FOLGER Shakespeare Library: the world's leading center for Shakespeare studies.

Each edition includes:
- Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
- Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
- Scene-by-scene plot summaries
- A key to famous lines and phrases
- An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
- An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
- Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare

First performed in the 1580s, Love's Metamorphosis is widely regarded as the most elegantly structured of Lyly's plays. The plot looks back to the account of Erisichthon's punishment for the desecration of Ceres' grove in Ovid's Metamorphosis, but the Ovidian story is woven into a wider network of interests turning upon aspects of love. A series of allusions to earlier Lylian compositions allows the play to be viewed in terms of a continuum of work, exploring the status of Cupid and the nature and extent of his power. The play is notable for the articulate resistance offered by the female characters towards the desires of their lovers and the wishes of authority figures, while Protea, is of particular interest to feminist criticism as a striking example of a woman empowered rather than marginalised by the loss of her virgin state. Revived towards the close of the sixteenth century, the play is of importance to theatre historians in that it is the only one of Lyly's comedies known to have passed from Paul's to a different troupe. It is newly edited here from the sole early witness, the quarto of 1601. -- .

The importance of native American realism is traced through a study of the evolution of dramatic theory from the early 1890s through World War I and the uniquely American innovations in realistic drama between world wars.

Dario Fo (1926-2016), actor, playwright, theatre director, stage designer, political activist, artist and author who, having attained international fame in theatre, produced the first of his six novels at the age of 88 - was there any limit to his versatile genius? He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, and works such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist or Can't Pay? Won't Pay secured his reputation as the outstanding political playwright of his age. Unlike other writers of a similar mind, Fo's chosen genre was farce, so his drama is a uniquely engaging mixture of laughter and anger. In 1954 he married Franca Rame (1929-2013), a member of a family-company of touring players. The personal and professional partnership of the two over sixty years was probably unique in theatre history. Her inherited, instinctive knowledge of stagecraft was invaluable to him, but although she was always recognised as an actor of considerable talent, her contribution to the writing of the plays was long undervalued. With the emergence of the feminist movement she increasingly asserted herself, notably with a series of one-woman works she wrote and performed. She became one of Italy's and Europe's leading feminist campaigners, and as such a target for right-wing terrorist groups. In 1973, she was kidnapped and raped by neo-Fascist thugs. Although the subjects of their plays, with their fearless attacks on corruption and satire of Popes and politicians, were often taken from the headlines of the day, their theatre was deeply rooted in theatrical tradition. The Nobel Prize citation stated that Fo 'emulated the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden', but this political campaigning came at a cost. The couple's militant reputation meant that they were for many years barred from Italian television and banned from entering the USA, but their plays were staged from London to Tokyo and they themselves were acclaimed wherever they toured. Joseph Farrell translated many of their works and knew Dario and Franca well. His biography is a complete account of the various activities and multifaceted lives of two extraordinary individuals.

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.

This study provides a European perspective on the drama of Yeats and of the Irish playwrights - Wilde and Synge, O'Casey and Beckett - who share in the achievement of creating a modern 'drama of the interior'. Professor Worth traces in particular the influence of Maeterlinck, examining his 'static drama' in some detail. A dominant theme is the importance of total theatre techniques to the playwrights of the interior from Wilde in Salome to O'Casey in plays like Cock-a-Doodle Dandy. Yeats is seen as the great pioneer, assimilating inspiration from the French, with Arthur Symons as guide, from Synge, from Gordon Craig and from the No drama, and evolving a modern technique for a drama of complex self-consciousness."

For literary scholars, plays are texts; for scenographers, plays are performances. Yet clearly a drama is both text and performance. Dramatic Spaces examines period-specific stage spaces in order to assess how design shaped the thematic and experiential dimensions of plays. This book highlights the stakes of the debate about spatiality and the role of the spectator in the auditorium - if audience members are co-creators of the drama, how do they contribute? The book investigates: Roman comedy and Shakespearean dramas in which the stage-space itself constituted the primary scenographic element and actors' bodies shaped the playing space more than did sets or props the use of paid applauders in nineteenth-century Parisian theaters and how this practice reconfigured theatrical space transactions between stage designers and spectators, including work by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, William Ritman, and Eiko Ishioka Dramatic Spaces aims to do for stage design what reader-response criticism has done for the literary text, with specific case studies on Coriolanus, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Tales of Hoffman, M. Butterfly and Tiny Alice exploring the audience's contribution to the construction of meaning.

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.

After decades of neglect, the screenplay is finally being recognized as a form that deserves serious critical analysis. This book for the first time combines detailed study of the theory and practice of screenwriting with new approaches to criticism and original studies of individual texts.

PHILO. Nay, but this dotage of our general's O'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes, That o'er the files and musters of the war Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn, The office and devotion of their view Upon a tawny front. His captain's heart, Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, And is become the bellows and the fan To cool a gipsy's lust.

Edition, with notes and introductions, of the elaborate entertainments offered to Elizabeth by her courtiers. The entertainments offered by Elizabethan courtiers to their Queen are a central part of the elaborate cult surrounding the figure of Elizabeth. Yet the fascinating literary texts written for these occasions have been comparatively neglected, despite years of growing interest in both "Gloriana" herself and the masques in general. This book presents an extended study of the entertainments by way of introduction to four of the actual texts. The general introduction examines the origins of the entertainments in court spectacles and pageants of the early Tudor period, and shows how they underline the central place of the cult of Elizabethan court life during her reign, as well as considering the literary traditions of chivalry and romance on which the texts of the entertainments rely so heavily. The four major texts edited here are: The Four Foster Children of Desire (1581), and those at Cowdray in 1591,Elvetham (1591), and Ditchley (1592). Two minor texts, on Bisham and Rycote (1592), are also included. Each text is preceded by an introduction and is fully annotated; there are also notes on the music and a full bibliography.

Originally published in 1987, this is a thorough and lucid introduction and commentary to the whole of Goethe's Faust. It gives the student of German and European literature valuable insights into the most important work of Germany's foremost poet. German quotations are translated or paraphrased in English and a detailed knowledge of German literature is not assumed. The book traces Goethe's work on the play over 60 years of his creative career and surveys its critical reception over the 200 years since its first appearance. Part One is analysed as a mimetic tragedy, Part Two as an historical and cultural profile of Goethe's own times. The commentary guides the reader carefully through its subtleties and multi-layered references and provides a broad and coherent structure for the overall understanding of the work. It suggests provocative interpretations of some figures and episodes in Part Two and places renewed emphasis on parts of the work that often receive relatively little attention. An appendix surveys the metres and verse forms of the play.

Originally published in 1951 this full length study gives an account of Buchner's life and personality, together with an account of his three plays, his unfinished short story, his scientific publications and his translations of Hugo.

"It's moral vision, as well as the Miller voice, which remains as strong and unrelenting as a prophet's, that distinguish Broken Glass." - The New York Times When Sylvia Gellburg, a young Jewish woman living in Brooklyn, becomes partially paralyzed from the waist down, her husband Phillip is shocked: what could've caused this sudden condition? The answer is Kristallnacht, the horrific, anti-Semitic event occurring halfway around the world. As the Gellburgs reckon with this pogrom and with the breakdown of their own marriage, a terrifying thought emerges: will the Jewish people ever be able to avoid persecution? Broken Glass is one of Miller's most moving and personal works, touching on themes of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, winning him the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1994. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ambika Singh, and Nupur Tandon, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker,) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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.

Levels of education and, consequently, of literacy were low in the Dublin tenements at the beginning of the 20th century, and this facilitated the persistence of an oral tradition which stretched back for thousands of years. This book is an analysis of O'Casey's Abbey plays in the context of the oral culture in which they were set. Because they were powerless in a culture dominated by those who had reaped the advantages of education, the tenement dwellers were dazzled by the apparent magic of literacy and in awe of those who wielded its power. O'Casey uses this to dramatize the ease with which the poor were seduced into what he saw as a bourgeois revolution which brought them nothing but suffering and death.

Although Sean O'Casey's Abbey plays"The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars"--are universally admired for the richness of their language, this is the first authoritative analysis of the plays in relation to the linguistic and political culture at the turn of the century. Levels of education, and consequently, of literacy were low in the Dublin tenements and this facilitated the persistence of an oral tradition which stretched back for thousands of years. What might strike the modern reader as extravagant in the language of O'Casey's characters would be quite normal in an oral community where all communication was performative.

Because they were powerless in a culture dominated by those who had reaped the advantages of education, the tenement dwellers were dazzled by the apparent magic of literacy and in awe of those who wielded its power. O'Casey uses this to dramatize the ease with which the poor were seduced into what he saw as a bourgeois revolution which brought them nothing but suffering and death. It is hardly surprising, then, that the villains in these plays are educated intruders who speak a language strikingly different from that of the tenement dwellers.

Making Plays explores great drama of the last two decades through the eyes of those who write it, and those who direct it. It is at once a masterclass on theatrical technique and a unique insight into the ways in which great dramatists of our time have reacted to a rapidly changing world. In this book Duncan Wu talks to Michael Attenborough, Alan Bennett, Michael Blakemore, Howard Brenton, David Edgar, Sir Richard Eyre, Michael Frayn, Sir David Hare, Nicholas Hytner, and Max Stafford-Clark.

Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance seeks to address the representation of the humors from non-traditional, abstract, and materialist perspectives, considering the humorality of everyday objects, activities, and performance within the early modern period. To uncover how humoralism shapes textual, material, and aesthetic encounters for contemporary subjects in a broader sense than previous studies have pursued, the project brings together three principal areas of investigation: how the humoral body was evoked and embodied within the space of the early modern stage; how the materiality of an object can be understood as constructed within humoral discourse; and how individuals' activities and pursuits can connote specific practices informed by humoralism. Across the book, contributors explore how diverse media and cultural practices are informed by humoralism. As a whole, the collection investigates alternative humoralities in order to illuminate both early modern works of art as well as the cultural moments of their production.

In this, the third and final volume of his critical account of American drama in the twentieth century, Christopher Bigsby turns from the text-oriented drama of Williams, Miller and Albee (volume 2) in order to trace other, parallel theatrical developments of the post-war period, including contemporary groups and playwrights. Beyond Broadway denotes the geographical and spiritual challenges to prevailing standards which so fragmented the theatre of the 1960s in particular. Following his analysis of the Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway playwrights and theatres, Dr Bigsby separates the period into four main areas: performance theatre (including the Living Theatre and the Performance Group); the conjunction of dance, music and painting with drama in the ‘theatre of images’; two successful contemporary playwrights, Sam Shepard and David Mamet; and finally the committed theatre exemplified in the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Chicano, black and women’s theatre.

A pioneering collection of articles on fictionalized biographies of the Romantics in contemporary fiction and drama. It appears that the lives of the British Romantics and the myths surrounding them have a special appeal for contemporary writers.The present volume sets out to explore this renewed interest in Romantic artist-figures in the context of the current renaissance of 'life-writing'. The essays collected here deal with Romantic 'biofictions' by such authors as Peter Ackroyd, Adrian Mitchell, Ann Jellicoe, Liz Lochhead, Judith Chernaik, Amanda Prantera, Robert Nye, Tom Stoppard, Howard Brenton, Edward Bond, and others. Thomas Chatterton, William Blake, James Hogg, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Polidori, John Clare, and -- most prominently -- Lord Byron featureas the 'biographical subjects' in the works discussed.

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.

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.

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.

This book recovers a sense of the high stakes of Shakespearean comedy, arguing that the comedies, no less than the tragedies, serve to dramatize responses to the condition of being human, responses that invite scholarly investigation and explanation. Taking its cue from Stanley Cavell's influential readings of Othello and Lear, the book argues that exposure or vulnerability to others is the source of both human happiness and human misery; while the tragedies showcase attempts at the evasion of such vulnerability through the self-defeating pursuit of epistemological certainty, the comedies present the drama and the difficulty of turning away from an epistemological register in order to productively respond to the fact of our humanity. Where Shakespeare's tragedies might be viewed in Cavellian terms as the drama of skepticism, Shakespeare's comedies then exemplify the drama of acknowledgement. As a parallel and a preamble, Gottlieb suggests that the field of literary studies is itself a site of such revealing responses: where competing research methods strive to foreclose upon (or, alternatively, rejoice in) epistemological uncertainty, such commitments bespeak an urge to avoid or circumvent the human in the practice of scholarship. Reading Shakespeare's comedies in tandem with a "defactoist" view of teaching and learning points in the direction of a new humanism, one that eschews both the relativism of old deconstruction and contemporary Presentism and the determinism of various kinds of structural accounts. This book offers something new in scholarly and popular understanding of Shakespeare's work, doing so with both philosophical rigor and literary attention to the difficult work of reading.

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.