William Shakespeare's sonnets are some of his most enduring work and a treasure for all time. Mystery surrounds these magical poems. Who was Shakespeare's Dark Lady and who was the Fair Youth that Shakespeare addressed in so many of the sonnets? These Poems are both witty and poignant. Interestingly, Shakespeare chose to break many of the established rules when writing these. They are simply a joy to read. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, Coral is far more red, than her lips red, If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun: If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head: I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks, And in some perfumes is there more delight, Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

This book examines the continuing relevance of Buchner in the early twenty-first century, in terms of politics, science, philosophy, aesthetics, performance and cultural studies, uniquely combining close readings with wide-ranging cultural, theatrical, philosophical and theoretical contextualizations. Der Band beschaftigt sich mit Buchners anhaltender Aktualitat in den verschiedensten Bereichen. Er zeichnet sich durch detailliert textbezogene Interpretationen aus, die gleichzeitig zahlreiche aktuelle kultur- und theaterwissenschaftliche, philosophische, naturwissenschaftliche, asthetische und theoretische Themen ansprechen.

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"This powerful and lively package of primary materials and historical context will demonstrate how historical 'forces' play themselves out on the ground. Kierner's collection offers a fresh lens on a new world struggling into being and will inspire teachers and students of all ages alike."
--Catherine Allgor, author of "A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation"

aThe Contrast makes a real contribution to the existing scholarship on this period, it has great appeal for classroom use, and it puts back in print an amusing play that is instrumental in understanding critical issues in the new nation. The play aThe Contrasta centers on gender roles, relations, and expectations, mocking the gender stereotypes of the day and is a rich source for understanding a host of political and social issues in the Early Republic. It is funnyaeven to a modern audienceaand replete with literary references.a
--Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, author of "Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790-1860"

aI can think of no other text of the period that lays out the drive toward transparency more clearly or denigrates coquettes and libertines more entertainingly. The play is a pivotal piece of American cultural history.a
--Norma Basch, author of "Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the Victorians"

"The Contrast," which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, andextremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers.

Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler's play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans -- and, if so, how?

Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.

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.

Scholars have been seeking to understand Sophocles' Antigone for over two millennia. The origins of this long tradition of the play's interpretation are now represented mainly by a series of notes that have survived in the margins of medieval manuscripts. The book offers an English introduction and an authoritative critical text, which is accompanied by a detailed apparatus criticus.

Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world. David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.

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.

Is loyalty to the state worth everything? Titus Andronicus, Rome's most honored general, has led twenty-one of his sons to their death on battlefields, fighting for Rome, even killing one for, in his judgment, behaving disloyalty to the emperor. With the Roman emperorship uncertain, he returns triumphant from wars against the Goths, bringing with him the captives Queen Tamora, her sons, and her lover Aaron. From the beginning the violent and tragic consequences of this action decide the course of the play. Undoubtedly Shakespeare at his most violent, Titus Andronicus is not for the faint-hearted. Beyond the bloodshed it is an examination of the state: Rome in which law, custom, and tradition have come to be so powerful as to obscure reality, and so make possible a barbarity that understands itself as the peak of civilization; and the individual: driven by loyalty, revenge, and the desire for power, and yet endowed with the capacity to change.

Despite the recent turn to affects and emotions in the humanities and despite the unceasing popularity of romantic and erotic love as a motif in fictional works of all genres, the subject has received surprisingly little attention in academic studies of contemporary drama. Love in Contemporary British Drama reflects the appeal of love as a topic and driving force in dramatic works with in-depth analyses of eight pivotal plays from the past three decades. Following an interdisciplinary and historical approach, the study collects and condenses theories of love from philosophy and sociology to derive persisting discourses and to examine their reoccurrence and transformation in contemporary plays. Special emphasis is put on narratives of love's compensatory function and precariousness and on how modifications of these narratives epitomise the peculiarities of emotional life in the social and cultural context of the present. Based on the assumption that drama is especially inclined to draw on shared narratives for representations of love, the book demonstrates that love is both a window to remnants of the past in the present and a proper subject matter for drama in times in which the suitability of the dramatic form has been questioned.

Octavia is a work of exceptional historical and dramatic interest. It is the only surviving complete example of the Roman historical drama known as the fabula praetexta. Written shortly after Nero's death by an unknown author, the play deals with events at the court of Nero in the decisive year 62 CE, for which it is the earliest extant (almost contemporary) literary source; its main themes are sex, murder, politics, power and the perceptions and constructions of history. It is a powerful, lyrical and spectacular play. This is the first critical edition of Octavia, with verse translation and commentary, which aims to elucidate the text dramatically as well as philologically, and to locate it firmly in its historical and theatrical context. The verse translation is designed for both performance and serious study.

"Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London "explores the intimate and dynamic relationship between acting companies and playwrights in this seminal era in English theatre history.Siobhan Keenan's analysis includes chapters on the traditions and workings of contemporary acting companies, playwriting practices, stages and staging, audiences and patrons, each illustrated with detailed case studies of individual acting companies and their plays, including troupes such as Lady Elizabeth's players, 'Beeston's Boys' and the King's Men and works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Brome and Heywood. We are accustomed to focusing on individual playwrights: "Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London" makes the case that we also need to think about the companies for which dramatists wrote and with whose members they collaborated, if we wish to better understand the dramas of the English Renaissance stage.

Can the inadvertent clashes between collaborators produce more powerful effects than their concordances? For Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, the playwriting team best known for their tragedy The Changeling, disagreements and friction proved quite beneficial for their work. This first full-length study of Middleton and Rowley uses their plays to propose a new model for the study of collaborative authorship in early modern English drama. David Nicol highlights the diverse forms of collaborative relationships that factor into a play's meaning, including playwrights, actors, companies, playhouses, and patrons. This kaleidoscopic approach, which views the plays from all these perspectives, throws new light on the Middleton-Rowley oeuvre and on early modern dramatic collaboration as a whole.

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.

Has any other love story become so enmeshed in our culture as the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet? In fair Verona the families of Montague and Capulet are locked in a long-standing, bitter blood feud when young Romeo Montague slips into a masquerade party at the Capulet's. During the dance he glimpses Juliet, the daughter of the house, and is struck by love at first sight. She returns his passion and they promise each other everlasting love notwithstanding the rift between their families. Despite their extraordinary circumstances, the story of Romeo and Juliet has become the archetypal tale of young love. Reflecting the seemingly insurmountable hurdles young lovers perceive and the conviction that even death is preferable to separation. Perhaps the fascination also lies in Shakespeare's exquisite language that so perfectly expresses the depths of feeling that manifests what all lovers would say if they found the words.

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000, Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese writer to be so lauded for his prose and plays. Since relocating to France in 1987, in a voluntary exile from China, he has assembled a body of dramatic work that has best been understood neither as expressly Chinese nor French, but as transnational. In this comprehensive study of his post-exile plays, Mary Mazzilli explores Gao's plays as examples of postdramatic transnationalism: a transnational artistic and theatrical trend that is fluid, flexible and encompasses a variety of styles and influences. As such, this innovative interdisciplinary investigation offers fresh insights into contemporary theatre. Whereas other publications have considered Gao's work as a cultural and artistic phenomenon, Gao Xingjian's Post-Exile Plays: Transnationalism and Postdramatic Theatre is the first study to relate his plays to postdramatic theatre and to provide close textual and dramatic analysis that will help readers to better understand his complex work, and also to see it in the context of the work of contemporary playwrights such as Martin Crimp, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek. Among the plays discussed are: The Other Shore, written just before he left China in 1987; Between Life and Death (1991) - compared in detail to Martin Crimp's Attempts on her life; Dialogue and Rebuttal (1992), and its relationship to Beckett's Happy Days; Nocturnal Wanderer (1993), Weekend Quartet (1995), and the latest plays Snow in August (1997), Death Collector (2000) and Ballade Nocturne (2010).

One of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Othello sets itself apart with its personal scale, fascinating plot and compelling, exotic characters. It shows the two sides of passion with shocking clarity. At first great love overcomes the great differences in social status, age, and race between Othello and Desdemona and their mutual devotion seems invulnerable. But the waves of passion are turned to obsessive jealousy at the hand of Iago, the perfect villain, who has set out to destroy Othello on a personal mission of revenge. With a faultlessly executed plan, Iago sews the seeds of doubt and mistrust that pervert Othello's once noble mind and ensnares those closest to him into a miserable web of deceit and doom. This powerful drama, with its gripping dialogue and unequalled poetry, is not to be missed.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals.
Collected here for the first time in the series are four major works by Euripides all set in Athens: Hippoltos, translated by Robert Bagg, a dramatic interpretation of the tragedy of Phaidra; Suppliant Women, translated by Rosanna Warren and Steven Scully, a powerful examination of the human psyche; Ion, translated by W. S. Di Piero and Peter Burian, a complex enactment of the changing relations between the human and divine orders; and The Children of Herakles, translated by Henry Taylor and Robert A. Brooks, a descriptive tale of the descendants of Herakles and their journey home. These four tragedies were originally avialble as single volumes. This volume retains the informative introductions and explanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combines glossary and Greek line numbers.

Winner of the London Hellenic Prize 2020 The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro gathers together for the first time the three 'Greek' plays of the MacArthur Genius Award-winning Chicanx playwright and performance artist. Based respectively on Sophocles' Electra and Oedipus, and Euripides' Medea, Alfaro's Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, and Mojada transplant ancient themes and problems into the 21st century streets of Los Angeles and New York, in order to give voice to the concerns of the Chicanx and wider Latinx communities. From performances around the world including sold-out runs at New York's Public Theater, these texts are extremely important to those studying classical reception, Greek theatre and Chicanx writers. This unique anthology features definitive editions of all three plays alongside a comprehensive introduction which provides a critical overview of Luis Alfaro's work, accentuating not only the unique nature of these three 'urban' adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy but also the manner in which they address present-day Chicanx and Latinx socio-political realities across the United States. A brief introduction to each play and its overall themes precedes the text of the drama. The anthology concludes with exclusive supplementary material aimed at enhancing understanding of Alfaro's plays: a 'Performance History' timeline outlining the performance history of the plays; an alphabetical 'Glossary' explaining the most common terms in Spanish and Spanglish appearing in each play; and a 'Further Reading' list providing primary and secondary bibliography for each play. The anthology is completed by a new interview with Alfaro which addresses key topics such as Alfaro's engagement with ancient Greek drama and his work with Chicanx communities across the United States, thus providing a critical contextualisation of these critically-acclaimed plays.

Clifford Odets, one of the 20th century's leading American playwrights, was a fervent believer in democracy and the human ability to overcome obstacles. Yet his legacy has been overshadowed by persistent attempts to read him as a thoroughly political playwright. This new consideration reads his career--the work itself and the conditions of its invention--as cultural creations in a time of political, social, and economic change. Spanning two World Wars, the Depression, and the Cold War, the works of Clifford Odets illuminate a period of tremendous change in American life and theatre. Herr adroitly examines Odets's plays and screenplays against the backdrop of the artistic and economic pressures placed upon him by the Group Theatre, Broadway, Hollywood, and the 1952 HUAC hearings in which he testified. He avers that Odets's experience as a writer in the film and theatre industries is reflected in expressions of economic struggle in his plays. While a "culture of abundance" in the face of economic catastrophe shaped the structure and content of his early works, political pressures, especially during the Cold War, shaped his later career. This book illustrates the deeply utopian nature of Odets's vision, which existed alongside a continuing ambivalence toward consumer culture as a means of political and social change. Herr's fresh new look at Odets's works and contributions to the American stage invites readers to reconsider accepted notions about the playwright's importance.

Eastern and Western Synergies and Imaginations: Texts and Histories is a product of east-west studies crossed with adaptation studies: it goes beyond evaluation of cultural interactions and discussion of forms and manners of adaptation. This volume brings together critical discourses from various cultural locales which have developed from and thrived on the notion of "East meets West" or "West meets East". The 10 chapters trace and investigate cross-, trans- or multi-cultural interpretations of fictional and non-fictional narratives that feature people and events in cities and regions which thrive, or have thrived, as East-West hubs, thereby expounding multiple layers of relationship between source texts and new texts. An allegorical play, The Three Ladies of Macao, premiered in December 2016, is now published as appendix in this volume.

In this volume, Nicholas R. Jones analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s, when the performance of Africanized Castilian, commonly referred to as habla de negros (black speech), was in vogue. Focusing on Spanish Golden Age theater and performative poetry from authors such as Calderon de la Barca, Lope de Rueda, and Rodrigo de Reinosa, Jones makes a strong case for revising the belief, long held by literary critics and linguists, that white appropriations and representations of habla de negros language are "racist buffoonery" or stereotype. Instead, Jones shows black characters who laugh, sing, and shout, ultimately combating the violent desire of white supremacy. By placing early modern Iberia in conversation with discourses on African diaspora studies, Jones showcases how black Africans and their descendants who built communities in early modern Spain were rendered legible in performative literary texts. Accessibly written and theoretically sophisticated, Jones's groundbreaking study elucidates the ways that habla de negros animated black Africans' agency, empowered their resistance, and highlighted their African cultural retentions. This must-read book on identity building, performance, and race will captivate audiences across disciplines.

Eupolis (fl. 429-411 BC) was one of the best-attested and most important of Aristophanes' rivals. He wrote the same sort of vigorous, topical, and often indecent comedy that we know from the surviving plays of Aristophanes. No complete play has survived, but more than 120 lines of his best-known comedy, Demoi (The Demes), are extant. This book provides a new translation of all the remaining fragments and an essay on each lost play, as well as discussions of Eupolis' career and the sort of comedy that this prizewinning poet created.