Discourse of All's Well that Ends Well Ralph Alan Cohen The Tragic Dimension in Shakespeare’s Comedies Jay L. Halio Leonato and Beatrice at 5.4.97 of Much Ado About Nothing Margaret C. Maurer Mistakes were Made: Errata in Early Modern English Playbooks Thomas Berger Teaching Shakespeare’s Sonnets the Boothian Way Laurie Ellinghausen Taught by a Teacher to Teach: A Personal History or What I Learned from Stephen Booth Louisa Newlin Go, Dog. Go!: A Lesson on the Pleasures of Language Michael Ellis-Tolaydo A Bibliography of the Work of Stephen Booth Brett Gamboa and Michael J. Collins About the Contributors
£999.99
53rd State Press Particle and Wave: A Conversation
Book SynopsisIn a roving, shimmering conversation that took place in May 2021, scholar, poet, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs and playwright, songwriter, performance artist, and educator Daniel Alexander Jones discuss love as a foundational principle of artistic practice and societal change. Reflecting on Love Like Light, Daniel Alexander Jones's collection of seven plays and performance texts (published by 53rd State in July 2021), DAJ and APG illuminate the ways in which an attention to care, community, nuance, invitation, perceptual particularities, and embodied conditions can resist the profoundly extractive context in which life is lived and art is made. As they discuss the work of Audre Lorde, Billie Holiday, Beah Richards, Bayard Rustin, and Malcolm X, as well as that of DAJ's grandma Daisy Mae and APG's grandmother, aunt, and niece, DAJ and APG propose that love, like light, suffuses everything, and that love, like light, creates a field in which transformation, justice, healing, and radical beauty are not just possible—they are already, now.
£13.15
Aurora Metro Publications The Trial, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony:
Book SynopsisThree distinctive adaptations from a master of total theatre, Steven Berkoff fuses all the elements of drama together in a whole theatrical experience. Combining movement and mime with text to achieve a heightened dramatic intensity, Berkoff takes Kafka's stories and transforms them into a powerful dramatic expression of the inhumanity which plagued the twentieth century and continues unchecked today.Trade Review"Berkoff has a master's ear for vocabulary and rhythm. Everything is heightened - physically, emotionally, intellectually... There's so much to work with and draw from." - Theatre Weekly; "Throughout the play, you find yourself relating to both Gregor, as the one being isolated, but also to his family members who are the cause of that. That makes the show eerily relatable, and it's this quality that allows you to ponder the topic on a deeper level." - everything-theatre.co.uk; "The totality of alienation was stressed through the theatre of shadows. [The family's] greed and stupidity were the forces that concealed, distorted and destroyed what was essential in human nature." - Theatre JournalTable of ContentsSteven Berkoff Author biography Bibliography of Steven Berkoff Foreword by Cheryl Robson preface to The Trial by Steven Berkoff The Trial by Franz Kafka adapted for the stage by Steven Berkoff preface to Metamorphosis by Steven Berkoff Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka adapted for the stage by Steven Berkoff preface to In the Penal Colony by Steven Berkoff In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka adapted for the stage by Steven Berkoff Steven Berkoff Awards
£14.24
Benediction Classics Romeo and Juliet
£13.87
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare's Immortal
Book SynopsisAngela Thirlwell explores the fictitious life and the many after-lives of Rosalind, Shakespeare's progressive new heroine, and her perennial influence on drama, fiction and art. The book ranges widely across Tudor history, theatre history, sexual politics, autobiography, art history and filmography. This highly original 'biography' of Rosalind - Shakespeare's greatest female creation - contains exclusive new interviews with Juliet Rylance, Sally Scott, Janet Suzman, Juliet Stevenson, Michelle Terry, award-winning director Blanche McIntyre, as well as insights from Michael Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Greg Doran, Rebecca Hall, Adrian Lester, Pippa Nixon, Vanessa Redgrave and Fiona Shaw.
£24.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Ulysses
Book SynopsisLeopold Bloom’s odyssey is a pandemonium of live music, puppets, dancing, clowning, bowler hats and kazoos. It’s Ulysses as you’ve never imagined it before, a superbly theatrical homage to Joyce’s chronicle of Dublin life and the greatest novel of all time. With his wife Molly waiting in bed for the nefarious Blazes Boylan, Leopold Bloom traverses Dublin, conversing in pubs, graveyards and brothels, enduring ridicule and prejudice as he steadfastly clings to his principles and subtly slays his dragons while drawing ever closer to his fateful encounter with the young Stephen Dedalus.
£999.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Strange Fruit
Book Synopsis"I go half way round the world and back thinking I’d made some sort of discovery and come back to find the same damn lies, the same white lies, the same black lies." Alvin and Errol can’t picture much of a future for themselves. They’re young, Black and living in England in the 1980s, with an entire country and political system set against them. Instead they focus firmly on their past – the sunny Caribbean and heroic father they left behind when their mother brought them to England twenty years ago. But when Alvin returns home from his grandfather’s funeral a new version of their past emerges, and the two brothers are caught in a desperate struggle to unearth the truth about their existence. Powerful and compelling, Strange Fruit by Caryl Phillips (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) is the story of a family caught between two cultures, and the uncrossable no man’s land that can come between parents and their children.
£999.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Land Without Dreams
Book SynopsisThis Is A Play About The Future (And Climate Change. Not Insomnia.) A woman walks onto the stage. She says she is from the future. She says that we have stopped dreaming. She says we can change everything. She says that she can help end all our dystopian nightmares. But we know plays don’t change the world. Right? Land Without Dreams is a hopeful, funny and courageous new show by experimental Copenhagen-based theatre company Fix&Foxy. Their previous works include radical versions of Pretty Woman, Twin Peaks, and Friends.
£999.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Shakespeare: The Theatre of Our World
Book SynopsisIn 1623 the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell assembled Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, better known as The First Folio. In doing so they preserved literature's most dramatically vital and poetically rich account of our human world. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and performers, Shakespeare's inexhaustible work has remained abreast of contemporary concerns ever since, and it continues to hold a mirror up to the nature of our troubled society and our contradictory selves. The plays accompany us through the ages of mankind, from comic springtime to wintry age, compressing our life in time into the three hours' traffic of the stage; the characters in them have shaped the way we think about politics and war, consciousness and morality, love and death. Peter Conrad examines the world-view of the plays, their generic originality and their astonishingly inventive language. He goes on to explore Shakespeare's global legacy as his characters migrate to every continent and are reinvented by later writers, painters, composers, choreographers and film-makers.Trade ReviewThe success of Peter Conrad's Shakespeare [...] lies in the balance it strikes between personal, confessional, emotional responses such as Flaubert's, and more critical perspectives * TLS *
£17.09
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Letters to a Jobbing
Book SynopsisA wonderful book for aficionados, actors, academics, and audiences alike. This is a unique introduction and guide to Shakespeare’s life and times, a uniquely modern take on Shakespeare by a man uniquely qualified to write about him. Imagines Shakespeare having to deal with the attitudes of modern times.
£14.87
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Whiter than Snow & Diary of an Action Man
Book SynopsisTwo plays for young people by one distinctive voice. Diary of An Action Man and Whiter Than Snow reveal an imagination that has raised the writer Mike Kenny onto the international stage. Renowned for producing multi-layered, stimulating children’s plays, his work often also appeals to adults. Refreshingly bold, adeptly sculpted and highly original, these texts draw audiences into the real myths of childhood and challenge our perceptions of normality. Whiter than Snow opened at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich in March 2009 in a production by Graeae.
£12.58
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Mapping Shakespeare: An exploration of
Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeare’s lifetime (1564–1616) spanned the reigns of the last of the Tudors, Elizabeth I and the first of the Stuart kings, James I and the changing times and political mores of the time were reflected through his plays. This beautiful new book looks at the England in which Shakespeare worked through maps and illustrations that reveal the way that he and his contemporaries saw their land and their place in the world. It also explores the locations of his plays and looks at the possible inspirations for these and why Shakespeare would have chosen to set his stories there.
£18.75
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Women Beware Women: A critical guide
Book SynopsisThis is a comprehensive introduction to Thomas Middleton's "Women Beware Women" - introducing its critical history, performance history, the current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play. Thomas Middleton's intense study of betrayal, corruption, lust and violence, "Women Beware Women", is one of the revenge tragedies most commonly studied and performed today. This guide offers students an introduction to its critical and performance history, including notable stage productions, TV, audio and film versions and dramatic and text adaptations. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research. "Continuum Renaissance Drama" offers practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performative contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Each guide introduces the text's critical and performance history but also provides students with an invaluable insight into the landscape of current scholarly research through a keynote essay on the state of the art and newly commissioned essays of fresh research from different critical perspectives.Trade ReviewThis comprehensive collection of essays, beginning with Andrew Hiscock's historical account of Women Beware Women, combines fresh research, provocative new interpretations and a useful account of performances of one of Middleton's most powerful plays. Such established scholars as Helen Wilcox, Robert C. Evans and Coppelia Kahn join new voices for pioneering work on a major English playwright. -- Arthur F. Kinney, Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary History and Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amhers, USAWomen Beware Women: A Critical Guide provides a comprehensive critical and historical overview of the play, as well as views on the genre, the teaching of the text, and the performance techniques employed in staging the play. -- Gul Kurtulus * Sixteenth Century Journal *Table of ContentsSeries Introduction; Timeline; Introduction; 1. The Critical Backstory, Robert Evans (Auburn University at Montgomery, USA); 2. Performance History, Paul Innes (University of Glasgow, UK); 3. The State of the Art - Current Critical Research, Joost Daalder (Flinders University, Australia); 4. New Directions 1: Edward Gieskes (University of South Carolina, USA); 5. New Directions 2: Coppelia Kahn (Brown University, USA); 6. New Directions 3: Anne McLaren (University of Liverpool, UK); 7. New Directions 4: Helen Wilcox (University of Wales Bangor, UK); Resources. Liz Oakley-Brown (University of Lancaster, UK); Notes on Contributors; Index.
£31.99
Nick Hern Books I Am Shakespeare
Book SynopsisA fascinating, witty and characteristically exuberant dramatic exploration of the Shakespeare authorship debate. Is it possible that the son of an illiterate tradesman, from a small market town in Warwickshire, could have written the greatest dramatic works the world has ever seen? It’s a question that has puzzled scholars, theatre practitioners and theatregoers for many years. The philosopher, Francis Bacon; the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere; and Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke: all of them have been put forward as the real author of the plays. But why would they hide behind an anonymous actor? Who was the real Bard of Stratford? Why should we care? Mark Rylance is one of a number of leading actors who seriously question the idea that William Shakespeare was the man behind the thirty-seven plays that have moved, inspired and amazed generations. First performed at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, in 2007, and subsequently on tour, Rylance’s provocative play introduces us to four candidates and their respective claims – whilst asking fundamental questions about what makes a genius, and why it all matters anyway.Trade Review'Witty, gloriously funny and wonderfully well-written… the best thing I have seen for years' * The Stage *
£10.44
