Race may dominate everyday speech, media headlines and public policy, yet still questions of racialized blackness and whiteness in Shakespeare are resisted. In his compelling new book Ian Smith addresses the influence of systemic whiteness on the interpretation of Shakespeare's plays. This far-reaching study shows that significant parts of Shakespeare's texts have been elided, misconstrued or otherwise rendered invisible by readers who have ignored the presence of race in early modern England. Bringing the Black American intellectual tradition into fruitful dialogue with European thought, this urgent interdisciplinary work offers a deep, revealing and incisive analysis of individual plays, including Othello, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. Demonstrating how racial illiteracy inhibits critical practice, Ian Smith provides a necessary anti-racist alternative that will transform the way you read Shakespeare.

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's great comedy of love, folly and mistaken identity. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Twelfth Night in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with three leading directors - Sam Mendes, Declan Donnellan and Neil Bartlett - providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare's career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's journey into the Forest of Arden. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of As You Like It in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with important Shakespearean directors (Dominic Cooke and Michael Boyd) and a Shakespearean actor (Naomi Frederick) - providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare's career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

Completing the 8 volume Everyman Signet Shakespeare contains Shakespeare series, this final volume contains Shakespeare's four Last Plays - THE TEMPEST, PERICLES, THE WINTER'S TALE AND CYMBELINE. The beautifully produced, single-column text of the plays, with the Signet footnotes, is supplemented with bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespear's life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Professor Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in context.

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's magnificent tragedy of love, jealousy and explosive racial politics. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Othello in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with two leading directors and an actor - Trevor Nunn, Michael Attenborough and Antony Sher - providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare's career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

This edition of Sir Thomas More is the first to bring the play into the context of a major Shakespeare series, to provide a substantial critical analysis, and to offer a comprehensive modern stage history. The introduction deals with issues such as the strange involvement of the anti-Catholic spy-hunter Anthony Munday as chief dramatist, the place of Sir Thomas More as a Catholic martyr in Protestant late Elizabethan culture, and the play's representation of a multi-cultural London.The text itself, supported by a searching and detailed commentary, adopts a distinctive presentation that enables readers to keep track of the manuscript and the hands that produced it, whilst engaging with the play as a fascinating theatrical piece. Sir Thomas More deals with matters so controversial that it may never have reached performance on stage. The authors' determination to deal with rioting and religious politics led to a play that is compelling in its own right but also intriguing as a document of what could, and could not, be articulated in the early modern public theatre. Surviving only as a manuscript text on which Shakespeare was thought to have worked, it can be considered to be the most important play manuscript of the period, owing to its highly complex witness to collaboration between dramatists and to censorship.

The One-Hour Shakespeare series is a collection of abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays, designed specifically to accommodate both small and large casts. This volume, The Early Comedies and Romances, includes the following plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream Two Gentlemen of Verona The Tempest The Winter's Tale. These accessible and versatile scripts are supported by: an introduction with emphasis on the evolution of the series and the creative process of editing; the One-Hour projects in performance, a chapter on implementing money-saving ideas and suggestions for production whether in or outside a classroom setting; specific lesson plans to incorporate these projects successfully into an academic course; and cross-gender casting suggestions. These supplementary materials make the plays valuable not only for actors, directors and professors, but for any environment, cast or purpose. Ideal for both academics and professionals, One-Hour Shakespeare is the perfect companion to teaching and staging the most universally read and performed playwright in history.

The New York Theater Workshop's production of Othello, starring Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo, and directed by Tony award-winning director Sam Gold, opens in November. This production is sponsored in part by The Pelican Shakespeare series and Penguin Classics. This edition of Othello is edited with an introduction and notes by Russ McDonald and was recently repackaged with cover art by Manuja Waldia. Waldia received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for the Pelican Shakespeare series. The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The One-Hour Shakespeare series is a collection of abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays, designed specifically to accommodate both small and large casts. This volume, The Comedies, includes the following plays: As You Like It Love's Labour's Lost Much Ado About Nothing Twelfth Night These accessible and versatile scripts are supported by: an introduction with emphasis on the evolution of the series and the creative process of editing; the One-Hour projects in performance, a chapter on implementing money-saving ideas and suggestions for production whether in or outside a classroom setting; specific lesson plans to incorporate these projects successfully into an academic course; and cross-gender casting suggestions. These supplementary materials make the plays valuable not only for actors, directors and professors, but for any environment, cast or purpose. Ideal for both academics and professionals, One-Hour Shakespeare is the perfect companion to teaching and staging the most universally read and performed playwright in history.

Gorgeous, strange and magical, A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best-loved of Shakespeare's plays. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated throughout by Sir John Gilbert, and includes an introduction by Ned Halley. A young woman flees Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites soon take an interest in human affairs, dispensing love potions and casting mischievous spells. In this dazzling comedy, confusion ends in harmony, as love is transformed, misplaced, and - ultimately - restored.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. In this second edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Kurt Schlueter approaches Shakespeare's early comedy as a parody of two types of Renaissance educational fiction: the love-quest story and the test-of-friendship story, which in combination show high-flown human ideals as incompatible with each other and with human nature. Since the first known production at David Garrick's Drury Lane Theatre, the play has tempted major directors and actors, though changing conceptions of the play often fail to recognise its subversive impetus. This updated edition includes a new introductory section by Lucy Munro on recent stage and critical interpretations, bringing the thoroughly researched, illustrated performance history up to date.

Little Theatre

Farce

Ray Cooney

Characters: 6 male, 2 female

Never has this master of farce been frenetically funnier. Henry A. Perkins, a mild mannered C.P.A, accidently picks up the wrong briefcase one full of money. Henry assumes it is illicit cash and he decides to keep it. Knowing that the former owner must have his briefcase, he rushes home to book one way fares to Barcelona. He tells his confused wife to leave everything behind; if she doesn't like Barcelona, they can go to Bali. In fact, they can buy Bali The doorbell rings as they wait for their taxi. The police detective at the door thinks Henry was soliciting in the men's room of the local pub actually, he was sitting in the loo counting the cash. The bell rings again. Another detective arrives thinking Henry is dead; a man with bullet holes in his head and Henry's briefcase were found in the Thames. Henry's inept attempts to extricate himself from this impossible situation lead to increasingly hysterical situations.

From Ariel to Hamlet, Juliet to Macbeth's Witches, Shakespeare Legends Alphabet presents the quintessential A to Z of Shakespearean characters. Dramatically illustrated and poetically written, this book brings to center stage 26 of the most treacherous, magical, ambitious, comical, noble and powerful personalities loved and hated by audiences for generations. A must have for any lover of great drama, and students of Shakespeare's works.

John Dover Wilson's New Shakespeare, published between 1921 and 1966, became the classic Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's plays and poems until the 1980s. The series, long since out-of-print, is now reissued. Each work is available both individually and as a set, and each contains a lengthy and lively introduction, main text, and substantial notes and glossary printed at the back. The edition, which began with The Tempest and ended with The Sonnets, put into practice the techniques and theories that had evolved under the 'New Bibliography'. Remarkably by today's standards, although it took the best part of half a century to produce, the New Shakespeare involved only a small band of editors besides Dover Wilson himself. As the volumes took shape, many of Dover Wilson's textual methods acquired general acceptance and became an established part of later editorial practice, for example in the Arden and New Cambridge Shakespeares.

What is it about Hamlet that has made it such a compelling and vital work? Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages is an account of Shakespeare's great play from its sources in Scandinavian epic lore to the way it was performed and understood in his own day, and then how the play has fared down to the present: performances on stage, television, and in film, critical evaluations, publishing history, spinoffs, spoofs, musical adaptations, the play's growing reputation, its influence on writers and thinkers, and the ways in which it has shaped the very language we speak. The staging, criticism, and editing of Hamlet , David Bevington argues, go hand in hand over the centuries, to such a remarkable extent that the history of Hamlet can be seen as a kind of paradigm for the cultural history of the English-speaking world.

From the very beginning, she was a radical. At age nineteen, Charlotte Cushman, America's beloved actress and the country's first true celebrity, left her life-and countless suitors-behind to make it as a Shakespearean actress. After revolutionizing the role of Lady Macbeth in front of many adoring fans, she went on the road, performing in cities across a dividing America and building her fame. She was everywhere. And yet, her name has faded in the shadows of history. Now, for the first time in decades, Cushman's story comes to full and brilliant life in this definitive, exhilarating, and enlightening biography of the 19th-century icon. With rarely seen letters, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman's life, set against the excitement and drama of New York City in the 1800s, featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries that changed the cultural landscape. A vivid portrait of an astonishing and unique life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable women, and restores her to the centre stage where she belongs.

"O mother, mother! What have you done?"
--"Coriolanus"
Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide a fresh new edition of this gripping political and personal tragedy--along with more than a hundred pages of exclusive features, including
- an original Introduction to "Coriolanus"
- incisive scene-by-scene synopsis and analysis with vital facts about the work
- commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers
- photographs of key RSC productions
- an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical career and chronology of his plays
Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

Choreographing Shakespeare presents a hitherto unexplored history of the choreographers and performers who have created dance adaptations of Shakespeare. This book investigates forty dance works in genres such as ballet, modern dance, and hip-hop, produced between 1940 and 2016 by choreographers in Britain, America, and Europe, all of which use Shakespeare's plays and Sonnets as their source material. By combining scholarly analysis of these productions with practice-based conversations from six contemporary choreographers, Klett offers both breadth of coverage and in-depth analysis of how Shakespeare's poetic language is translated into the usually wordless medium of dance, and shows exactly how these dance adaptations move beyond the Shakespearean texts to engage with musical and choreographic influences. Ideal for students of Shakespeare and Dance Studies, Choreographing Shakespeare explores how dance adaptations strive to design legible and intelligible stories, while ultimately celebrating the beauty of pure movement.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Enter Cassandra (Scene 2) ACT II Scene I. A Part of the Grecian Camp Enter Ajax and THersites Ajax. Thersites ! Thersites. Agamemnon ? how if he had boils ? full, all over, generally ? Ajax. Thersites l TROILUS ? 5 65 Thersites. And those boils did run ? say so, did not the general run then ? were not that a botchy core ? Ajax. Dog! Thersites. Then would come some matter from him; I see none now. Ajax. Thou bitch-wolf's son, canst thou not hear ? Bea ting him Feel, then, 11 Thersites. The plague of Greece upon thee, thou -"ongrel beef-witted lord ! -. rff- '.-'., . Ajax. Speak then, thou vinewed'st leaven, speak ! I will beat thee into handsomeness. Thersites. I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? a redjrnurrain o' thy jade's tricks! 20 Ajax. Toadstool, learn me the proclamation. Thersites. Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus ? Ajax. The proclamation! Thersites. Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think. Ajax. Do not, porpentine, do not! my fingers itch. Thersites. I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another. 31 Ajax. I say, the proclamation ! Thersites. Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina's beauty, ay, that thou barkest at him. Ajax. Mistress Thersites ! Thersites. Thou shouldst strike him., / J. /. /..t''.'" Ajax. cpbio' .r Thersites. He would pun thee into shivers with his fisi, as a sailor breaks a biscuit. 41 ...

With its many rites of initiation (religious, educational, professional or sexual), Elizabethan and Jacobean education emphasized both imitation and discovery in a struggle to bring population to a minimal literacy, while more demanding techniques were being developed for the cultural elite. The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature examines the question of transmission and of the educational procedures in16th- and 17th-century England by emphasizing deviant practices that questioned, reassessed or even challenged pre-established cultural norms and traditions. This volume thus alternates theoretical analyses with more specific readings in order to investigate the multiple ways in which ideas then circulated. It also addresses the ways in which the dominant cultural forms of the literature and drama of Shakespeare's age were being subverted. In this regard, its various contributors analyze how the interrelated processes of initiation, transmission and transgression operated at the core of early modern English culture, and how Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, or lesser known poets and playwrights such as Thomas Howell, Thomas Edwards and George Villiers, managed to appropriate these cultural processes in their works.

Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays examines the changing ideological conceptions of sovereignty and their on-stage representations in the public theaters during the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods (1580-1642). The study examines the way in which the early modern stage presented a critical dialogue concerning the nature of sovereignty through the lens of specifically English history, focusing in particular on the presentation and representation of monarchy. It presents the subgenre of the English history play as a specific reaction to the surrounding political context capable of engaging with and influencing popular and elite conceptions of monarchy and government. This project is the first of its kind to specifically situate the early modern debate on sovereignty within a 'popular culture' dramatic context; its purpose is not only to provide an historical timeline of English political theory pertaining to monarchy, but to situate the drama as a significant influence on the production and dissemination thereof during the Tudor and Stuart periods. Some of the plays considered here, notably those by Shakespeare and Marlowe, have been extensively and thoroughly studied. But others-such as Edmund Ironside, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and King John and Matilda-have not previously been the focus of much critical attention.

Though printer Richard Tottel's Songes and Sonettes (1557) remains the most influential poetic collection printed in the sixteenth century, the compiliation has long been ignored or misundertood by scholars of early modern English culture. Embracing a broad range of critical and historical perspectives, the eight essays within this volume offer the first sustained analysis of the many ways that consumers read and understood Songes and Sonettes as an anthology over the course of the early modern period. Copied by a monarch, set to music, sung, carried overseas, studied, appropriated, rejected, edited by consumers, transferred to manuscript, and gifted by Shakespeare, this muti-author verse anthology of 280 poems transformed sixteenth-century English language and culture. With at least eleven printings before the end of Elizabeth I's reign, Tottel's ground-breaking text greatly influenced the poetic publications that followed, including individual and multi-author miscellanies. Contributors to this essay collection explore how, in addition to offering a radically new kind of English verse, 'Tottel's Miscellany' engaged politics, friendship, religion, sexuality, gender, morality and commerce in complex-and at times, contradictory-ways.

Never performed in Shakespeare's lifetime, Timon of Athens presents an intriguing puzzle for contemporary audiences. The disjointed plot and many gaps in the story have led scholars to believe it was a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, a younger writer known for his satires, and productions for decades have faced choices about the most effective way to present the play. In this translation, Cavander acts as a third playwright in this collaborative process. Wrangling the voices of Shakespeare and Middleton on the page, Cavander unveils poetic lines and phrases that have sat stubbornly in the cobwebs, cutting these voices through the time barrier and into the world as we know it. This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare's verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print-a new First Folio for a new era.