Description
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, USA
Women 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.
