Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisBeginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new...Trade ReviewA comprehensive and readable guide that will be the standard work for many years to come. * Times Literary Supplement *Carlson has taken on the monumental task of abstracting the major theoretical statements on the theater from the Greeks to the present. He cogently summarizes the texts, drawing comparisons freely while avoiding evaluation. The book's organization is historical, with national divisions until the 20th century, at which time all countries are considered together within much more finely defined time limits. This is a much needed book. * Choice *The coverage in Theories of the Theatre is remarkable. It is already difficult to imagine seriously undertaking theatre studies without this volume in a prominent place on one's shelf. * Theatre Survey *

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Book SynopsisKuriyama's new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.Trade ReviewAlthough Kuriyama devotes plenty of space to the writer's posthumous progress,... the real value of her book lies in the prevailing skepticism with which she treats her subject: the documentary evidence and the conspiracy theories favored throughout the past century. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement *Constance Brown Kuriyama's new book on Christopher Marlowe offers a refreshing counter to some of the more speculative and conspiracy-theory oriented works of literary biography on the young playwright. In her methodological introduction she presents a candid and honest overview of the demands and pitfalls of biographical writing and illustrates some of the dangers for Marlowe scholarship of valorizing a documentary-based approach without considering the immediate context of chosen primary materials.... Kuriyama's book is clearly presented with chapters structured around successive stages of Marlowe's personal development.... As a readable introduction to the playwright's life this book offers students a highly commendable combination of both primary and secondary material. -- Matthew Woodcock * Sixteenth Century Journal *Double agents, barroom brawls, counterfeit coins, paid informants, hired henchmen, intelligence networks spanning foreign locales, and dashing gents sent on clandestine missions for Her Majesty's secret service—descriptions from the most recent James Bond film? No, just some of the disputed details from Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography of Christopher Marlowe.... My own sense is that the actual 'facts' of the poet and playwright's life lie somewhere between the wild speculations of Marlowe's more imaginative biographer's and Kuriyama's necessary and important corrective to them. -- Robert Sawyer * South Atlantic Review *In this more speculative life of Marlowe, Kuriyama provides insightful details into English education, politics, and religion during the Renaissance. * Library Journal *Kuriyama has written a smart 'life' shot through with learning—a timely look at the most notorious early modern 'badboy' and his reputation. * Studies in English Literature *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Canterbury Tale 2. Fetching Gentry from the University 3. Commencing M.A.: Acquaintances, Friends, and Connections 4. A Poet's Life in London 5. Lord Strange and Thomas Walsingham 6. Fortune Turns Base 7. A Trim Reckoning 8. The Dead Shepherd 9. Marlow Lost and FoundAppendix: Transcriptions and Translations of Selected Documents References Index

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Book SynopsisHow should a literary scholar approach a text characterized not by stability but by variation and flux? This book offers a radical new perspective on the limits—and the accomplishments—of the modern traditions of textual criticism in classics. Sean...Trade Review"Iphigenias at Aulis is an outstanding piece of scholarship. It is sure to be a defining work on the cutting edge of a new and burgeoning trend across the humanities and within classical studies as well. The theory is sound, the thesis is daring, the scholarship impeccable, and the readings inventive and convincing." -- James I. Porter, University of Michigan"Sean Alexander Gurd reconfigures textual criticism as a field through which some of the most pressing questions in the interpretation of literature can be traced. This transformation of classical philology is achieved in a thorough analysis of what is, without doubt, the most complicated, textually, of all the Greek tragedies, Iphigenia at Aulis. Gurd's groundbreaking analysis shows how the textual criticism of this play provides the basis for what he calls a 'radical philology.' In this approach not only is the invigoration of Classical textual criticism at stake but also the invigoration of Classical literature and the history of its reception." -- David S. Ferris, University of Colorado

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Book SynopsisRevising our understanding of music's relationship to language and literature in Renaissance England.Trade ReviewOrtiz's goal is to reexamine all the concepts related to and about music in Renaissance England and specifically to argue that Shakespeare challenges many of the concepts that were carried over from medieval notions and viewpoints.... It is a fascinating approach and historical perspective that has been lost on previous scholarship in this area.... This is an important contribution to musicological, historical, and Shakespearean studies. -- Bradford Lee Eden * Sixteenth Century Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Disciplining Music 1. Titus Andronicus and the Production of Musical Meaning 2. "Her speech is nothing": Mad Speech and the Female Musician 3. Teaching Music: The Rule of Allegory 4. Impolitic Noise: Resisting Orpheus from Julius Caesar to The Tempest 5. Shakespeare's Idolatry: Psalms and Hornpipes in The Winter's Tale 6. The Reforming of Reformation: Milton's A MaskeSelected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisHeather Hirschfeld recovers the historical specificity and the conceptual vigor of the term "satisfaction" as used in dramas of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Trade ReviewHirschfeld's readings are consistently imaginative and challenging. Her book is the product of wide reading and deep and sustained thinking and does enough to satisfy this reader. -- Kennth J.E. Graham * Early Theatre *One mark of a good critical book is that it creates a minifield and brings together disparate scholarship into new connections. This characterizes Heather Hirschfield's new book, which coalesces around the term "satisfaction." If the subject were only the satisfaction for sin discussed by theology, the result might be predictable. But Hirschfield connects theological satisfaction with an unexpected context, the Rolling Stones’ "I can’t get no satisfaction," a playful connection that is, in fact, productive. -- Dennis Taylor * Renaissance Quarterly *Part of the book's achievment is that the questions it continually seems to elicit from the reader are as suprising as Hirshcfield's own argument is provocative.... The End of Satisfaction makes a real contribution to our sense of how changing theologies of penitence were registered by the culture—and especially drama—of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. -- William Junker * Comparative Drama *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Where's Satisfaction? 1. "Adew, to all Popish satisfactions": Reforming Repentance in Early Modern England 2. The Satisfactions of Hell: Doctor Faustus and the Descensus Tradition 3. Setting Things Right: The Satisfactions of Revenge 4. As Good as a Feast?: Playing (with) Enough on the Elizabethan Stage5. "Wooing, wedding, and repenting": The Satisfactions of Marriage in Othello and Love’s Pilgrimage Postscript: Where’s the Stage at the End of Satisfaction?

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Book SynopsisSophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is the most famous of ancient tragedies and a literary masterpiece. It is not, however, the only classical dramatization of Oedipus' quest to discover his identity. Between four and five hundred years after Sophocles' play...Trade Review"Among the dozens of translations of the Oedipus tragedy available, very few provide the kind of close, elegant reading this one does, for both staging and teaching. Ahl recreates the authentic political and religious context for the often erroneously channeled Freudian take on the old identity vehicle, while paying scrupulous attention to the original language.... This is a new rendering for a new generation.""Elegant, polished, easily readable and—no mean feat—performable, Frederick Ahl's versions of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus—and Seneca's Oedipus—are likely to advance to the forefront of modern translations of these plays and to point the way for future work. Ahl is laudably clear and nontechnical. His book addresses the needs of college and university instructors and will appeal to general readers and stage professionals as well." -- Martin M. Winkler, George Mason University"Our view of Oedipus Tyrannus, the finest of all Greek tragedies, has been colored by Renaissance reception of the Senecan Oedipus, much better known until a couple of centuries ago. Frederick Ahl has successfully freed Sophocles' play from modern 'interference' as well as from Freudian misapprehension and error. He has also gone a long way toward placing Oedipus Tyrannus in its original political and religious context, and makes a case for seeing Oedipus as a product of Augustan Rome. The translations are superb: close, and not merely literal, but literate. A landmark in scholarship." -- Michael Vickers, University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisChristopher Marlowe (15641593) emerges in most accounts of his life by biographers and critics as a mysterious and sensational action figure, a hapless pawn of circumstance, or a pseudonymous cipher. Constance Brown Kuriyama''s new biography reconstructs the eventful life of a radically innovative playwright who flourished briefly and died violently more than four hundred years ago, yet persists in the romantic imagination even today.Many discoveries about Marlowe''s life have emerged over the past hundred years. The author here supplements these findings with new material, placing the dramatist and poet more precisely in his historical milieu. Kuriyama interprets Marlowe''s acts of violenceinexplicable though they may seemas logical consequences of the circumstances he faced. Experience and temperament both accounted for the characteristically brash way he moved through the world.The stringent constraints of Elizabethan society, which encouraged intense political and Trade ReviewAlthough Kuriyama devotes plenty of space to the writer's posthumous progress,... the real value of her book lies in the prevailing skepticism with which she treats her subject: the documentary evidence and the conspiracy theories favored throughout the past century. -- Michael Caines * Times Literary Supplement *Constance Brown Kuriyama's new book on Christopher Marlowe offers a refreshing counter to some of the more speculative and conspiracy-theory oriented works of literary biography on the young playwright. In her methodological introduction she presents a candid and honest overview of the demands and pitfalls of biographical writing and illustrates some of the dangers for Marlowe scholarship of valorizing a documentary-based approach without considering the immediate context of chosen primary materials.... Kuriyama's book is clearly presented with chapters structured around successive stages of Marlowe's personal development.... As a readable introduction to the playwright's life this book offers students a highly commendable combination of both primary and secondary material. -- Matthew Woodcock * Sixteenth Century Journal *Double agents, barroom brawls, counterfeit coins, paid informants, hired henchmen, intelligence networks spanning foreign locales, and dashing gents sent on clandestine missions for Her Majesty's secret service—descriptions from the most recent James Bond film? No, just some of the disputed details from Constance Brown Kuriyama's new biography of Christopher Marlowe.... My own sense is that the actual 'facts' of the poet and playwright's life lie somewhere between the wild speculations of Marlowe's more imaginative biographer's and Kuriyama's necessary and important corrective to them. -- Robert Sawyer * South Atlantic Review *In this more speculative life of Marlowe, Kuriyama provides insightful details into English education, politics, and religion during the Renaissance. * Library Journal *Kuriyama has written a smart 'life' shot through with learning—a timely look at the most notorious early modern 'badboy' and his reputation. * Studies in English Literature *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Canterbury Tale 2. Fetching Gentry from the University 3. Commencing M.A.: Acquaintances, Friends, and Connections 4. A Poet's Life in London 5. Lord Strange and Thomas Walsingham 6. Fortune Turns Base 7. A Trim Reckoning 8. The Dead Shepherd 9. Marlow Lost and FoundAppendix: Transcriptions and Translations of Selected Documents References Index

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Book SynopsisBeginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new...Trade ReviewA comprehensive and readable guide that will be the standard work for many years to come. * Times Literary Supplement *Carlson has taken on the monumental task of abstracting the major theoretical statements on the theater from the Greeks to the present. He cogently summarizes the texts, drawing comparisons freely while avoiding evaluation. The book's organization is historical, with national divisions until the 20th century, at which time all countries are considered together within much more finely defined time limits. This is a much needed book. * Choice *The coverage in Theories of the Theatre is remarkable. It is already difficult to imagine seriously undertaking theatre studies without this volume in a prominent place on one's shelf. * Theatre Survey *

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Book SynopsisThis book shows how Sophocles' method of presenting character, his unique handling of myth, his predilection for presenting ideas by comparison and contrast, and his principles of structure are so closely related that they serve to clarify each other.Trade ReviewAn important and substantial book that confirms Kirkwood's position in the front ranks of criticism. * Classical World *Kirkwood displays the sure touch of one who has been familiar with his author for years. His analysis and exposition have a deft clarity that is not only scholarly but wholly charming. Kirkwood's judgments, even where we might disagree with them, always reflect a good sense and mature deliberation. * American Journal of Philology *The intention of Kirkwood's clear and well-written book is to study the dramatic methods of Sophocles, especially in the revelation of character. The chapter on construction, distinguishing 'diptych,' 'linear,' and 'triangular' form in the plays, and the chapter on the role of the chorus both center on what is, for the author, the primary essence of Sophocles' art: the delineation of his heroic, or merely human, characters. Sophocles' method is chiefly one of interplay: his dramatis personae are revealed, Kirkwood points out, through their relationships with each other, an observation not in itself new, but developed here extensively and convincingly. * Phoenix *

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Book SynopsisIn his new concluding chapter, Peter Kivy advances his argument on behalf of a distinctive intellectual and musical character of opera before Mozart. He proposes that happy endings were a musical—as opposed to a dramatic—necessity for opera during...Trade ReviewKivy is simply the best philosopher writing about music today.... Here he studies the special problem of opera, how it became both a dramatic and a musical art, and what its underlying aesthetic principles are. He traces opera's philosophical foundations from the imitation theories of Plato and Aristotle, to the representation theory of the Italian Camerata, the mechanistic psychology of Descartes, the doctrine of affektenlehre, and the associationist psychology of the British Enlightenment.... Kivy's writing is honest, insightful, careful, and witty.... There is meat here for philosophers, musicians, music theorists, historians, and social critics. * Choice *Kivy provides close philosophical analysis of texts that underpin the origins of Western European opera and... relates seventeenth and eighteenth-century operatic practice to the philosophical and psychological theories of the times.... In a long and generally excellent discussion Kivy takes as his target those writers... who attempt to deduce a composer's psycho-biography from other librettos he chooses to set.... Kivy's book has a certain acumen and charm. * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisNo literary figure has proved so elusive as Shakespeare. How, Courtney Lehmann asks, can the controversies surrounding the Bard's authorship be resolved when his works precede the historical birth of that modern concept? And how is it that Shakespeare...Trade ReviewThis is a first-rate study-densely written, expertly controlled, and intellectually invigorating.... Shakespeare Remains is a rare work-an original reflection on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theater and an important contribution to discussion about 'the contestatory nature of Shakespeare's inheritance.'... Will significantly change perceptions of Shakespeare in all of his historical guises. -- Mark Thornton Burnett * Shakespeare Quarterly *Overall, Lehmann's book is itself a montage of sorts, an intelligent, inventive engagement between Shakespeare studies and post-modern theory. * Virginia Quarterly Review *The issue of authorship—its history, meaning, and significance—is what Courtney Lehmann explores in her book Shakespeare Remains: Theatre to Film, Early Modern to Postmodern. -- Ken Wong * Consciousness, LIterature and the Arts *Equally smart and timely, Courtney Lehmann's Shakespeare Remains: Theater to Film, Early Modern to Postmodern is both original and conceptually brilliant.... Assured work by one of the best scholars of Shakespeare's films, this is a 'don't miss' book. -- Barbara Hodgdon * Studies in English Literature *Shakespeare Remains... provides readers of Shakespeare and performance practitioners with an accessible critical perspective that links the literary body of Shakespeare's received texts to contemporary film adaptations of his plays. -- Joe Falocco, Catawba College * Renaissance Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in Roman Comedy. "The very essence of comedy is social," writes David Konstan, "and in the complex movement of its plots...Trade ReviewA fresh, tightly written and reasoned analysis of plays by Plautus and Terence, directed chiefly to the social and ethical implications of the plots. Konstan's goal is not social history but an interpretation of the playwright's artistry in constructing the social world of each play. His innovative approach should improve our understanding of the complex use of social tensions in comedy. * The Key Reporter *There is a striking scholarly brilliance underlying David Konstan's work. It is classical scholarship at its very best: objective, thorough, comparative, knowledgeable, and in this case, innovative and thought provoking. In eight, well-written, closely-annotated chapters (plus an introduction and conclusion), Konstan examines how six plays by Plautus and two by Terence reflect... 'tension in values as the mainspring of the drama....'. * Theatre Studies *This is a very important book in the study of Roman comedy and, indeed, in the study of comedy and society generally.... Konstan's ideas are profound; some are controversial; all are worth considering. * The Classical Bulletin *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA magnificent study... [that] illuminates the role of folk culture in medieval drama, especially in the cycle plays and moralities, and convincingly carries the tradition forward into Elizabethan drama... We are fortunate indeed to have this book. -- David Bevington ClioTable of ContentsEditor's PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1. The MimusChapter 2. The Folk Play and Social CustomChapter 3. The Mystery CyclesChapter 4. Moralities and InterludesChapter 5. The Elizabethan DramaChapter 6. Shakespeare's Theater: Tradition and ExperimentAppendixAbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisKerrigan's approach reflects his interests in literary formalism, historical scholarship, intellectual history, and psychoanalysis.Trade ReviewKerrigan's reading of the tradition is illuminating, subtle, informed, and informative, and he uses it to establish his reading of the play, working within the tradition but extending it to hitherto unseen and insightful ways. Philosophy and Literature

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Book SynopsisShakespeare's Promises is a unique and valuable resource, providing a fresh perspective that will benefit all readers of Shakespeare.Trade ReviewImpressive in its intellectual reach, often witty, and always moving in its claims for the powerful and inescapable bonds that make us human. Journal of English and Germanic Philology A book of considerable interest, with many thought-provoking readings of specific speeches and dramatic moments, and sketches the scope of this vast subject with admirable brevity and clarity. -- Danielle Clarke Early Modern Literary Studies 2004

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Book SynopsisThe Records of Early English Drama volumes make available historical transcripts that provide evidence of early English drama, music, ceremonial dance, and other forms of communal public entertainment in Britain from the Middle Ages to 1642, when the Puritans closed the London theatres.

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Book SynopsisBernard Shaw and William Archer is the final volume in the series on the Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw. The two colleagues loved to debate with one another in public, and these feisty arguments regularly carried over to the letters, which bear witness to the vital partnership between a theatre critic and a playwright.Trade Review‘Highly recommended.’ -- H.I. Einsohn * Choice Magazine vol 55:07:2018 *Table of ContentsGeneral Editor's Note Introduction Editor's Note Abbreviations and Works Cited LETTERS Table of Correspondents Index

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Albert W. Halsall presents the first complete treatment in English of Hugo's plays - a history, plot summary, and detailed analysis of all the dramas, from Cromwel and Torquemada to the juvenilia and the epic melodrama Les Burgraves.

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Book SynopsisIn this volume William S. Anderson sets Plautus, who wrote Rome's earliest surviving poetry, in his rightful place among the Greek and Roman writers of what we know as New Comedy (fourth to second centuries).Anderson begins by defining major innovations that Plautus made on inherited Greek New Comedy (Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus), transforming it from romantic domestic drama to a celebration of rollicking family anarchy. He shows how Plautus diminished the traditional importance of love and replaced it with a new major theme: 'heroic badness,' especially embodied in the rogue slave (ancestor of the impudent servant, valet, or maid). Anderson then examines the unique verbal texture of Plautus' drama and demonstrates his revolt against realism, his drive to have his characters defy everyday circumstances and pit their intrepid linguistic wit against social order, their Roman extravagant impudence against Greek self-control.Finally, Anderson explores the special form

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Book SynopsisThis collection contains 14 essays, written from the late 1970's to the present, making available for the full scope of Berger's unique approach to ethical discourses in Shakespeare's plays.Trade Review“This collection represents a decade of writing by a uniquely brilliant critic who combines intense sensitivity to textual nuance with extraordinary theoretical agility. Complex and sophisticated, these essays brim with thrills, gags, twists, and flashes. And Shakespeare's texts never quite read the same again.”—Margreta de Grazia, University of Pennsylvania.

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Book SynopsisThis book investigates the discursive practices of philosophy and theater/performance on the basis of actual encounters between representatives of these two fields.Trade Review"This book, by theater historian and preformance theorist Freddie Rokem, makes a significant contribution to both fields . . . Rokem has crafted an enaging and vigorous study of the relationship between theater and philosophy that does as Horace recommended theater do, instruct and delight." -- Monica Prendergast * Comparative Literature Studies *"Philosophers and Thespians is a cultural-studies discourse on human life as a journey. Rokem's book embraces wide-ranging cultural contexts that complement his philosophy of history. In contrast to the proponents of new historicism, Rokem supplements his subjective narration with substantive intertextual and historical research. The practical and detailed applications of the concept of performativity make this book a valuable companion to graduate cultural studies and philosophy programs." -- Anna Kawalec * Philosophy in Review *"This is an exemplary book of both comparison and drama. It describes four historical encounters between thespian-like philosophers and philosophically inclined thespians . . . Philosophers and thespians share in thinking and doing, in word and action. Rokem's method of writing and thinking—a method of eyewitnessing and commentary—intends to match and indeed does match his subject matter. The match makes this a most worthwhile book to read and to review." -- Lydia Goehr * Comparative Drama *"Rokem plays out interaction between Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin as theatricalized philosophical thinking. The volume's second part, 'Constellations,' ponders 'performative agendas' embedded in narratives, wistful imaginings in which constellations of dramatic form take shape from points of thought." -- P.D. Nelsen * Choice *"This book's central—and brilliant—idea is to treat the relation between philosophy and theater not as an abstract, disciplinary one, but as an encounter between philosophers and theater people. By portraying actual and fictional encounters between philosophers, playwrights, and directors, Rokem reminds us that theater history has always been entangled with philosophy and that philosophy ignores the theater at its own peril." -- Martin Puchner * Columbia University *

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Book SynopsisA writer who defies categorization, Daniil Kharms has come to be regarded as an essential artist of the modernist avant-garde. This selection of prose and poetry provides the most comprehensive portrait of the writer in English translation to date, revealing the arc of his career and including a particularly generous selection of his later work.Trade Review“[A] profound and subtle testament to Kharms and his brutal era.” - Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisA direct descendant of John Ridge, Nagle has penned a play that twists and turns from violent outbursts to healing monologues, illuminating a provocative double meaning for the sovereignty of both tribal territory and women's bodies.

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Book SynopsisFeatures new plays by Lisa B. Thompson, author of Single Black Female. In these three plays, the black feminist playwright and scholar thoughtfully explores themes such as the black family, motherhood, migration, racial violence, and trauma and its effect on black people from the early twentieth century to the present.Trade Review“Underground is more than a play. It's a powerful weapon of change—a truth bomb that will get conversations started.” —T. Lynn Mikeska, Austin Chronicle “Monroe is a wonderful new play that contains charming characters, witty dialogue and an examination of the horrific effects of racial terrorism in a way that entertains while it educates.” —Frank Benge, Broadway World “The Mamalogues . . . treats [motherhood] in a way that everyone can recognize . . . Sisters in the BBSM—Black Bougie Single Mothers—are here to share, and in this case, that can be fun. But alongside ‘bougie’ and ‘mothers’ in the support group's name are the words ‘single’ and ‘black,’ and they carry a weight that must be acknowledged. Thompson does so in dramatic moments that live side by side with the comic ones, just as it happens in life.” —Robert Faires, The Austin Chronicle “The lushness of Lisa B. Thompson’s singular theatrical imagination is on full display in this dazzling trio of plays. Writing with remarkable urgency, creativity, humor, and humanity, Thompson crafts complex characters and worlds that affirm and invite us to delight in the beauty of black life.” —Isaiah Matthew Wooden, coeditor of Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration “We expect our storytellers to bring truth to the madness, and the stage has been where so much of that madness has been scripted in life-sized proportions. Lisa B. Thompson understands this better than most, and with her new collection, Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues, she captures the magic, trauma, and most importantly, the humor and laughter of Black life, and offers us a lifeline to the could-have-beens and should-have-beens that we can take for our own.” —Mark Anthony Neal, author of Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities “Captivating, funny, and smart, Lisa B. Thompson’s Underground, Monroe, and The Mamalogues: Three Plays portrays the vitality and complexity of blackness. Drawing from rich histories that pull audiences into specific places and times, the collection enriches our understanding of the black middle class through multifaceted, complicated, and always compelling narratives.” —Soyica Colbert, author of Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics “Scored with laughs joyously and tenderly musical, Thompson’s plays capture symphonies of humor and pathos shared between friends and family. Colloquialisms, vernacular riffs, and style trends condition characters that plumb and challenge notions of race and gender as well as conflicts of language and culture. Thompson marvelously works rhythms and breaks of sincerity, irony, love, and social critique to engage the epic experiences of being Black in America. These plays, like her celebrated Single Black Female, make for deceptively light stage work around intense histories and trenchant reflections.” —Stephanie Leigh Batiste, playwright, actor, and author of Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American PerformanceTable of Contents Foreword by E. Patrick Johnson Acknowledgments Underground Monroe The Mamalogues Interview by Joan Morgan

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Book SynopsisPrince Friedrich of Homburg is the indisputable dramatic masterpiece of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), a leading figure, along with Goethe and Schiller, among early German Romantics.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Writing in a careful yet engaging style, Burkhart succeeds not only in clarifying the historical significance of this Nahuatl interpretation of a Spanish play, she also makes it interesting." * The Americas *

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Book SynopsisJonathan Gil Harris challenges the way we conventionally understand physical objects. Turning to Renaissance theories of matter, he considers the profound untimeliness of things, focusing particularly on Shakespeare's stage materials.Trade Review"It is difficult to do justice here to the extraordinarily wide range of critical and theoretical models that Harris draws on, or the ease with which he brings them together. . . . Harris's book is important . . . not only for its fine discussions of individual works but also for setting a yardstick for the work that early modernists might do in this area, and for the form that a 'turn to time' might take." * TLS *"Excitingly-and excitedly-written, energetic and widely suggestive. In restoring to the discussion of historical objects their resistance to temporal fixities, Harris's book does cultural historians a service." * Renaissance Quarterly *"A deep, intelligent, thought-provoking book on the ways in which physical objects both inhabit and transcend time. . . . This exciting book takes familiar texts and presents them in a new way." * Choice *"One of the most intellectually profound interventions into the field of Renaissance studies to appear in the last five to ten years. In challenging conventional understandings of historical time, Harris's book offers nothing less than a complete overhaul of current critical practice and persuades us to glimpse a scholarly future that is genuinely and excitingly new." * Renaissance Studies *"Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare is rigorously researched, well argued and skillfully written, and follows its own argument by using the past to suggest alternative ways of imaging both present and future. . . . Harris's book impresses with the depth and breadth of his knowledge, and the skill with which he brings together multiple branches of theoretical discourse to inform and advance his argument. . . . One of the more significant works of literary scholarship of recent years." * Parergon *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Urban Housefuls 2. Work in the Atlantic Service Economy 3. Family Credit and Shared Debts 4. Translating Money 5. Shopping Networks and Consumption as Collaboration 6. The Republic of Goods Conclusion Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisCopyright is by no means the only device for asserting ownership of a work. Some writers, including playwrights in the early modern period, did not even view print copyright as the most important of their authorial rights. A rich vein of recent scholarship has examined the interaction between royal monopolies, which have been identified with later notions of intrinsic authorial ownership, and the internal copy registration practices of the English book trades. Yet this dialogue was but one part of a still more complicated conversation in early modern England, James J. Marino argues; other customs and other sets of professional demands were at least as important, most strikingly in the exercise of the performance rights of plays.In Owning William Shakespeare James Marino explores the actors'' system of intellectual property as something fundamentally different from the property regimes exercised by the London printers or the royal monopolists. Focusing on Hamlet,Trade Review"Who, in the early modern period, laid claim to owning Shakespeare's plays? How did the property regimes of print and performance determine the nature of such claims? In tackling these questions, James J. Marino scores some palpable hits." * TLS *"Expertly blending literary criticism, performance theory, and historical analysis of intellectual property, Marino masterfully argues for the important role the Chamberlain's Men/King's Men played in vigorously maintaining their ownership in and the authenticity of Shakespeare's plays." * Choice *"A thematically dense, insightful book that will engage readers interested in the origins and evolutions of intellectual property law, of the business of early modern drama, and of textual transmissions and adaptations." * Early English Studies *"In this fascinating study, which brings together literary and textual studies, book and theatre history, the story of how Shakespeare's plays came to be created and known as his is told as a story of the King's Men and their property. Focusing on how intellectual property was created and maintained, Owning William Shakespeare makes important contributions to theatre and book history, puts paid to scholarship premised on the recovery of Shakespeare's authorial script, and argues for a radically revised understanding of early modern dramatic texts." * Review of English Studies *"Owning William Shakespeare tells the story of early modern drama as intellectual property. It does so with energy, urgency, passion, and originality: it points out details about book history and publication that have never been articulated before, redefining the field in important ways." * Tiffany Stern, University College, Oxford *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Secondhand Repertory: The Fall and Rise of Master W. Shakespeare Chapter 2. Sixty Years of Shrews Chapter 3. Hamlet, Part by Part Chapter 4. William Shakespeare's Sir John Oldcastle and the Globe's William Shakespeare Chapter 5. Restorations and Glorious Revolutions Notes Works Cited Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisFor Jeffrey Masten, the history of sexuality and the history of language are intimately related. In Queer Philologies, he studies particular terms that illuminate the history of sexuality in Shakespeare''s time and analyzes the methods we have used to study sex and gender in literary and cultural history. Building on the work of theorists and historians who have, following Foucault, investigated the importance of words like homosexual, sodomy, and tribade in a variety of cultures and historical periods, Masten argues that just as the history of sexuality requires the history of language, so too does philology, the love of the word, require the analytical lens provided by the study of sexuality.Masten unpacks the etymology, circulation, transformation, and constitutive power of key words within the early modern discourse of sex and gender—terms such as conversation and intercourse, fundament and foundation, friend and boy—that described bodies, pleasures, emoTrade Review"Masten has much to teach us about the consequence of learning to hear how words resonated for Shakespeare's first audiences, and how they can be made to sound and resound today. . . . As Masten indicates, queer philology need not be confined to the study of terms used to describe and 'inscribe' sex and gender, but should be extended to include all the terms of the social exclusions that currently concern us." * Times Literary Supplement *"A groundbreaking new study. . . . Queer Philologies should prove a seminal work for literary critics, sexual historians, queer theorists, and textual editors. Animated by Masten's witty prose, deeply enmeshed in the relevant scholarship, and often breathtaking in its acuity, originality, and capaciousness of thought, it is the most pleasurable polemic in recent literary history." * Review of English Studies *"[A] tour de force of erudition and intellectual wit that maps out a new region of scholarship: 'queer philology.' . . . Masten undertakes a vast philological program to show how vagaries and occluded regularities of early modern sex/gender vocabularies are intimately woven into specific traits of early modern orthography, rhetorical structures, etymologies, and familial bonds between words and word clusters." * SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *"A careful and thought-provoking study . . . with stunning insight and extremely thoughtful attention to detail. Queer Philologies suggests exciting new possibilities in one of the foundational fields of literary study." * Comparative Drama *"Masten's page-turning case studies show us the necessity to get fully philological in order to get fully queer. It is not that we should queer time or locate some version of the 'homosexual' in early modern texts but that we should be more historical and more philological in order to read queerly." * GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies *"Queer Philologies, Jeffrey Masten's brilliant new book, makes the queerness of linguistic relations into the stuff of a genuine page-turner. Doing nothing less than reinventing the field of philology for the twenty-first century, Masten charts striking moments in the two-way traffic between words and world, exploring how accident and error figure in the shaping of sexuality and multiply its significations beyond all scholarly control. To dip into this book is to recognize that it's destined to become a classic, one of the works without which queer theory and early modernism no longer can be thought." * Lee Edelman, Tufts University *"A masterpiece as well as a great intellectual joy. Masten finds in philology and in the history of the book a new approach to the analysis of norms and normativities-that is, to practices of standardization, including the standardization of sex and gender. This queer manifesto for the mutual implication of the history of sexuality and the materiality of language is as powerful as it is scrupulous, as original as it is radical. No one who reads this book will ever think of the letter Q in the same way again." * David Halperin, University of Michigan *"A brilliant, exacting, original book. Coherently organized, deftly argued, elegant in style, and utterly unique, Queer Philologies is not only full of insights relevant to scholars of early modern literature; it advances paradigm-shattering proposals relevant to queer studies scholars and historians of sexuality more generally." * Valerie Traub, University of Michigan *"Jeffrey Masten's witty and searching book will help a new generation of students to recover the philological grounds for the early modern period's sexual relations and gender constructions. Deploying and extending his signature combination of queer theory and textual scholarship, Masten gives us startling new readings of key works, words, and even letters that leave them looking very queer indeed." * William Sherman, Victoria and Albert Museum *Table of ContentsNote on Citations and Quotations Introduction. On Q: An Introduction to Queer Philology Chapter 1. Spelling Shakespeare: Early Modern "Orthography" and the Secret Lives of Shakespeare's Compositors LEXICON 1. FRIENDSHIP Chapter 2. "Sweet Persuasion," the Taste of Letters, and Male Friendship Chapter 3. Extended "Conversation": Living with Christopher Marlowe; a Brief History of "Intercourse" LEXICON 2. BOY-DESIRE Chapter 4. Reading "Boys": Performance and Print Chapter 5. "Amorous Leander," Boy-desire, Gay Shame; Or, Straightening Out Christopher Marlowe LEXICON 3. SODOMY Chapter 6. Is the "Fundament" a Grave? Translating the Early Modern Body Chapter 7. When Genres Breed: "Mongrell Tragicomedie" and Queer Kinship Editing Philologies Chapter 8. All Is Not Glossed: Editing Sex, Race, Gender, and Affect in Shakespeare Chapter 9. More or Less Queer: Female "Bumbast" in Sir Thomas More Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisSituating the theater as a site of broad cultural movements and conflicts, Lisa A. Freeman asserts that antitheatrical incidents from the English Renaissance to present-day America provide us with occasions to trace major struggles over the nature and balance of power and political authority. In studies of William Prynne''s Histrio-mastix (1633), Jeremy Collier''s A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), John Home''s Douglas (1757), the burning of the theater at Richmond (1811), and the U.S. Supreme Court''s decision in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998) Freeman engages in a careful examination of the political, religious, philosophical, literary, and dramatic contexts in which challenges to theatricality unfold. In so doing, she demonstrates that however differently the public might be defined in each epoch, what lies at the heart of antitheatrical disputes is a struggle over the character of the body poliTrade Review"Dazzlingly ambitious and meticulously researched. . . . [Antitheatricality and the Body Public] is a testament to the perspicacity of Freeman's thought that her ideas shed light not only on the theater as a key to understanding how societies have defined and debated their constituents in the near and distant past but also on how we might use the theater to think through the constitutional crises of the present and the future." * TDR: The Drama Review *"Lisa Freeman's rich study should take a privileged place alongside the most influential work in the field. . . . Antitheatricality and the Body Public should inspire any reader to pursue the reciprocity between theater and power modeled by her exemplary scholarship." * Theatre Journal *"It is, a bold-but certainly timely-move by Lisa Freeman to analyze antitheatricality anew. She delivers on this task with a thorough and thought-provoking investigation realized in a compelling series of case studies that demonstrate the pervasiveness of antitheatrical onslaughts across theater history. . . . A must-read for researchers working on any period of British or American theater." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"This book's rigorous historicism and meticulous close readings are impressive, but more importantly, they are foundational to its theoretical reach and power. Freeman's premise that antitheatricality persistently calls on a 'body public,' a particular understanding of the ideal state that includes even as it excludes bodies, is a productive way to consider more than this book's five cases." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"As Lévi-Strauss said of cats, the theater 'is good to think with,' especially in moments of social stress and trauma, and Lisa A. Freeman demonstrates just how useful it can be in five meticulously researched case studies. Her book represents an impressive labor of research and writing, chock full of new material in every chapter." * Joseph Roach, Yale University *"A work of great erudition and scholarly merit that shows how antitheatrical rhetoric emerges as a way of mediating social, cultural, and governmental crisis. The result is a highly self-aware and remarkably original argument about the function of cultural regulation." * Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph *

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Book SynopsisPlaywriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater shows how the rise of England's first commercialized culture industry also gave rise to the first generation of participatory consumers and their attempts to engage with mainstream culture by writing early modern "fan fiction."Trade Review"An extremely substantial contribution to the field. Playwriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater has the potential to reconfigure current debates about theatrical authorship and spectatorship, and it also acts as an invaluable primer on a range of neglected material." * Lucy Munro, King's College London *Table of ContentsIntroduction. "All write Playes" Chapter 1. "Mayn't a spectator write a comedy?": The Early Modern Idea of Playgoers as Playmakers Chapter 2. "Some other may be added": Playwriting Playgoers Revising in Their Manuscripts Chapter 3. "As shall be shewed before the daye of action": Playwriting Playgoers and Performance Chapter 4. "Watching every word": Playwriting Playgoers as Verse Dramatists Conclusion. "I began to make a play" Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Stephen Orgel is interested in books and plays. But throughout The Invention of Shakespeare, Orgel is adamant that a/the book is not the play. These essays, written over thirty years, have an argumentative throughline...as he demonstrates the varied ways in which plays are mutable...The 'invention' of the book’s title is about the way editors, critics and eras give a fixed identity to a figure we confidently but misleadingly identify as 'Shakespeare'....Throughout these essays we are treated to Orgel’s brilliance as a literary critic and close reader. He moves not just effortlessly but analogously from material books – a study of blanks, lacunae, the empty parentheses." * Times Literary Supplement *"Stephen Orgel is one of the greatest Shakespeare and early modern scholars of our time, and every single one of these pieces is engaging, exhilarating, revelatory, thought-provoking." * Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Emma Lipton demonstrates that the legal theory of witnessing serves as both an agent of civic community and as a model of the drama itself. This is a highly original argument, and the critical payoff is large. It says something vital about the shape and form of these plays and their ways of testing out through witnessing the inherited biblical, festive, and liturgical narratives." * Sarah Beckwith, Duke University *

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Book SynopsisA study of the early years of the Field Day Theatre Company, which has been a vital presence on the Irish cultural and intellectual scene since its inception in 1980. Drawing on reviews, pre-production publicity and personal interviews, it discusses Field Day's evolving aims and achievements.Trade ReviewThe strengths of Richtarik's study lie in its undoubted enthusiasm for, and belief in, the potential of theatre; in its meticulously researched detail; and in its concentration on the contradictions within Field Day. - Irish Review

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Book SynopsisArgues that Hamlet's famous phrase not only underscores the blurred boundaries between the warring Protestantism and Catholicism of Shakespeare's time; it is also an appeal for basic spirituality, free from any particular doctrinal scheme.Trade ReviewFiddes’s theological breadth and openness are a breath of the freshest of air, bracing, and giving new life. The book is very engagingly written and thoroughly absorbing throughout. It deserves to garner a wide readership among lovers and scholars of Shakespeare and theologians who wish to think with, and through, art, drama, liturgy, poetry." - Sarah Beckwith, Duke University, author of Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness

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Book SynopsisRather than having spent the last 50 years coming to terms with the magnitude of evil of the Holocaust, this book is about a country that, according to the author, has largely ignored its participation and attempted to minimize its national memory of the event.

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Book SynopsisUpdated and expanded for the third edition, this volume presents a comprehensive account of the development and influence of the American screenwriter.Trade ReviewA fascinating, entertaining romp through the forest of writing for films. You will encounter flora and fauna of the art and business of cinema dramaturgy. It is com­pulsory reading for professional and layman alike. Stempel offers the first general account of the development and influence of the American screenwriter. . . . He discusses hundreds of individual writers, the workings of the writing departments of the big studios during Hollywood’s heyday, the impact of McCarthyism and the blacklist on the profession. . . . A real cornerstone item for film studies collections and a genuinely, enjoyably readable one. Informal in style and anecdotal in approach, this perceptive account is filled with stories spotlighting writers’ creative work and their struggle to achieve recognition. Individual chapters on the narrative styles of the major studios offer fascinating evi­dence of the way in which a single producer could determine the structure of all scripts under his control. . . . An invaluable resource for anyone interested in film, popular culture, or twentieth-century American writing.

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Book SynopsisExplores the history of Irish theater in America, from Harrigan and Hart to the productions of senior Irish playwrights such as Brian Friel and younger writers such as Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson. This volume includes examinations of company dynamics, tours of companies and actors, and the production history of individual works.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“A genuinely new and significant contribution to Irish theater history. . . . No other monograph out there that does what this book does, which is to provide a comprehensive and contextualized history of contemporary women’s contributions to theater inNorthern Ireland.”—Susan Cannon Harris, author of Gender and Modern Irish Drama.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“A genuinely new and significant contribution to Irish theater history. . . . No other monograph out there that does what this book does, which is to provide a comprehensive and contextualized history of contemporary women’s contributions to theater inNorthern Ireland.”—Susan Cannon Harris, author of Gender and Modern Irish Drama.

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Book SynopsisA study of all of the major tragedies of Jean Racine, France's preeminent dramatist—and, according to many, its greatest and most representative author—Mitchell Greenberg's work offers an exploration of Racinian tragedy to explain the enigma of the plays' continued fascination.Table of ContentsA Note on Text and Translations Preface Introduction: Spectacle, Myth, Sacrifice: Racinian Tragedy and the Origins of Modernity 1. La Thébaïde: Politics and Monstrous Origins 2. Andromaque: Myth and Melancholy 3. Britannicus: Power, Perversion, and Paranoia 4. Oriental Oedipus: Bérénice, Bajazet, Mithridate 5. Iphigénie: Sacrifice and Sovereignty 6. Phèdre (et Hippolyte): Tabou, Transgression, and the Birth of Democracy? 7. Esther, Athalie: Religion, and Revolution in Racine's Heavenly City Notes Index

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