The Edge of Christendom on the Early Modern Stage (Late Tudor and Stuart Drama)
by Lisa Hopkins
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the edges of Europe were under pressure from the Ottoman Turks. This book explores how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represented places where Christians came up against Turks, including Malta, Tunis, Hungary, and Armenia. Some forms of Christianity itself might seem alien, so the book also considers the interface between traditional Catholicism, new forms of Protestantism, and Greek and Russian orthodoxy. But it also finds that the concept...
Shakespeare's English Kings (Galaxy Books, #508) (Oxford Paperbacks)
by Peter Saccio
Far more than any professional historian, Shakespeare is responsible for whatever notions most of us possess about English medieval history. Anyone who appreciates the dramatic action of Shakespeare's history plays but is confused by much of the historical detail will welcome this guide to the Richards, Edwards, Henrys, Warwicks and Norfolks who ruled and fought across Shakespeare's page and stage. Not only theater-goers and students, but today's film-goers who want to enrich their understandi...
This study takes a different approach to the work of poet-playwright Clifford Odets. Rather than focusing on biographical and political factors surrounding his works, Cantor provides a close reading of 11 of Odets' plays as a whole, grounding his study within an analysis of themes common to each text. While granting emphasis to Odets' poetic style, Cantor gives due notice to Odets' achievements as both mythmaker and voice of the Jewish middle class. Included are reprints of "Sum and Substance,"...
Cliffsnotes on Ibsen's a Doll's House & Hedda Gabler (Cliffs notes)
by Marianne Sturman and Henrik Johan Ibsen
Ibsen's plays rank among those most frequently performed world-wide, rivaled only by Brecht, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and the Greek tragedies. By the time Ibsen died in 1906, his plays had already conquered the theaters of the Western world. Inviting rapturous praise as well as fierce controversy, they were performed in Europe, North America, and Australia, contributing greatly to the theater, culture, and social life of these continents. Soon after Ibsen's death, his plays entered the stages of Ea...
There are four reasons for producing this modern edition of Barrie's earliest plays - 'Bandelero the Bandit', Bohemia and 'Caught Napping'. The first is canonical. Neither of the first two has ever been published while only two copies of 'Caught Napping' can be traced and these date from the year of its composition in 1883. The second is biographical. After being heralded as a genius in his own day simplistic Freudian links between Barrie and his most famous creation, Peter Pan threatened to...
This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity. * An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama.* Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism.* Topics co...
In the hands of the twentieth century's most innovative dramatists, characters have revealed their identities on stage in a variety of unconventional ways: they speak with electronic voices or engage in solipsistic monologues; they are lost in self-conscious third-person forms of communicating; or they are expressed simply as movement, sound, and decor. Missing Persons is a study of character and its representations on the modern stage. Within broad literary contexts, William E. Gruber addresses...
William Shakespeare's Twelth Night (Barron's book notes, 3548-8)
by Robert Owens Scott
A guide to reading "Twelfth Night" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.
Modernism and the Choreographic Imagination (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism, Drama and Performan)
by Megan Girdwood
This is the first biography of Thomas Harris. Until now, little has been known about his life. He was most visible as the man who controlled Covent Garden theatre for nearly five decades, one of only two venues in London allowed by law to perform spoken drama. But this career was only one of many: he became the confidant of George III, a philanthropist, sexual suspect, and a brothel owner in the underworld of Covent Garden. While deeply involved in Pitt the Younger's government, Harris worked as...
Ecology and Environment in European Drama (Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies, #14)
by Downing Cless
Looking at European drama through an ecological lens, this book chronicles nature and the environment as primary topics in major plays from ancient to recent times. Cless focuses on the few, yet well-known plays in which nature is at stake in the action or the environment is a dramatic force. Though theater predominantly explores human and cultural themes, these plays fully display the power of the other-than-human world and its endangerment during the history of Europe. While offering a broad o...
Plays by Women from the Contemporary American Theater Festival
by Ms Susan Miller, Ms Eleanor Burgess, Ms Johnna Adams, Ms Chisa Hutchinson, and D W Gregory
Based at Shepherd University, in West Virginia, the Contemporary American Theater Festival is nationally and internationally recognized as a home for playwrights and the development and production of new plays. The Festival makes it a priority to celebrate and produce playwrights with strong, distinct voices, with a core value to tell diverse stories. This anthology of work provides plays that speak to one of the most compelling virtues of artists everywhere – freedom of speech. A necessary vol...
The Arden Guide to Renaissance Drama is a single critical and contextual resource for students embarking on an in-depth exploration of early modern drama, providing both critical insight and accessible contextual information. This companion equips students with the information needed to situate the plays in their socio-political, intellectual and literary contexts. Divided into two parts, it introduces students to the major authors and significant dramatic texts of the period and emphasises the...