Lycurgus, the king of the Thracian tribe of the Edonians, is the hero of the first attested Greek myth about the resistance against the god Dionysus. According to many scholars, Lycurgus was worshipped as a god among the Thracians, Phrygians, and Syrians. His myth might have been used as a hieros logos in the initiations into the 'Bacchic' and 'Orphic' mysteries in Greece and Rome. This book focuses on Aeschylus' tragic tetralogy Lycurgeia and Naevius' tragedy Lycurgus, the two most important texts that shaped the tradition of the Lycurgus myth, and offers a new and, at times, radically different interpretation of these fragmentary plays and related cultural texts.

This book is about the centrality of movement, movement perception, and kinesthetic experience to theatrical spectatorship. Drawing upon phenomenological accounts of movement experience and the insights of cognitive science, neuroscience, acting theory, dance theory, philosophy of mind, and linguistics, it considers how we inhabit the movements of others and how these movements inhabit us. Individual chapters explore the dynamics of movement and animation, action and intentionality, kinesthetic resonance (or mirroring), language, speech, and empathy. In one of its most important contributions to the study of theatre, performance, and spectatorship, this book foregrounds otherness, divergence, and disability in its account of movement perception. The discussions of this and other issues are accompanied by detailed analysis of theatre, puppetry, and dance performances.

Of all the poets Francis Meres names in his famous Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), just two rate a mention as being both 'our best for tragedy' and 'the best poets for comedy': William Shakespeare and George Chapman. All Fools, written in 1599, is the only Elizabethan comedy based directly on the plays of Terence. By taking episodes and characters from two brilliant works, The Self-Tormenter and The Brothers, Chapman creates something that is distinctly Elizabethan while remaining faithful to the spirit of the great Roman master. In this edition, an extensive introduction and commentary show how Chapman combines the literary and theatrical traditions of ancient Rome with everyday life in his own time to fashion a sparkling and innovative comedy that will delight audiences today as much as it did those of 1599. -- .

Dramatic character is among the most long-standing and familiar of artistic phenomena. From the theatre of Dionysus in ancient Greece to the modern stage, William Storm's book delivers a wide-ranging view of how characters have been conceived at pivotal moments in history. Storm reaffirms dramatic character as not only ancestrally prominent but as a continuing focus of interest. He looks closely at how stage figures compare to fictional characters in books, dramatic media, and other visual arts. Emphasis is sustained throughout on fundamental questions of how theatrical characterization relates to dramatic structure, style, and genre. Extensive attention is given to how characters think and to aspects of agency, selfhood, and consciousness. As the only book to offer a long view of theatrical characterization across this historical span, Storm's dramaturgical and theoretical investigation examines topics that remain vital and pertinent for practitioners, scholars, students of theatre and literature, and general audiences.

A pioneering study of the development of one of the key critical discourses in contemporary Irish studies, this book covers all the major figures, publications and debates within Irish postcolonial criticism, delivering a commentary on this diverse body of work as well as positioning Irish postcolonial criticism within the wider postcolonial field.

"Yet the dark places are the centre" claims George Steiner in "The Bluebird's Castle". Any attempt to analyze rationally the predominating barbaric phenomenon of the 20th century, namely the Holocaust and its Fascist background, challenges the limits of human understanding. The phenomenon of the Holocaust is a consequence of these "dark places" where again in Steiner's words "we have passed out of the major order and symmetries of Western civilization". A final understanding of the theme is beyond the limits of rationality and may also be viewed in the light of Adorno's "no poetry after Auschwitz". Nevertheless, the need to attempt reflective and creative 'work' on this topic continues. The aim of the book is to study the relationship between ideology and myth as they function diversely in Fascist and Antifascist drama. All the plays discussed are constructed as a paradigmatic constellation between myth and ideology, coordinated by a central and homogeneous political intent. The difference between them lies in their Fascist or Antifascist attitude. The plays analyzed were chosen for the treatment of a common thematic Ur-myth: the post-figuration of the return of the prodigal son and the story of the crucifixion from the New Testament. The 'prodigal cluster' includes plays by Franz Theodor Csokor, Ernst Wiechert and Max Frisch, the 'sacrificial cluster' plays by Otto Erler, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and George Tabori. As an introductory analysis, the theme of the artist and his mission is treated in two plays written in the pre-Nationalsocialist period: "Der Einsame. Ein Menschenuntergang" by Hanns Johst and Bertold Brecht's reaction to this play in "Baal". A final analysis deals with the fusion of mythologems and ideologems as demonstrated in two plays dealing with the New Myth of Germania by Richard Eutinger and Heiner Muller.

Essays on festive drama - plays, pageantry and traditional ceremonies - of the European middle ages, with comparative material. Festive drama, in these studies, includes processions and folk-customs as well as full-blown plays, from Spain, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Britain, Denmark, and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). The main focus is the middleages, but style and approach are as relevant as time-scale, reflecting a culture in which there are no firm divisions between drama and pageantry and traditional ceremonies. Common themes emerge: the world turned upside-down of Shrovetide; the emotive power of religious celebration; and the links between commerce and the demonstration of civic pride. Festive customs are viewed as hidden agendas of popular culture, and performances are reconstructed. Thisis the obverse of art and power: the means by which the people, not the princes, rule the world. Professor MEG TWYCROSS teaches at the Department of English at Lancaster University. Contributors: PETER H. GREENFIELD, OLGA HORNER, SHEILA LINDENBAUM, CLAIRE SPONSLER, RONALD E. SURTZ, RAFAEL PORTILLO, MANUEL J. GOMEZ LARA, PAMELA M. KING, ROBERT POTTER, JOHN CARTWRIGHT, DAVID MILLS, JAMES STOKES, ALAN E. KNIGHT, MARJOKE DE ROOS, FEMKE KRAMER, TOM PETTITT, LEIF SNDERGAARD, WIM HUESKEN, JEAN-MARC PASTREE, SALLY-BETH MACLEAN, MALCOLM JONES, CHRISTINE RICHARDSON, JARMILA F. VELTRUSKY, JOHN COLDEWEY.

The use of significant proper names is one of the most entertaining aspects of Aristophanes' art; unsurprisingly, it has received much scholarly attention. But although there are a large number of articles and scattered comments on individual names, the present book offers the first systematic study on the subject. It is, as far as possible, an exhaustive discussion of significant proper names that appear in Aristophanes' eleven extant plays: personal names (which occupy the largest part), theonyms, place-names, ethnics and demotics - all names that seem to be deliberately used for their meanings. Two appendixes discuss slave-names and selected names from Aristophanes' fragmentary plays. Names are carefully analysed in their context, taking into account a range of factors such as language (etymology and word-plays), the content of the plays (the plots, set against their political and social background), and issues of characterisation. This work is thus meant to contribute simultaneously to Aristophanic scholarship, by enabling a deeper appreciation of Aristophanes ' humour, and to the field of Greek literary onomastics.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern theater, and his plays are performed all over the world. Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a fuddy-duddy old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen's modernity, but for his modernism. Situating Ibsen in his cultural context, she shows how unexpected his rise to world fame was, and the extent of his influence on writers such Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce who were seeking to escape the shackles of Victorianism.
Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism also rewrites nineteenth-century literary history; positioning Ibsen between visual art and philosophy, the book offers a critique of traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism. Modernism, Moi argues, arose from the ruins of idealism, the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. She also shows why Ibsen still matters to us today, by focusing on two major themes-his explorations of women, men, and marriage and his clear-eyed chronicling of the tension between skepticism and the everyday.
This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism.

George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687) was one of the most scandalous and controversial figures of the Restoration period. He was the principal author of The Rehearsal (1671), an enormously successful burlesque play that ridiculed John Dryden and the rhymed heroic drama. Historians remember Buckingham as an opponent who helped topple Clarendon from power in 1667, as a member of the "Cabal" government in the early 1670s, and as an ally of the Earl of Shaftesbury in the political crisis of 1678-1683. The duke was prominent among the "court wits" (Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, Dorset, Wycherley, and their circle); he was closely associated with such writers as Butler and Cowley; he was a conspicuous champion of religious toleration and a friend of William Penn. No edition of Buckingham has been published since 1775, partly because his work presents horrendous attribution problems. He was (probably) adapter or co-author of six plays (two of them vastly successful for more than a century) including one in French that appears here in English for the first time. He is also associated with nine topical pieces (variously political, religious, and satiric) and some twenty poems of wildly varying type. The "Buckingham" commonplace book has previously been published only in fragmentary form. Almost all of these works present major difficulties in both attribution and annotation, here seriously addressed for the first time. This edition is a companion venture to Harold Love's important edition of Rochester (OUP, 1999).

More than any other English monarch before or since, Queen Elizabeth I used her annual progresses to shape her royal persona and to bolster her popularity and authority. During the spring and summer, accompanied by her court, Elizabeth toured southern England, the Midlands, and parts of the West Country, staying with private and civic hosts, and at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The progresses provided hosts with unique opportunities to impress and influence the Queen, and became occasions for magnificent and ingenious entertainments and pageants, drawing on the skills of architects, artists, and craftsmen, as well as dramatic performances, formal orations, poetic recitations, parades, masques, dances, and bear baiting.
The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I is an interdisciplinary essay collection, drawing together new and innovative work by experts in literary studies, history, theatre and performance studies, art history, and antiquarian studies. As such, it will make a unique and timely contribution to research on the culture and history of Elizabethan England. Chapters include examinations of some of the principal Elizabethan progress entertainments, including the coronation pageant Veritas temporis filia (1559), Kenilworth (1575), Norwich (1578), Cowdray (1591), Bisham (1592), and Harefield (1602), while other chapters consider the themes raised by these events, including the ritual of gift-giving; the conduct of government whilst on progress; the significance of the visual arts in the entertainments; regional identity and militarism; elite and learned women as hosts; the circulation and publication of entertainment and pageant texts; theafterlife of the Elizabethan progresses, including their reappropriation in Caroline England and the documenting of Elizabeth's reign by late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century antiquarians such as John Nichols, who went on to compile the monumentalThe Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (1788-1823).

Written to honour the distinguished work and career of Alexandra F. Johnston, 'Bring furth the pagants' brings together original essays in early English drama by colleagues and students of the founder and director of the Records of Early English Drama Project

Editors David N. Klausner and Karen Sawyer Marsalek have grouped the contributions into three primary areas of Johnston's research: the study of documentary records in relation to drama, including new research on the York documents; the interpretation of early English drama, focusing both on the biblical plays and also on the moral interludes, including a broad survey of the role of the Expositor figure in English and French plays; and the drama of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Marlowe and Shakespeare) from the standpoint of its medieval background.

Diverse, thought-provoking, and original, this collection acts as an important complement to the REED volumes and provides a fitting tribute to the scholar it honours.

ContributorsCaroline M. BarronDavid BevingtonGarrett P.J. EppDavid N. KlausnerSally-Beth MacLeanKaren Sawyer MarsalekPeter MeredithDavid MillsBarbara D. PalmerK. Janet RitchMargaret RogersonChester ScovilleJ.A.B. SomersetMeg Twycross

This book is ideal for anyone keen to understand how contemporary plays and playwrights work, particularly those wanting to write for the stage themselves. Drawing heavily on contemporary practice, it considers moments from a range of plays, with a focus on those from the National Theatre's repertoire. The book embraces a range of different dramaturgical structures and styles popular today; plays by a diverse selection of writers; and the current openness of dramatic form. A book of tools, rather than rules, this guide provides suggestions and provocations, exercises and tricks, examples and discussions. An ideal text for playwrights to hone their craft.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller. 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers' Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness. Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama, recreated as the immortal film starring Marlon Brando, is one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century. Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1961), and Small Craft Warnings (1972). If you enjoyed A Streetcar Named Desire, you might like The Glass Menagerie, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Lyrical and poetic and human and heartbreaking and memorable and funny' Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather 'One of the greatest American plays' Observer

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Moliere wrote, directed, and starred in comedies for public and court audiences in seventeenth-century France. He is perennially successful, but perennially subject to critical controversy: do his plays aim to do more than make audiences laugh? This book focuses on a group of characters in the plays, the interpretation of whose role lies at the heart of any answer to this question. For over a century critics have baptised them 'raisonneurs'. They are characters who engage with some of Moliere's most foolish protagonists, but they have been variously interpreted as exponents of wisdom or as ridiculous bores. This book argues that new light can be shed on the words and actions of these characters, and so on the tenor of the plays as a whole, by detailed contextual analysis of the dramaturgical and comic structures in which they operate. They have never before been treated so exhaustively. They emerge neither as the mouthpieces of common sense nor as pompous fools, but as thoughtful, witty, and resourceful friends of the foolish protagonists whom Moliere himself played. The book takes into account what is known of the performance styles of Moliere's troupe of actors as well as engaging closely with the text of the plays and the critical debate to date. Some of Moliere's most teasingly problematic plays are held up to fresh scrutiny, including L'Ecole des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, and Le Malade imaginaire. The book is written with scholars, students, and interested theatre-goers in mind. This is the first book-length treatment of the topic.

George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687) was one of the most scandalous and controversial figures of the Restoration period. He was the principal author of The Rehearsal (1671), an enormously successful burlesque play that ridiculed John Dryden and the rhymed heroic drama. Historians remember Buckingham as an opponent who helped topple Clarendon from power in 1667, as a member of the 'Cabal' government in the early 1670s, and as an ally of the Earl of Shaftesbury in the political crisis of 1678-1683. The duke was prominent among the 'court wits' (Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, Dorset, Wycherley, and their circle); he was closely associated with such writers as Butler and Cowley; he was a conspicuous champion of religious toleration and a friend of William Penn. No edition of Buckingham has been published since 1775, partly because his work presents horrendous attribution problems. He was (probably) adapter or co-author of six plays (two of them vastly successful for more than a century) including one in French that appears here in English for the first time. He is also associated with nine topical pieces (variously political, religious, and satiric) and some twenty poems of wildly varying type. The 'Buckingham' commonplace book has previously been published only in fragmentary form. Almost all of these works present major difficulties in both attribution and annotation, here seriously addressed for the first time. This edition is a companion venture to Harold Love's important edition of Rochester (OUP, 1999).

This book contains an introduction to the text of and a commentary on the fragments of two plays by Euripides, the Kresphontes (ca. 424 B.C.) and the Archelaos (ca. 408/7 B.C.) Fragments of both plays are preserved in quotations by other writers and in recently published papyri. The introduction discusses aspects of the background and of the contents of the plays, such as, for example, their first performances, the relation of the Kresphontes with the plays about Orestes, and Euripides' motives in writing the Archelaos (politics or flattery?). The commentary to each play deals with the interpretation of the fragments and testimonia, with textual problems and with typical elements of Euripides' style. This is the first full-scale treatment of both plays and offers, thanks to modern papyrus finds, some new evidence on their composition and context. The text of the papyrus fragments is based on personal inspection of the papyri concerned, which has resulted in a number of new readings.

A contemporary of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe was one of the most influential early modern dramatists, whose life and mysterious death have long been the subject of critical and popular speculation. This collection sets Marlowe's plays and poems in their historical context, exploring his world and his wider cultural influence. Chapters by leading international scholars discuss both his major and lesser-known works. Divided into three sections, 'Marlowe's works', 'Marlowe's world', and 'Marlowe's reception', the book ranges from Marlowe's relationship with his own audience through to adaptations of his plays for modern cinema. Other contexts for Marlowe include history and politics, religion and science. Discussions of Marlowe's critics and Marlowe's appeal today, in performance, literature and biography, show how and why his works continue to resonate; and a comprehensive further reading list provides helpful suggestions for those who want to find out more.

This book is an anthology of thirteen of the most important articles published on Aeschylus in the last fifty years. It gives roughly equal coverage to the seven surviving plays, and there is also a chapter which places them in the context of Aeschylus' work as a whole. Three articles have< br> been translated into English for the first time, and others have a fresh foreword or postscript by the author. Greek quotations have been translated for the benefit of those reading the plays in English. The editor has supplied a substantial introduction and an index.

Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Barber Shop Chronicles, which was partly inspired by verbatim recordings, is a heart-warming, hilarious and insightful play that leaps from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day. It was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and is here publishedas a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Oladipo Agboluaje.

George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687) was one of the most scandalous and controversial figures of the Restoration period. He was the principal author of The Rehearsal (1671), an enormously successful burlesque play that ridiculed John Dryden and the rhymed heroic drama. Historians remember Buckingham as an opponent who helped topple Clarendon from power in 1667, as a member of the 'Cabal' government in the early 1670s, and as an ally of the Earl of Shaftesbury in the political crisis of 1678-1683. The duke was prominent among the 'court wits' (Rochester, Etherege, Sedley, Dorset, Wycherley, and their circle); he was closely associated with such writers as Butler and Cowley; he was a conspicuous champion of religious toleration and a friend of William Penn. No edition of Buckingham has been published since 1775, partly because his work presents horrendous attribution problems. He was (probably) adapter or co-author of six plays (two of them vastly successful for more than a century) including one in French that appears here in English for the first time. He is also associated with nine topical pieces (variously political, religious, and satiric) and some twenty poems of wildly varying type. The 'Buckingham' commonplace book has previously been published only in fragmentary form. Almost all of these works present major difficulties in both attribution and annotation, here seriously addressed for the first time. This edition is a companion venture to Harold Love's important edition of Rochester (OUP, 1999).

Reformations of the Body establishes new ties between theology and theatricality in the time of Shakespeare, juxtaposing original readings of religious thinkers such as John Calvin with case studies of influential tragedies such as Doctor Faustus and Othello. While current accounts of the Reformation often assume that Protestant iconoclasts devalued sensory experience and bodily praxis, Jennifer Waldron shows how and why the human body and the bodily senses retained sacred value after the Reformation. In readings of scenes of providential revival, bloody pacts with the devil, and sacrificial rites of revenge, she shows how theological problems became tightly bound to the living medium of theater itself.

The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music studies the complex impact of movements, costumes, words, scenes, music, and special effects in English illusionistic theatre of the Renaissance. Drawing on a massive amount of documentary evidence relating to English productions as well as spectacle in France, Italy, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire, the book elucidates professional ballet, theatre management, and dramatic performance at the early Stuart court. Individual studies take a fresh look at works by Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Carew, John Milton, William Davenant, and others, showing how court poets collaborated with tailors, designers, technicians, choreographers, and aristocratic as well as professional performers to create a dazzling event. Based on extensive archival research on the households of Queen Anne and Queen Henrietta Maria, special chapters highlight the artistic and financial control of Stuart queens over their masques and pastorals. Many plates and figures from German, Austrian, French, and English archives illustrate accessibly-written introductions to costume conventions, early dance styles, male and female performers, the dramatic symbolism of colors, and stage design in performance. With splendid costumes and choreographies, masques once appealed to the five senses. A tribute to their colorful brilliance, this book seeks to recover a lost dimension of performance culture in early modern England.

This is the first comprehensive study of the English crime play, presenting a survey of 250 plays performed in the London West End between 1900 and 2000. The first part is historically orientated while the second one establishes a tentative poetics of the genre. The third part presents an analysis of some 20 plays adapted from detective fiction.