MEDIUM AEVUM says of Heaven Singing, the general discussion of the subject from which the present volume follows on with examination of the individual plays: 'A formidable achievement, indispensable for any serious and comprehensive study of early English drama.' Richard Rastall's two books on music in early English religious drama complement each other. Heaven Singing provides an overview of the evidence for music in the plays, and defines the place, nature and cultural contexts ofmusic in the drama; Minstrels Playing is a discussion of the evidence for every play in that repertory, and is therefore concerned with the place and nature of musical performance in each play individually. Followinghis general discussion of music in the anonymous religious plays of 15th- and 16th-century England in The Heaven Singing (1996), this companion volume turns to the individual biblical, saint and moral plays. Richard Rastallplaces each in its intellectual and cultural context, and notes the surviving evidence for music and other aural effects in the dramatic directions, text references, use of Latin and the liturgy, and the existing documentary records. At the end of each chapter a cue-list shows where the music should appear and presents the arguments for specific repertory and performance modes, providing an invaluable aid for directors. This leads on to a section on modern performance, in which Dr Rastall discusses a wide range of issues that impinge on the practicalities of providing music in early English drama and raise problems and queries for producers and musical directors: the type of staging and the nature of the set, the choice of cast, the choice of musical items, the training and rehearsing of singers, and much else. Dr RICHARD RASTALL is Reader in Historical Musicology and Dean of the Faculty of Music, Visualand Performing Arts at the University of Leeds.

Since its publication in 1890, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler has been a recurring point of fascination for readers, theater audiences, and artists alike. Newly married, yet utterly bored, the character of Hedda Gabler evokes reflection on beauty, love, passion, death, nihilism, identity, and a host of other topics of an existential nature. It is no surprise that Ibsen's work has gained the attention of philosophically-minded readers from Nietzsche, Lou Andreas-Salome, and Freud, to Adorno, Cavell, and beyond. Once staged at avant-garde theaters in Paris, London, and Berlin, Ibsen is now a global phenomenon. The enigmatic character of Hedda Gabler remains intriguing to ever-new generations of actors, audiences, and readers. Hedda Gabler occupies a privileged place in the history of European drama and as a work of literature, and, as this volume demonstrates, invites profound and worthwhile philosophical questions. Through ten newly commissioned chapters, written by leading voices in the fields of drama studies, European philosophy, Scandinavian studies, and comparative literature, this volume brings out the philosophical resonances of Hedda Gabler in particular and Ibsen's drama more broadly.

This book is a complete re-assessment of the works of J.M. Synge, one of Ireland's major playwrights. The book offers the first complete consideration of all of Synge's major plays and prose works in nearly 30 years, drawing on extensive archival research to offer innovative new readings. Much work has been done in recent years to uncover Synge's modernity and to emphasise his political consciousness. This book builds on this re-assessment, undertaking a full systematic exploration of Synge's published and unpublished works. Tracing his journey from an early Romanticism through to the more combative modernism of his later work, the book's innovative methodology treats text as process, and considers Synge's reading materials, his drafts, letters, diaries, and journalism, turning up exciting and unexpected revelations. Thus, Synge's engagement with occultism, pantheism, socialism, Darwinism, and even a late reaction against eugenic nationalisms, are all brought into the critical discussion. Breaking new ground in ascertaining the tenets of Synge's spirituality, and his aesthetic and political idealization of harmony with nature, the book also builds on new work in modernist studies, arguing that Synge can be understood as a leftist modernist, exhibiting many of the key concerns of early modernism, but routing them through a socialist politics. Thus, this book is valuable not only to considerations of Synge and the Irish Revival, but also to modernist studies more broadly.

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Death, like most experiences that we think of as 'natural', is a product of the human imagination: all animals die, but only human beings suffer Death; and what they suffer is shaped by their own time and culture. Tragedy was one of the principal instruments through which the culture of early modern England imagined the encounter with mortality. The essays in this book approach the theatrical reinvention of Death from three perspectives. Those in Part 1 explore Death as a trope of apocalypse - a moment of un-veiling or dis-covery that is figured both in the fearful nakedness of the Danse Macabre and in the shameful 'openings' enacted in the new theatres of anatomy. Separate chapters explore the apocalyptic design of two of the period's most powerful tragedies - Shakespeare's Othello, and Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. In Part 2, Neill explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narrative in a number of plays where a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending. The imposition of an end is often figured as an act of writerly violence, committed by the author or his dramatic surrogate. Extensive attention is paid to Hamlet as an extreme example of the structural consequences of such anxiety. The function of revenge tragedy as a response to the radical displacement of the dead by the Protestant abolition of purgatory - one of the most painful aspects of the early modern re-imagining of death - is also illustrated with particular clarity. Finally, Part 3 focuses on the way tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funereal arts. It offers detailed analyses of three plays - Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Ford's The Broken Heart. Here, funeral is rewritten as triumph, and death becomes the chosen instrument of an heroic self-fashioning designed to dress the arbitrary abruption of mortal ending in a powerful aesthetic of closure.

One of the founding members of the Provincetown Players, Susan Glaspell contributed to American literature in ways that exceed the work she did for this significant theatre group. Interwoven in her many plays, novels and short stories is astute commentary on the human condition. This volume provides an in-depth examination of Glaspell's writing and how her language conveys her insights into the universal dilemma of society versus self. Glaspell's ideas transcended the plot and character. Her work gave prominent attention to such issues as gender, politics, power and artistic daring. Through an exploration of eight plays written between the years of 1916 and 1943, ""Trifles"", ""Springs Eternal"", ""The People"", ""Alison's House"", ""Bernice"", ""The Outside"", ""Chains of Dew"" and ""The Verge"" - this work concentrates on one Glaspell's central themes: individuality versus social existence. It explores the range of forces and fundamental tensions that influence the perception and communication of her characters. The final chapter includes a brief commentary on other Glaspell works. A biographical overview provides background for the author's reading and interpretation of the plays, placing Glaspell historically within the post-modern movement.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple," declares Algernon early in Act One of The Importance of Being Earnest, and were it either, modern literature would be "a complete impossibility." It is a moment of sly, winking self-regard on the part of the playwright, for The Importance is itself the sort of complex modern literary work in which the truth is neither pure nor simple. Wilde's greatest play is full of subtexts, disguises, concealments, and double entendres. Continuing the important cultural work he began in his award-winning uncensored edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Nicholas Frankel shows that The Importance needs to be understood in relation to its author's homosexuality and the climate of sexual repression that led to his imprisonment just months after it opened at London's St. James's Theatre on Valentine's Day 1895. In a facing-page edition designed with students, teachers, actors, and dramaturges in mind, The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest provides running commentary on the play to enhance understanding and enjoyment. The introductory essay and notes illuminate literary, biographical, and historical allusions, tying the play closely to its author's personal life and sexual identity. Frankel reveals that many of the play's wittiest lines were incorporated nearly four years after its first production, when the author, living in Paris as an exiled and impoverished criminal, oversaw publication of the first book edition. This newly edited text is accompanied by numerous illustrations.

This volume provides an accessible and engaging guide to the study of American dramatic literature. Designed to support students in reading, discussing, and writing about commonly assigned American plays, this text offers timely resources to think critically and originally about key moments on the American stage. Combining comprehensive coverage of the core plays from the post-Revolutionary era to the present, each chapter includes: historical and cultural context of each of the plays and their distinctive literary features clear introductions to the ongoing critical debates they have provoked collaborative prompts for classroom or online discussion annotated bibliographies for further research With its accessible prose style and clear structure, this introduction spotlights specific plays while encouraging students to contemplate timely questions of American identity across its selected span of US theatrical history.

This volume provides an accessible and engaging guide to the study of American dramatic literature. Designed to support students in reading, discussing, and writing about commonly assigned American plays, this text offers timely resources to think critically and originally about key moments on the American stage. Combining comprehensive coverage of the core plays from the post-Revolutionary era to the present, each chapter includes: historical and cultural context of each of the plays and their distinctive literary features clear introductions to the ongoing critical debates they have provoked collaborative prompts for classroom or online discussion annotated bibliographies for further research With its accessible prose style and clear structure, this introduction spotlights specific plays while encouraging students to contemplate timely questions of American identity across its selected span of US theatrical history.

Monograph on Martin Crimp, one of Europe's most celebrated playwrights Covers Crimp's most recent work Takes an internationalist approach Is the first book to address Crimp's work of the past decade

* This book offers an exciting examination of the theatrical functions of medieval English stage directions as records of earlier performance. * Would be recommended reading in for any undergraduate or master's level students studying the medieval period in Performance studies, English Literature or in History (in particular in the UK and the US). * The closest competitors focus on after 1560 so this project is a first in its time period coverage.

"And Yet I Remember" explores representations of ageing and old age in English drama from 1660 to the 1750s. Within these approximately ninety years, England witnessed significant developments in medicine and the advent of sentimental philosophy, which began to transform attitudes toward old age and ageing. This study discusses the enduring cultural and literary stereotyping of old(er) people in culture and drama of this period. The chapters are organised around the stereotypes that kept reappearing in cultural, medical and religious narratives on old age, namely the desiring old man (senex amans) and woman (the "lusty old widow") and the nostalgic and wise elder. Exploring many diverse storylines between 1660 and the 1750s that treat old age and present old(er) characters, the analyses in this study further show how the choice of genre, personal experiences and attitudes of the playwright, and political and cultural revolutions affected the representation of older people.

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.

Robert Greene holds a significant place in our understanding of Elizabethan literature. This book offers the most rigorous attempt yet undertaken to determine the scope of the playwright's canon through analyses of Greene's verse style, vocabulary, rhyming habits, and the dramatist's phraseology in his attested plays and in comparison to four plays that have long been on the margins of Greene's corpus: Locrine, Selimus, George a Greene, and A Knack to Know a Knave. The book defines the ranges for Greene's stylistic habits for the very first time and proceeds to identify parallels of thought, language, and overall dramaturgy that reveal a single author's creative consciousness. This volume also casts light on Greene as a more collaborative dramatist than has hitherto been acknowledged. Through emphasizing the immediate surroundings in which Greene was writing - the flourishing of popular theatres in two compact areas of London, in which each theatre company and their dra-matists kept a close eye on what their competitors were producing - Greene emerges as an influential playwright, whose restored oeuvre enables us to establish new ways in which his dramatic methods impacted other writers of the period, including Shakespeare.

The Things That Can't Be Said: Three Plays About Iraq is a trilogy of plays by renowned Iraqi American playwright/performer Heather Raffo including 9 Parts of Desire, Fallujah: The First Opera about the Iraq War, and Noura. In these three works Raffo explores the indelible effects of war on Iraqis, Americans, and the refugees caught between the two cultures. When considered together, these three works give voice to nearly two decades of rarely examined traumas that have reshaped cultural and national identity for both Americans and Iraqis since the events of 9/11. Heather Raffo is a renowned playwright and performer whose work has been described by The New Yorker as an example of "how art can remake the world." An American with Iraqi heritage, her work is seen as a rare bridge between western and eastern cultures. With ongoing debates about the legacy of America's foreign wars and future role in the Middle East, this volume offers a uniquely historical and deeply human perspective on the political issues of our time. Spanning a decade and a half, together these works form a mosaic of untold stories that were ground breaking in their time and continue to profoundly impact communities and classrooms internationally. 9 Parts of Desire (2003): "First Choice/The Best Shows in London" by The Times, and as one of the "Five Best Plays" in London by The Independent. Its award winning, Off-Broadway premiere ran for nine sold out months and was a critics pick of the The New York Times, Time Out, and Village Voice. The play then received productions in nearly every major regional theatre market in American before being translated for international productions in Brazil, Greece, Sweden, Hungary, India, Turkey, Malta, France, Iraq, Egypt, and Israel. It was the first commercial hit on a national and international stage by an Arab American playwright helping to birth a new genre of Middle Eastern American Theatre. Fallujah (2016) received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera before transferring to NYC Opera. The first ever opera about the Iraq War it tells a U.S. Marine's account of the battle of Fallujah it focuses on moral injury and veteran suicide. Noura (2018) won the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award and was hailed "The Most Ambitious Premiere" of the Women's Voices Theatre Festival by The Washington Post and "stirringly powerful" by The New York Times. Told from inside the marriage of an Iraqi family, the play explores the lingering cost of exile for both recent refugees and more established American immigrants. Drawing inspiration from Ibsen's A Doll's Hous and championed as a first of its kind feminist refugee narrative, it is already being included in university curriculum both in America and abroad.

Originally published in 1949 this book is a study of comedy based on representative works of drama and narrative, mainly in English, from Chaucer to Bernard Shaw. The theme is that comedy implies a philosophy of life that is fairly constant, despite the changes in social conditions and fashions of thought. There is a bibliographical index and the book is illustrated fully and widely by quotations from English comic writers.

Originally published in 1931, this book surveys the origin and development of Greek Comic Drama, with full discussion not only of Aristophanes and Menander but also of other important playwrights whose work had usually received scant notice because only fragments of it have survived. The important papyrus-finds of the previous forty years have been expounded and used. The final chapter is an introduction to comic metre and rhythm.

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.

Exploring Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality in Four Spanish Plays explores society's influence on identity in Spanish theatrical works and discusses parallels to these works in contemporary popular culture. The Spanish plays El retablo de las maravillas (The Marvelous Puppet Show) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1615), Virtudes vencen senales (Virtues overcome Signs) by Velez de Guevara (1620), El publico (The Audience) by Federico Garcia Lorca (1929), and La llamada de Lauren (Lauren's Call) by Paloma Pedrero (1985) all deal with characters in the midst of a crisis of identity. Using an eclectic approach supported by contemporary theories of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, the author analyzes the four plays in terms of identity and shows how society imposes the construction of identity. As the characters reach to define themselves, internal and external pressures guide them in interpreting acceptable behavior. This book offers a close reading of the psychological struggle of each character driven by society to cover their differences with a symbolic mask which, if donned, will eventually devour their true identity.

In tracing the course of French comedy from the Renaissance, through the age of Louis XIV and the eighteenth century, to the eve of the Revolution, originally published in 1977, Geoffrey Brereton shows how it evolved from the crude farces and experimental plays of the sixteenth century to become a rich and highly sophisticated dramatic genre. The main emphasis is on the work of the principal dramatists, notably Moliere (whose plays and career are given a detailed and enlightening treatment), Corneille, Scarron, Marivaux and Beaumarchais, with some space devoted to the more neglected writers, such as the 'cynical generation' of Dancourt, Regnard, Lesage and others; and all the plays are seen in the context of the theatrical conventions that helped to shape them. Different types of comedy are analysed, including comedy of character and of manners, as well as the romantic, burlesque and bourgeois forms and the development of the opera-comique. At the same time Dr Brereton examines the influences on French comedy - influences as varied as those of the farce, the Italian commedia dell'arte, the Spanish comedia and the eighteenth century drame - and the way in which these were absorbed and exploited by French comic dramatists. Since comedy, more than any other kind of drama, reflects the contemporary social scene, attention is drawn to social conditions and attitudes, and some of the more striking parallels with modern social preoccupations are pointed out. Written in a very lively and readable style, and containing much stimulating and original comment, as well as providing the basic facts, it gives a considerable insight into the nature of French comedy during its most formative and fruitful period. A substantial bibliography and other reference material increase the usefulness of this book to the student of French drama.

Originally published in 1973, the history of French tragedy and tragicomedy from their origins in the sixteenth century to the last years of Louis XIV's reign is here surveyed in a single volume. Beginning with a brief account of the development of drama from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Dr Brereton examines the plays as types of drama, the circumstances in which they were produced and their reception by contemporaries. The traditionally great figures of Corneille and Racine are treated at some length, but their work is seen in perspective against the plays of their predecessors and of their own time. Garnier and Montchrestien are discussed, among others, as notable writers of Renaissance humanist tragedy. Sections are devoted to secondary but still important dramatists such as Mairet, Rotrou, Du Ryer, Tristan L'Hermite, Thomas Corneille and Quinault. A long chapter on Alexandre Hardy reviews the work of this neglected author and stresses his interest as a transitional link between the two centuries and as a vigorous pioneer of a type of drama which flourished for several decades after him concurrently with French 'classical' tragedy. The main currents of critical theory, social attitudes and stage history are described in their relation to the development of the drama. Well over a hundred plays are discussed or summarized; and the author has constantly referred back to the original material and has avoided an over-simplification of a vast subject which contains more exceptions and anomalies than has generally been recognized in the past. Chronological tables of the works of major dramatists, summaries of numerous plays and a bibliography containing modern editions of plays are included.

This authoritative new edition of the ancient scholia to Sophocles' Trachiniae is designed to replace the corresponding part of the Teubner text published in 1888. It is the first to rely on a complete scrutiny of the sources of the text and the conjectural activity of scholars, but is also characterised by a fresh methodological approach: the transmission of scholia is prone to creating different versions of basically the same material, and to making conflations of originally distinct entities; in the English preface these transmissional peculiarities guide the editor in establishing a methodology which is appropriate both for analysing the manuscript tradition and composing the critical text of the Trachiniae scholia. By applying this working tool, the editor is the first to restore the scholia to the Trachiniae in a textual state which is arguably the earliest we can recover, and is free of contradictions, unacceptable repetitions, and hybridisation or blending of elements from different versions. The critical text is accompanied by a detailed apparatus criticus, and is contextualised in its scholarly tradition by means of a rich collection of parallel passages. Extensive indices are provided at the end of the book.

First presented in the spring of 458 B.C.E. at the festival of Dionysus in Athens, Aeschylus' trilogy Oresteia won the first prize. Comprised of three plays-Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and The Furies-it is the only surviving example of the ancient trilogy form for Greek tragedies. This drama of the House of Atreus catches everyone in a bloody net. Queen Clytaemestra of Argos murders her husband Agamemnon. Their son Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother. The Furies, hideous deities who punish the murder of blood kin, pursue Orestes. Into this horrific cycle steps Athena, goddess of wisdom, who establishes the rule of law to replace fatal vengeance. Orestes is tried in court before a jury of Athenians and found not guilty. Athena transforms the Furies into benevolent goddesses and extols the virtue of mercy. An important historical document as well as gripping entertainment, the Oresteia conveys beliefs and values of the ancient Athenians as they established the world's first great democracy. Aeschylus (525/4-456/5 B.C.E.) was the first of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece, forerunner of Sophocles and Euripides. In this trilogy he created a new dramatic form with characters and plot, infused with spellbinding emotion. David Mulroy's fluid, accessible English translation with its rhyming choral songs does full justice to the meaning and theatricality of the ancient Greek. In an introduction and appendixes, he provides cultural background for modern readers, actors, and students.

"The [Vagrant Trilogy] extends far beyond the timeline of devastating events, and instead shows us something greater: humanity." - Broadway World The Vagrant Trilogy is a set of three plays by award-winning Arab American playwright Mona Mansour which explores the Palestinian condition prior to, during, and after the infamous Six-Day War. It sketches the devastating effect this conflict had on members of the Palestinian diaspora scattered in Europe and in Lebanese refugee camps. With productions in Washington DC, New York, and Abu Dhabi, this trilogy has moved audiences across both America and the Arabic-speaking world. The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going offer a deep exploration of the Palestinian struggle for home and identity, a powerful glimpse into a reality that many face and few understand. The volume includes a foreword by director Mark Wing-Davey; an introduction by Arab American theatre scholars Hala Baki and Michael Malek Najjar; the three plays in their final performance versions; an interview with playwright Mona Mansour; and a critical essay by literary scholar Diya Abdo. This collection of Mansour's outstanding plays is another important contribution to the Arab American theatrical canon and the larger body of American drama.