Who is the proper occupant of the nursery? The obvious answer is the child, and not an archive, a seductive troll-princess, or poor fosterlings. Nevertheless, characters in Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf intend to host these improper occupants in their children's rooms. Dr. Gunn calls these dramas 'the empty nursery plays' because they all describe rooms intended for offspring, as well as characters' plans for refilling that space. One might expect nurseries to provide an ideal setting for a realist playwright to dramatize contemporary problems. Rather than mattering to Ibsen in terms of naturalist detail or explicit social critique, however, they are reserved for the maintenance of characters' fears and expectations concerning the future. Empty Nurseries, Queer Occupants intervenes in scholarly debates in child studies by arguing that the empty bourgeois nursery is a better symbol for innocence than the child. Here, 'emptiness' refers to the common construction of the child as blank and latent. In Ibsen, the child is also doomed or deceased, and thus essentially absent, but nurseries persist as spaces of memorialization and potential alike. Nurseries also gesture toward the domains of childhood and women's labor, from birth to domestic service. 'Bourgeois nursery' points to the classed construction of innocence and to the more materialist aspects of this book, which inform our understanding of domesticity and family in the West and uncover a set of reproductive connotations broader than 'the innocent child' can convey.

This anonymous manuscript play has long been the subject of scholarly dispute regarding its relationship with Shakespeare's "Richard II." This edition, which thoroughly re-examines the text, situates the play within its historical and political context, relating it to the genre of chronicle drama to which it belongs. The manuscript is of particular interest in that it appears to have been used in the playhouse over a considerable period of time and contains what seems to be evidence of the theatre practice of the time. The marginalia, including 'false' entries, actors' names, instructions for omission, references to stage properties and cues for musical effects, etc., are documented in an Appendix and discussed in the Introduction. The play is also of special interest for its skilful and original handling of source material which may well have influenced Shakespeare's "Richard II." The extensive appendices drawn from Holinshed, Grafton and Stow provide the reader with the opportunity to investigate the manner in which the dramatist has shaped the material. The editors argue for the play's stage-worthiness and dramatic complexity, suggesting that its range both of dramatic tone and social inclusiveness indicate the work of a dramatist of considerable skill and subtlety, equal or superior to the Shakespeare of the Henry VI plays.

This authoritative new edition of the ancient scholia to Sophocles' Electra 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 Electra scholia. By applying this working tool, the editor is the first to restore the scholia to the Electra 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.

The book is written mainly for students to enable them better to appreciate and enjoy Euripides' Andromache. Its presentation seeks to combine depth of analysis with clarity and accessibility. It discusses Greek theatre and performance, the myth behind the play, and the literary, intellectual, and political context in which it was written and first performed. The book provides analyses of the various characters, and highlights the play's ambiguities and complexities. What makes Andromache of special interest is the fact that, of the 32 extant tragedies, it might have been originally produced outside Athens. This in turn leads the discussion of how the play's scrutiny of the Spartan characters affected the off-stage audience. Andromache is the only play that portrays the human toll caused by the Trojan War to both the Trojan and the Greek sides. After the Fall of Troy, Andromache, former wife of Hector, has been given to Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, as a war-prize. Andromache bore Neoptolemus a son, Molossus, before Neoptolemus married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. While Neoptolemus is away, Menelaus and Hermione attempt to kill Andromache and Molossus, causing a rift between the two families who were the major players in the War: the house of Atreus and the house of Peleus, father of Achilles. Although Neoptolemus is murdered, the play ends with a prophecy for the future of the line of descent of Peleus and Thetis in the form of the blessed kingdom of Molossia.

Described as "a powerful, brilliant, and original study" when first published, this second edition of Froma Zeitlin's experiment in decoding the Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes in the light of contemporary theory now updates her explorations of the tragic struggle between Eteocles and Polyneices, the doomed sons of Oedipus, with a new preface, a new afterword, and the addition of the relevant Greek texts. The mutual self-destruction of the enemy brothers in this last act of the cursed family is preceded (and determined) by one of Aeschylus' most daring innovations through the pairing of the shields of attackers and defenders in the central scene of the play as an extended dialogue explicitly concerned with visual and verbal symbols. In a preliminary consideration of the relations between language and kinship and between city and family, between self and society, as determining forces in fifth-century drama, the heart of the book is a detailed investigation of this tour de force of semiotic energy. Zeitlin's decipherment of this provocative text yields a heightened appreciation of Aeschylus' compositional artistry and the complexity of his worldview. At the same time, this study points the way to Zeitlin's larger engagement with the special ideological role that the city of Thebes comes to play on the tragic stage as the negative counterpart to the self-representation of Athens.

First published in 1971, Drama and the Theatre with Radio, Film and Television is concerned with the nature of theatre as a subject for study and the ways of studying it. All its contributors have practical experience of staging plays for professional or student companies, or for both. Necessarily, attention is chiefly focused on the main elements of plays in performance in theatres, now and in the past. The chosen topics place more specialized studies in a wider context, because such a book as this needs, above all, to give an impression of general scope. It is intended for those aiming for a theatre career and for young students interested in theatre.

This book locates the theatre of Marina Carr within a female genealogy that revises the patriarchal origins of modern Irish drama. The creative vision of Lady Augusta Gregory underpins the analysis of Carr's dramatic vision throughout the volume in order to re-situate the woman artist as central to Irish theatre. For Carr, 'writing is more about the things you cannot understand than the things you can', and her evocation of 'pastures of the unknown' forms the thematic through-line of this work. Lady Gregory's plays offer an intuitive lineage with Carr which can be identified in their use of language, myth, landscape, women, the transformative power of storytelling and infinite energies of nature and the Otherworld. This book reconnects the severed bridge between Carr and Gregory in order to acknowledge a foundational status for all women in Irish theatre.

In this book, McMahon considers Early Modern revenge plays from a political science perspective, paying particular attention to the construction of family and state institutions. Plays set for close study are The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Malcontent and The Duchess of Malfi. The plays are read as unique events occupying positions in historical process concerning the privatisation of the family (by means of symbolism and concrete household strategies such as budgeting and surveillance) and the subsequent appropriation of the family and its methods by the state. The effect is that family becomes an unofficial organ of the state. This process, however, also involves the reform of the state along lines demanded by the private family. McMahon's critical method, derived from the theory of Bourdieu, Bataille, and Girard, maps capital transactions to reveal emotionally charged, often idiosyncratic responses to issues of shared concern. Such issues include state corruption, the management of women, the performance of roles according to gender, the uses of surveillance, and the ethics of sacrifice.

Theology and Existentialism in Aeschylus revivifies the complex question of fate and freedom in the tragedies of the famous Greek playwright. Starting with Sartre's insights about radical existential freedom, this book shows that Aeschylus is concerned with the ethical ramifications of surrendering our lives to fatalism (gods, curses, inherited guilt) and thoroughly interrogates the plays for their complex insights into theology and human motivation. But can we reconcile the radical freedom of existentialism and the seemingly fatal world of tragedy, where gods and curses and necessities wreak havoc on individual autonomy? If forces beyond our control or comprehension are influencing our lives, what happens to choice? How are we to conceive of ethics in a world studiously indifferent to our choices? In this book, author Ric Rader demonstrates that few understood the importance of these questions better than the tragedians, whose literature dealt with a central theological concern: What is a god? And how does god affect, impinge upon, or even enable human freedom? Perhaps more importantly: If god is dead, is everything possible, or nothing? Tragedy holds the preeminent position with regard to these questions, and Aeschylus, our earliest surviving tragedian, is the best witness to these complex theological issues.

This volume investigates the early modern understanding of twinship through new readings of plays, informed by discussions of twins appearing in such literature as anatomy tracts, midwifery manuals, monstrous birth broadsides, and chapbooks. The book contextualizes such dramatic representations of twinship, investigating contemporary discussions about twins in medical and popular literature and how such dialogues resonate with the twin characters appearing on the early modern stage. Garofalo demonstrates that, in this period, twin births were viewed as biologically aberrant and, because of this classification, authors frequently attempt to explain the phenomenon in ways which call into question the moral and constitutional standing of both the parents and the twins themselves. In line with current critical studies on pregnancy and the female body, discussions of twin births reveal a distrust of the mother and the processes surrounding twin conception; however, a corresponding suspicion of twins also emerges, which monstrous birth pamphlets exemplify. This book analyzes the representation of twins in early modern drama in light of this information, moving from tragedies through to comedies. This progression demonstrates how the dramatic potential inherent in the early modern understanding of twinship is capitalized on by playwrights, as negative ideas about twins can be seen transitioning into tragic and tragicomic depictions of twinship. However, by building toward a positive, comic representation of twins, the work additionally suggests an alternate interpretation of twinship in this period, which appreciates and celebrates twins because of their difference. The volume will be of interest to those studying Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in relation to the History of Emotions, the Body, and the Medical Humanities.

This volume brings together a selection of the major articles of David Mills (1938-2013), which along with similar volumes by Alexandra F. Johnston, Peter Meredith and Meg Twycross makes up a set of "Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies". Mills was one of these four key scholars whose work has changed what is known about English medieval drama and theatre. He made major contributions to understanding English medieval theatre in the widest sense but more specifically to the nature and development of medieval plays and their performance at Chester. The scope of his work from manuscript to performance has created new knowledge and insights brought about by his remarkable technical skill as an editor and researcher. His texts of the Chester Cycle of Mystery Plays have become the standard works. In the light of this outstanding research the volume is comprised of four sections: 1. Editors and Editing; 2. Cultural Contexts; 3. Staging and Performance; 4. Criticism and Evaluation. An editorial introduction opens the work.

This book will constitute an original intervention into longstanding but insistently relevant debates around the significance of notions of 'performativity' to the critical analysis of early modern drama. In particular, the book aims to: show how the investigation of performativity can enable readings of Shakespeare and Jonson that challenge the dominant methodological frameworks within which those plays have come to be read; demonstrate that the thought of performativity does not come to rest in the simplicity of method or instrumentality, and that it resists its own claim that language and action might be understood as unproblematically instrumental; demonstrate that this self-resistance occurs or takes place as a moment in the process of articulating the claims of the performative, and that this process is itself in an important sense dramatic.

This collection of essays considers what constituted contagion in the minds of early moderns in the absence of modern germ theory. In a wide range of essays focused on early modern drama and the culture of theater, contributors explore how ideas of contagion not only inform representations of the senses (such as smell and touch) and emotions (such as disgust, pity, and shame) but also shape how people understood belief, narrative, and political agency. Epidemic thinking was not limited to medical inquiry or the narrow study of a particular disease. Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and other early modern writers understood that someone might be infected or transformed by the presence of others, through various kinds of exchange, or if exposed to certain ideas, practices, or environmental conditions. The discourse and concept of contagion provides a lens for understanding early modern theatrical performance, dramatic plots, and theater-going itself.

A World Elsewhere is Steven Berkoff's bold attempt to describe his multifarious theatrical works. Berkoff outlines the methods that he uses, first of all as an actor, secondly as a playwright and thirdly as theatre director, as well as those subtle connections in between, when one discipline melds effortlessly into another. He examines the early impulses that generated his works and what drove him to give them form, as well as the challenges he faced when adapting the work of other authors. Berkoff discusses some of his most difficult, successful and unique creations, journeying through his long and varied career to examine how they were shaped by him, and how he was shaped by them. The sheer scale of this book offers a rare experience of an accomplished artist, combined with the honesty and insight of an autobiography, making this text a singular tool for teaching, inspiration and personal exploration. Suitable for anyone with an interest in Steven Berkoff and his illustrious career, A World Elsewhere is the part analysis and part confession of an artist whose work has been performed all over the world.

Baroque Lorca: An Archaist Playwright for the New Stage defines Federico Garcia Lorca's trajectory in the theater as a lifelong search for an audience. It studies a wide range of dramatic writings that Lorca created for the theater, in direct response to the conditions of his contemporary industry, and situates the theory and praxis of his theatrical reform in dialogue with other modernist renovators of the stage. This book makes special emphasis on how Lorca engaged with the tradition of Spanish Baroque, in particular with Cervantes and Calderon, to break away from the conventions of the illusionist stage. The five chapters of the book analyze Lorca's different attempts to change the dynamics of the Spanish stage from 1920 to his assassination in 1936: His initial incursions in the arenas of symbolist and historical drama (The Butterfly's Evil Spell, Mariana Pineda); his interest in puppetry (The Billy-Club Puppets and In the Frame of Don Cristobal) and the two 'human' farces The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife and The Love of Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden; the central piece in his project of 'impossible' theater (The Public); his most explicitly political play, one that takes the violence to the spectators' seats (The Dream of Life); and his three plays adopting, an altering, the contemporary formula of 'rural drama' (Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba). Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Metamorphoses of Commedia dell'Arte traces the steps by which Commedia has been transformed by cultural contact outside Italy into popular forms which bear little resemblance to the original. The book follows the Masks of Arlecchino, Pedrolino and Pulcinella as they gradually migrate and mutate into Harlequin, Mr. Punch and seaside Pierrot troupes. What happened to Pantalone, Scaramouche, Colombina and the male Lover is also investigated, though they had no final forms of their own. This study constitutes a history of what happened, notably in France and Great Britain, to a supremely popular theatrical genre as a result of changing fashions in entertainment brought on by societal developments, civil and industrial revolution and dynastic change. It investigates how the genre was exploited by management, and even its own stars, lost its vitality and gradually ended up in 'sunken' forms.

Brings together authors of fiction with philosophers and academics in Early Modern England and compares their ways of describing and understanding the world; Explores popular culture as well as the culture of the learned and elite; Examines the intellectual consequences of the Reformation and compares the spiritual and doctrinal practices of the occult to those of orthodoxy. Magic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Supernatural Fiction in Early Modern Drama and Culture explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical. Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticizing it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audiences everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.

Reading and Writing a Screenplay takes you on a journey through the many possible ways of writing, reading and imagining fiction and documentary projects for cinema, television and new media. It explores the critical role of a script as a document to be written and read with both future readers and the future film it will be giving life to in mind. The book explores the screenplay and the screenwriting process by approaching the film script in three different ways: how it is written, how it is read and how it can be rewritten. Combining contemporary screenwriting practices with historical and academic context, Isabelle Raynauld provides key analytical tools and reading strategies for conceptualizing and scripting projects based on the impact different writing styles can have on readers, with various examples ranging from early cinema to new media and new platforms throughout. This title offers an alternative, thought-provoking and inspiring approach to reading and writing a screenplay that is ideal for directors, producers, actors, students, aspiring screenwriters and readers interested in understanding how an effective screenplay is created.

Set in Ancient Rome, "Poetaster" offers one of the first and most subtle statements in English of the Augustan cultural ideal. Jonson contrasts Augustus' wise rule with an English polity dominated (like the stage) by malice, intrigue and envy. This text examines these different strands so skilfully interwoven by Jonson, and argues for a reassessment of "Poetaster" as one of the most ideologically interesting of all early modern plays. The accompanying explanatory notes guide the reader through the personal and political illusions which gave the play its immediate satirical impact. -- .

Chekhov's masterpiece, about a Russian family losing its ancestral home, combines a lament for a vanishing past with a hopeful dream of the future. In the century since its first performance, The Cherry Orchard has undergone a wide range of conflicting interpretations: tragic and comic, naturalistic and symbolic, reactionary and radical. Beginning with the 1904 premiere at Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, this study traces the performance history of one of the landmark plays of the modern theatre. Considering the work of such directors as Anatoly Efros, Giorgio Strehler, Peter Brook, and Peter Stein, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard explores the way different artists, periods and cultures have reinvented Chekhov's poignant comedy of failure and hope.

What Shakespeare Stole From Rome analyses the multiple ways Shakespeare used material from Roman history and Latin poetry in his plays and poems. Three important tragedies deal with the history of the Roman Republic: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. From the tragedies of Seneca, Shakespeare took the theme of evil in the ruler, as in Richard III and Macbeth. The comedies of Plautus lie behind the early play The Comedy of Errors. From Ovid, Shakespeare took nearly all his Greek mythology, as in the miniature epic Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare, who knew Latin very well, introduced some 600 new Latin-based words into English.

Mr. Turbulent (1682) is an anonymous city comedy which starred popular comic actors and young actresses of great appeal. The play was produced in the immediate aftermath of the Exclusion Crisis. This first-ever critical edition offers a fully annotated modernized version of the text, together with an introduction that examines the contexts of the play. The editor also discusses at length such topics as the political dimension of the Moorfields setting and the green spaces of Restoration London. He examines as well the rethorical use of madness associated with the Bedlam hospital for the insane, the other pivotal cityscape setting in the comedy.

First published in 1974, Investigating Drama offers a holistic understanding of drama. An understanding of drama requires far more thana study, however thorough, of plays and playwright, stagecraft and techniques, for drama must always be seen in the context of the theatre at work. A descriptive coverage of the basic elements of drama is accordingly only half the purpose of this book, and the authors hope that their plea in the title for an 'investigation' will be taken literally. To allow maximum flexibility the book is divided into independent 'units', which can be followed through as a complete drama course, or taken individually by those wishing to concentrate on selective areas. All aspects of theatre are covered and there is ample opportunity for practical work in improvisation. This book will be of interest to students of literature and drama.

In the earliest extant works of Greek literature, Zeus reigns supreme in the Olympian hierarchy. However, scattered and scanty though they may be, there are allusions to threats of rebellion which challenge Zeus' supremacy. This book examines these passages, drawn from Homer, Hesiod and the "Homeric Hymns," to offer some new interpretations. While focusing on the theme of cosmic/divine strife, it becomes clear that hints of lost legends underlie these texts. Tracing their hidden logic helps to improve our understanding of early Greek poetry.