What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter of structure? The Contemporary Political Play: Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure examines the politics of contemporary 'political' drama. It traces the origins of the contemporary British political play to the emergence of the idea of 'serious drama' in the late 19th century through the work of Bernard Shaw, and argues that a Shavian version of serious drama was inextricably linked to the social and political structures of British society at the time. While political drama is still often thought of as adhering to a Shavian model in which social issues are presented through a dialectical structure, Grochala argues that the different political structures of contemporary Britain give rise to formally inventive dramaturgies that are no less 'serious' or political than their Shavian forebears. Through analysing the experimental dramaturgies of contemporary plays by playwrights including Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Anthony Neilson, debbie tucker green and Mark Ravenhill, among others, it offers a set of new principles for understanding how a play functions politically and reveals how today the dramaturgical structure of a play is as political as its content.

The theatre and drama of the late Georgian period have been the focus of a number of recent studies, but such work has tended to ignore its social and political contexts. Theatric Revolution redresses the balance by considering the role of stage censorship during the Romantic period, an era otherwise associated with the freedom of expression. Looking beyond the Royal theatres at Covent Garden and Drury Lane which have dominated most recent accounts of the period, this book examines the day-to-day workings of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and shows that radicalized groups of individuals continuously sought ways to evade the suppression of both playhouses and dramatic texts.
Incorporating a wealth of new research, David Worrall reveals the centrality of theatre within busy networks of print culture, politics of all casts, elite and popular cultures, and metropolitan and provincial audiences. Ranging from the drawing room of Queen Caroline's private theatrical to the song-and-supper dens of Soho and radical free and easies, Theatric Revolution deals with the complex vitality of Romantic theatrical culture, and its intense politicization at all levels. This fascinating new study will be of great value to cultural historians, as well as to literary and theatre scholars.

This new translation (the first complete verse translation of Aristophanes' comedies to appear for more than twenty-five years) makes freshly available one of the most remarkable comic playwrights in the entire Western tradition. Aristophanes is the only surviving representative of Greek Old Comedy, which flourished during the heyday of classical Athenian culture in the fifth century BC, and his plays are characterized by extraordinary combinations of fantasy and satire, sophistication and vulgarity, formality and freedom. This special mixture of qualities calls for a range and flexibility of linguistic resources which only a verse translation can supply. The present translation balances historical fidelity with literary and dramatic vigour, and conveys some of the unique variety of Aristophanic comic theatre. There is a substantial general introduction to the author and introductory essays to each of the plays, as well as full explanatory notes and an index of names.

Harold Pinter is one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. This brief biography offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output. Placing Pinters life and work alongside each other, the study illuminates Pinters vision of society, politics, gender, sex, violence and human relationships. Drawing upon the full-range of his output, his letters, journalism, writings about him, Baker combines a biographical approach with close (re)readings of his work to create a fresh perspective on his life and art. The book offers students, academics and readers a rich depiction of Harold Pinter, the man and the writer.

The first collection of its kind, Chartist Drama makes available four plays written or performed by members of the Chartist movement of the 1840s. Emerging from the lively counter-culture of this protest campaign for democratic rights, these plays challenged cultural as well as political hierarchies by adapting such recognisable genres as melodrama, history plays, and tragedy for performance in radically new settings. They include poet-activist John Watkins's John Frost, which dramatises the gripping events of the Newport rising, in which twenty-two Chartists lost their lives in what was probably a misfired attempt to spark a nationwide rebellion. Gregory Vargo's introduction and notes elucidate the previously unexplored world of Chartist dramatic culture, a context that promises to reshape what we know about early Victorian popular politics and theatre. -- .

This commentary discusses Aeschylus' play Agamemnon (458 BC), which is one of the most popular of the surviving ancient Greek tragedies, and is the first to be published in English since 1958. It is designed particularly to help students who are tackling Aeschylus in the original Greek for the first time, and includes a reprint of D. L. Page's Oxford Classical Text of the play.
The introduction defines the place of Agamemnon within the Oresteia trilogy as a whole, and the historical context in which the plays were produced. It discusses Aeschylus' handling of the traditional myth and the main ideas which underpin his overall design: such as the development of justice and the nature of human responsibility; and it emphasizes how the power of words, seen as ominous speech-acts which can determine future events, makes a central contribution to the play's dramatic momentum. Separate sections explore Aeschylus' use of theatrical resources, the role of the chorus, and the solo characters. Finally there is an analysis of Aeschylus' distinctive poetic style and use of imagery, and an outline of the transmission of the play from 458 BC to the first printed editions.

This systematic approach to the study of literary works involves the search for mythological archetypes, parallels, paradigms, and motives in a literary text. In a new attempt at an integrated vision of literary works, Zubarev presents a comprehensive approach on the basis of mythopoetics. Her theory is verified through a close examination of four of Chekhov's major plays: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. Zubarev presents a compelling approach to literary analysis, and explores the enigmatic roots of Chekhov's universal significance. Her mythopoetic study sheds light on why Chekhov's plays are moving in any language and in any time.

Proverbial language figures prominently in the works of Eugene O'Neill (1883-1953), the recipient of four Pulitzer prizes and a Nobel laureateship for literature. This book is a directory to the proverbs, proverbial expressions, and proverbial comparisons in O'Neill's 50 dramas and numerous letters, articles, diaries, and notebooks. Very little attention has been given to any aspect of O'Neill's language, to say nothing of the virtual disregard of him as a wielder of proverbial diction. This collection of 2,059 examples of O'Neill's proverbial usage is a first step towards remedying that situation and provides a foundation for future scholarship. The introduction shows how O'Neill used proverbs as a structural element of his dramas and places his proverbial usage in the context of international proverb scholarship, offers examples and generalizations about his manipulation of proverbs, and suggests fruitful areas of further investigation. The heart of the book is a key-word index to the proverbial texts that identifies the locations of the proverbial examples in the canon of O'Neill's works and facilitates comparisons of similar locutions. Each proverbial construction is dated so that the reader can immediately see the chronological range of the texts. For those interested in the history of particular proverbs, citations of standard proverb dictionaries are appended to most of the texts. Two appendices show the frequency with which proverbs appear and their distribution among the various dramas.

Oscar Wilde in Vienna is the first book-length study in English of the reception of Oscar Wilde's works in the German-speaking world. Charting the plays' history on Viennese stages between 1903 and 2013, it casts a spotlight on the international reputation of one of the most popular English-language writers while contributing to Austrian cultural history in the long twentieth century. Drawing on extensive archival material, the book examines the appropriation of Wilde's plays against the background of political crises and social transformations. It unravels the mechanisms of cultural transfer and canonisation within an environment positioned - like Wilde himself - at the crossroads of centre and periphery, tradition and modernity.

This book opens up a neglected chapter in the reception of Athenian drama, especially comedy; and it gives stage-centre to a particularly attractive and entertaining series of vase-paintings, which have been generally regarded as marginal curiosities. These are the so-called `phlyax vases', nearly all painted in the Greek cities of South Italy in the period 400 t0 360 BC. Up till now, they have been taken to reflect some kind of local folk-theatre, but Oliver Taplin, prompted especially by three that have only been published in the last twelve years, argues that most, if not all, reflect Athenian comedy of the sort represented by Aristophanes. This bold thesis opens up questions of the relation of tragedy as well as comedy to vase-painting, the cultural climate of the Greek cities in Italy, and the extent to which Athenians were aware of drama as a potential `export'. It also enriches appreciation of many key aspects of Aristophanic comedy: its metatheatre and self-reference, its use of stage-action and stage-props, its unabashed indecency, and its polarised relationship, even rivalry, with tragedy. The book has assembled thirty-six photographs of vase-paintings. Many are printed here for the first time outside specialist publications that are not readily accessible.

Many of our favorite films began as plays--some as well known as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," and some not so well known as "You've Got Mail"'s origin, a 1937 play "Parfumerie" by Miklos Laszlo. "Video Versions" identifies nearly 300 films and their theatrical origins, providing readers with an overview of the films and highlighting similarities and differences to the source plays. Perfect for teachers, students, and anyone interested in theater and film, it is the most complete resource available for video versions of plays.

Each entry provides: the original play's title, author, and year of publication; the name of the film, year of production, director and adapter; the main cast and the characters they play; running time and rating if available. Following a plot summary, a critical analysis provides the similarities and differences of the play and film, including character and plot changes, setting, missing or added scenes, special film techniques, and behind-the-scenes information such as who turned down or lost particular parts when the play was adapted to film. A short list of sources for further reading follows each entry. Information about contacting distributors--for obtaining the films--is included in the introduction and an extensive index completes the volume.

Martin McDonagh is one of the world's most popular dramatists. This is a highly readable and illuminating account of his career to date that will appeal to the legions of fans of his work for the stage and of his films Six Shooter and In Bruges. As a resource for students and practitioners it is unrivalled, providing an authoritative and enquiring approach to his work that moves beyond the tired discussions of national identity to offer a comprehensive critical exploration. Lonergan provides a detailed analysis of each of his plays and films, their original staging, critical reception, and the connections within and between the Leenane Trilogy, the Aran Islands plays and more recent work. It includes interviews with directors, designers and actors associated with his work and material from Druid Theatre Company, the RSC and the National Theatre relating to the original productions. It offers four critical essays on key features of McDonagh's work by leading international scholars and a series of further resources including a chronology, glossary, notes on McDonagh's use of language and a list of further reading.

The major work of German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (1808), was translated into English by one of Britain's most capable mediators of German literature and philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Goethe himself twice referred to Coleridge's translation of his Faust. Goethe's character wrestles with the very metaphysical and theological problems that preoccupied Coleridge: the meaning of the Logos, the apparent opposition of theism and pantheism. Coleridge, the poet of tormented guilt, of the demonic and the supernatural, found himself on familiar ground in translating Faust. Because his translation reveals revisions and reworkings of Coleridge's earlier works, his Faust contributes significantly to the understanding of Coleridge's entire oeuvre. Coleridge began, but soon abandoned, the translation in 1814, returning to the task in 1820. At Coleridge's own insistence, it was published anonymously in 1821, illustrated with 27 line engravings copied by Henry Moses after the original plates by Moritz Retzsch. His publisher, Thomas Boosey, brought out another edition in 1824. Although several critics recognized that it was Coleridge's work, his role as translator was obscured because of its anonymous publication. Coleridge himself declared that he 'never put pen to paper as translator of Faust', and subsequent generations mistakenly attributed the translation to George Soane, a minor playwright, who had actually commenced translating for a rival press. This edition of Coleridge's translation provides the textual and documentary evidence of his authorship, and presents his work in the context of other contemporary efforts at translating Goethe's Faust.

Bacchae is one of the most troubling yet intriguing of Greek tragedies. Written during Euripides' self-imposed exile in Macedonia, it tells of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Pentheus by his mother and aunts who, driven temporarily insane, have joined the Bacchae (devotees of the god Dionysus, or Bacchus). The startling plot, driven by Dionysus' desire to punish his family for refusing to accept his divinity, and culminating in the excruciating pathos of a mother's realization that she has killed her son, has held audiences transfixed since its original performance (when it won first prize). It is one of the most performed and studied plays in the Greek tragic corpus, with a strong history of reception down to the present day. This collection of essays by eminent academics gathered from across the globe explores the themes, staging and reception of the play, with essays on the characters Dionysus and Pentheus, the role of the chorus of Bacchae, key themes such as revenge, women and religion, and the historical and literary contexts of the play. The essays are accompanied by David Stuttard's English translation which is performer-friendly, accessible and closely accurate to the original.

Written in clear, accessible language, this guide challenges and encourages students to grapple with the difficult ideas and questions posed by Beckett's texts.Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is one of the most important twentieth century writers, seen as both a modernist and postmodernist, his work has influenced generations of playwrights, novelists and poets. Despite his notorious difficulty, Beckett famously refused to offer his readers any help in interpreting his work. Beckett's texts examine key philosophical-humanist questions but his writing is challenging, perplexing and often intimidating for readers. This guide offers students reading Beckett a clear starting point from which to confront some of the most difficult plays and novels produced in the twentieth century, texts which often appear to work on the very edge of meaninglessness.Beginning with a general introduction to Beckett, his work and contexts, the guide looks at each of the major genres in turn, analysing key works chronologically. It explains why Beckett's texts can seem so daunting and confusing, and focuses on key questions and issues. Giving an accessible account of both the form and content of Beckett's work, this guide will enable students to begin to get to grips with this fascinating but daunting writer."Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

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.

During the same period in which Derek Walcott was pouring immense physical, emotional, and logistical resources into the foundation of a viable first-rate West Indian theatre company and continuing to write his inimitable poetry, he was also busy writing newspaper reviews, chiefly for the "Trinidad Guardian." His prodigious reviewing activity extended far beyond those areas with which one might most readily associate his interests and convictions. As Gordon Rohlehr once presciently observed, "If one wants to see a quotidian workaday Walcott, one should go back to his] well over five hundred articles, essays and reviews on painting, cinema, calypso, carnival, drama and lite-rature," articles which "reveal a rich, various, witty and scrupulous intelligence in which generous humour counterpoints acerbity." These articles capture the vitality of Caribbean culture and shed additional light on the aesthetic preoccupations expressed in Walcott's essays published in journals. The editors have examined the corpus of Walcott's journalistic activity from its beginnings in 1950 to its peak in the early 1970s, and have made a generous selection of material from the "Guardian," along with occasional pieces from such sources as "Public Opinion "(Kingston) and "The Voice of St. Lucia" (Castries). The articles in Volume 2 are organized as follows: the performing arts; general surveys of anglophone Caribbean drama, theatre, and society; festivals, theatre companies, and productions; British and American drama; dance and music theatre; Carnival and calypso; and cinema screenings in Trinidad. Volume 2 additionally contains an exhaustive annotated and cross-referenced chronological bibliography of Walcott's journalism up to 1990. The co-editor Christopher Balme has written a searching introductory essay on a central theme - here, a survey of West Indian theatre and Walcott's engagement with it, particularly the idea of a 'National Theatre', coupled with an illustrative discussion of the playwright's seminal dramatic spectacle "Drums and Colours."

Marie Vieux Chauvet's Theatres: Thought, Form, and Performance of Revolt at once reflects and acts upon the praxis of theatre that inspired Haitian writer Marie Vieux Chauvet, while at the same time provides incisively new cultural studies readings about revolt in her theatre and prose. Chauvet - like many free-minded women of the Caribbean and the African diaspora - was banned from the public sphere, leaving her work largely ignored for decades. Following on a renewed interest in Chauvet, this collection makes essential contributions to Africana Studies, Theatre Studies, Performance Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Global South Feminisms. Contributors are: Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken, Stephanie Berard, Christian Flaugh, Gabrielle Gallo, Jeremy Matthew Glick, Kaiama L. Glover, Regine Michelle Jean-Charles, Cae Joseph-Massena, Nehanda Loiseau, Judith G. Miller, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Anthony Phelps, Ioana Pribiag, Charlee M. Redman Bezilla, Guy Regis Jr, and Lena Taub Robles. This collection is a beautiful gathering of voices exploring Chauvet's theatrical work, along with the role of theatre in her novels. The richly textured and evocatively written essays offer many new and necessary insights into the work of one of Haiti's greatest writers. - Laurent Dubois, Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History, Duke University. Author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History This collection draws necessary critical attention to how theatre and performance animate the work of a key figure in Caribbean fiction and drama. Using an innovative scholarly and artistic approach, the collection incorporates leading and new voices in Haitian studies and Francophone studies on Chauvet's depictions of revolt. - Soyica Diggs Colbert, Professor of African American Studies and Theater & Performance Studies, Georgetown University. Author of Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics

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.

Classics, Computer Science, and Linguistics are brought together in this book, in an attempt to provide an answer to the authorship question concerning Prometheus Bound, a disputed play in the Aeschylean corpus, by applying some well-established Computer Stylistics methods. One of the main objectives of Stylometry, which, broadly speaking, is the study of quantified style, is Authorship Attribution. In its traditional form it can range from manually calculating descriptive statistics to the use of computer-assisted methodologies. However, non-traditional Authorship Attribution drastically changed the field. It brought together modern Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence applications (machine learning, natural language processing), and its key characteristic is that it aims at developing fully-automated systems for the attribution of texts of unknown authorship. In this book the author employs a series of supervised and unsupervised techniques used in non-traditional Authorship Attribution-applied here for the first time in ancient drama. The outcome of the analysis indicates a significant distance between the disputed text and the secure plays of Aeschylus, but also various interesting (micro-linguistic) ties of affinity with other authors, especially Sophocles and Euripides.

How does the entrance of a character on the tragic stage affect their visibility and presence? Beginning with the court culture of the seventeenth century and ending with Nietzsche's Dionysian theater, this monograph explores specific modes of entering the stage and the conditions that make them successful-or cause them to fail. The study argues that tragic entrances ultimately always remain incomplete; that the step figures take into visibility invariably remains precarious. Through close readings of texts by Racine, Goethe, and Kleist, among others, it shows that entrances promise both triumph and tragic exposure; though they appear to be expressions of sovereignty, they are always simultaneously threatened by failure or annihilation. With this analysis, the book thus opens up possibilities for a new theory of dramatic form, one that begins not with the plot itself but with the stage entrance that structures how characters appear and thus determines how the plot advances. By reflecting on acts of entering, this book addresses not only scholars of literature, theater, media, and art but anyone concerned with what it means to appear and be present.

Murder, mayhem, and magic. Pushed by his wife to seize the throne, Macbeth kills his rightful liege and then tries desperately to hold onto the kingdom that he has wrongfully usurped. Prophesy and magic abound in this dark, moody, and atmospheric play. Out, damned spot Out, I say One- two -why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Since its Golden Age, Spanish drama has evolved in considerably unintended and unexpected ways with the contemporary playwrights of any present time engaging in experimental forms and treating current political issues intended to modernize, reformulate, and re-conceptualize the State and the stage. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 33 Spanish dramatists from the eighteenth century to the present. Some of these figures have been translated, anthologized, and studied for centuries; others remain known chiefly to specialists; still others are active in contemporary theater and draw critical interest for their innovative work.

Each of the entries is written by an expert contributor and provides an overview of the dramatist's life and art. Each includes a brief biography; a discussion of works, themes, and dramaturgy; an overview of the critical and scholarly response to the playwright's productions; and primary and secondary bibliographies. As a whole, the volume highlights trends, movements, and historical contexts related to modern Spanish drama. A lengthy introductory essay overviews the history and development of Spanish drama since the Golden Age, and extensive bibliographies conclude the work.

Aristophanes' Peace was performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 421 BC as a decade-long war with Sparta seemed finally to be drawing to an end, and is one of only eleven extant plays by the greatest Old Comic poet. Olson's edition of the play, which replaces Platnauer's of 1969, is based on a complete new collation of the manuscripts, many of which have never been adequately reported before. The extensive commentary explores matters of all sorts, but it focuses in particular on the realities of day-to-day life in classical Athens and also examines the practical problems of staging. The substantial introduction includes essays on Aristophanes' early career, the politics of the Greek world in the late 420s, and the poet's theology.

Best known as a revolutionary playwright of the 1930s, Clifford Odets may have reached his zenith when four of his plays were produced on Broadway in 1935: "Waiting for Lefty," "Till the Day I Die," "Awake and Sing ," and "Paradise Lost." His plays, however, also show a romantic strain and are at least as much inimate and personal as they are political, often reflecting the isolation and loneliness of individuals in family settings. Never achieving the acclaim of Eugene O'Neill, who came before, or Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who followed, Odets bridged the gap between earlier melodramatic theatre and the mature post-World War II drama on the American stage, creating rich and varied drama well into the 1950s. That his plays continue to be appraised and performed is clearly evident in this detailed and carefully articulated sourcebook.

A near-exhaustive resource for both literary and theatrical research materials on Odets's dramatic career, the volume is organized and indexed for quick reference. Included are a biographical essay; critical overview, production history, and plot summary of each dramatic product; annotated primary and secondary bibliographies and information on archival sources; and production credits. Essential for research libraries and theatre collections, the volume will be useful to theatre scholars and practitioners and to anyone interested in the work of this significant modern American playwright.