This study reclaims a lost body of theatrical work by focusing on four labor plays of the 1930s. These works dramatize union organizing efforts in American industry, using documentary detail in the dialogue and plot. To date, little attention has been given to the use of documentary detail in American scripts. Placing the labor plays in a social and historical context, Duffy raises interesting questions about the depiction of women as labor leaders and the overlooked role of women playwrights in the 1920s and 30s. The discussion focuses on the function of the plays and the question of whether they were merely didactic or if they served greater propagandistic ends. This work will be of interest to scholars in theatre history, American studies, southern history, and American labor history.

As both a literary genre and a view of life, tragedy has from the very beginning spurred a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Plato famously banned tragedians from his ideal community because he believed that their representations of vicious behavior could deform minds. Aristotle set out to answer Plato's objections, arguing that fiction offers a faithful image of the truth and that it promotes emotional health through the mechanism of catharsis. Aristotle's definition of tragedy actually had its greatest impact not on Greek tragedy itself but on later Latin literature, beginning with the tragedies of the Roman poet and Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC - AD 65). Scholarship over the last fifty years, however, has increasingly sought to identify in Seneca's prose writings a Platonic poetics which is antagonistic toward tragedy and which might therefore explain why Seneca's plays seem so often to present the failure of Stoicism. As Gregory Staley argues in this book, when Senecan tragedy fails to stage virtue we should see in this not the failure of Stoicism but a Stoic conception of tragedy as the right vehicle for imaging Seneca's familiar world of madmen and fools. Senecan tragedy enacts Aristotle's conception of the genre as a vivid image of the truth and treats tragedy as a natural venue in which to explore the human soul. Staley's reading of Seneca's plays draws on current scholarship about Stoicism as well as on the writings of Renaissance authors like Sir Philip Sidney, who borrowed from Seneca the word "idea" to designate what we would now label as a "theory" of tragedy. Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy will appeal broadly to students and scholars of classics, ancient philosophy, and English literature.

The fat female body is a unique construction in American culture that has been understood in various ways during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Analyzing post-WWII stage and screen performances, Mobley argues that the fat actress's body signals myriad cultural assumptions and suggests new ways of reading the body in performance.

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.

""I dined yesterday at Mrs Garrick's with Mrs Carter, Miss Hannah More and Miss Fanny Burney. Three such women are not to found; I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs Lennox, who is superiour to them all."" --Samuel Johnson
Dr. Johnson enjoyed the company of clever women. "Dr. Johnson's Women" explores his relationship with six remarkable and successful female authors, all of whom he knew well: Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, Charlotte Lennox, Hester Thrale, Fanny Burney and Elizabeth Montagu. It is also an account of the characters and achievements of these women. It is often assumed that women writers in the eighteenth century suffered the same restrictions and obstacles that confronted their Victorian successors. Norma Clarke shows that this was by no means the case. Highlighting the opportunities available to women with talent in the eighteenth century, "Dr. Johnson's Women" makes clear just how impressive and varied their achievements were.

Metatheater and Modernity: Baroque and Neobaroque is the first work to link the study of metatheater with the concepts of baroque and neobaroque. Arguing that the onset of European modernity in the early seventeenth century and both the modernist and the postmodernist periods of the twentieth century witnessed a flourishing of the phenomenon of theater that reflects on itself as theater, the author reexamines the concepts of metatheater, baroque, and neobaroque through a pairing and close analysis of seventeenth and twentieth century plays. The comparisons include Jean Rotrou's The True Saint Genesius with Jean-Paul Sartre's Kean and Jean Genet's The Blacks; Pierre Corneille's L'Illusion comique with Tony Kushner's The Illusion; Gian Lorenzo Bernini's The Impresario with Luigi Pirandello's theater-in-theater trilogy; Shakespeare's Hamlet with Pirandello's Henry IV and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Moliere's Impromptu de Versailles with "impromptus" by Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux, and Eugene Ionesco. Metatheater and Modernity also examines the role of technology in the creating and breaking of illusions in both centuries. In contrast to previous work on metatheater, it emphasizes the metatheatrical role of comedy. Metatheater, the author concludes, is both performance and performative: it accomplishes a perceptual transformation in its audience both by defending theater and exposing the illusory quality of the world outside.

The Pulitzer Prize Archive presents for the first time an extensive history of this award from its beginnings to the present. In the volumes of parts A to E the awarding of the prize in each category is documented, commented and arranged chronologically. The jury reports are printed completely in the supplements. The volumes of part F cover the history of the prize biographically and bibliographically. The supplement volumes of part G provide the background to the individual decisions.

From 1880 to 1956, when John Osborne transformed the British theater world with Look Back in Anger, British playwrights made numerous lasting contributions and provided a foundation for the innovations of dramatists during the latter half of the 20th century. This reference profiles the life and work of some 40 British playwrights active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of whom are also known for their work as novelists and poets. Included are figures such as W. H. Auden, Max Beerbohm, Noel Coward, T. S. Eliot, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, D. H. Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. Each entry provides a biographical overview; a list of major plays and summaries of their critical reception; a list of minor plays, adaptations, and productions; an assessment of the playwright's career; and archival and bibliographical information. Included in this reference book are alphabetically arranged entries for some 40 British playwrights active from 1880 through 1956. Entries are written by expert contributors, with each entry providing a biographical overview; a list of major plays, premieres, and significant revivals, along with a summary of the critical reception of these works; a listing of additional plays, adaptations, and productions; an assessment of the playwright's career and contributions, with reference to published evaluations in magazines, journals, dissertations, and books; a listing of locations housing unpublished archival material, if available; a selected bibliography of the dramatist's published plays and of essays and articles by the playwright on aspects of the theater; a selected bibliography of secondary sources; and, when available, a listing of previously published bibliographies on the playwright.

Best known for his plays "Six Degrees of Separation" and "The House of Blue Leaves, " John Guare is a major figure in the contemporary American theater. Other notable works by Guare include "Bosoms and Neglect, " "Landscape of the Body, " and the "Lydie Breeze" series. His career began with off-off-Broadway experimentation in the sixties and continues through the present. In that time Guare has created many imaginative, eccentric plays that reflect the chaos, violence, and loneliness of life in our time. He frequently combines outrageous farce with painfully serious subject matter.

This sourcebook is both a convenient reference and a resource for further investigation of Guare's works. The volume chronicles his achievements with a chronology and biographical essay. It also includes summaries of his published and unpublished plays, overviews of the critical reception of each work, production credits, a primary bibliography of dramatic and nondramatic writings, and extensive annotated bibliographies of reviews and other secondary material.

This is the first comprehensive study of Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett's innovative work for the screen. "Samuel Beckett's Plays on Film and Television "provides meticulous analysis of every play Beckett wrote, directed, or adapted for the screen. Herren studies Beckett's use of "memory machines"--technological media for channeling personal, cultural, philosophical, and artistic ghosts from the past. Having conjured these ghosts, Beckett "decomposes" them in order to recompose them for distinctly innovative use. Herren traces this countraditional approach to tradition as Beckett's signature style for film and television. The book concludes with a consideration of the "Beckett on Film" project, where Herren defends the vital need for creative freedom in future productions of Beckett's plays. With this publication, the film and television plays can now assume their rightful place alongside Beckett's remarkable fiction and stage plays, collectively constituting one of the most innovative artistic achievements of the twentieth century.

Brian Friel is Ireland's foremost living playwright, whose work spans fifty years and has won numerous awards, including three Tonys and a Lifetime Achievement Arts Award. Author of twenty-five plays, and whose work is studied at GCSE and A level (UK), and the Leaving Certificate (Ire), besides at undergraduate level, he is regarded as a classic in contemporary drama studies. Christopher Murray's Critical Companion is the definitive guide to Friel's work, offering both a detailed study of individual plays and an exploration of Friel's dual commitment to tradition and modernity across his oeuvre.Beginning with Friel's 1964 work "Philadelphia, Here I Come ," Christopher Murray follows a broadly chronological route through the principal plays, including "Aristocrats," "Faith Healer," "Translations," "Dancing at Lughnasa," "Molly Sweeney" and "The Home Place." Along the way it considers themes of exile, politics, fathers and sons, belief and ritual, history, memory, gender inequality, and loss, all set against the dialectic of tradition and modernity. It is supplemented by essays from Shaun Richards, David Krause and Csilla Bertha providing varying critical perspectives on the playwright's work.

This book rigorously examines the work of leading contemporary playwright Martin Crimp. It examines his plays, adaptations, translations and versions, treats them as texts and performance events and argues that their challenge to audiences derives from their 'making strange': producing theatrical innovation, thus rendering the familiar unfamiliar.

"A forgotten yet award-winning playwright, Cal Yeomans was one of the founders of gay theatre whose work was fueled by gay liberation and extinguished by the AIDS epidemic. Exploring both sex and sexuality so candidly, he burst the boundaries of what was considered acceptable. His writings were not only manifestations of the sexual liberation of the times, but were also attempts to overcome what he had been raised to despise. Schanke's examination of Yeomans' life and legacy allows a rare exploration into the pivotal moment of gay American history between the Stonewall riots and the AIDS epidemic"--

In this book, Dr. Ekman examines Strindberg's four plays of 1907: Thunder in the Air, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata, and The Pelican, the works which have gained most resonance internationally. For the first time, these works are studied in relation to Strindberg's lifelong obsession with the five senses and their function in stage plays, both symbolic and dramatic. The fact that impressions from a stage can only be seen and heard led Strindberg to disregard the senses in favour of the insights of wisdom and inner vision; and it is from this position that the Chamber Plays were written. Examined from this perspective, much that seems obscure in these plays and their new style of drama is revealed in an original and clarifying light.

On the morning of May 30, 1593, Christopher Marlowe met with three associates in the English intelligence network. Later that evening the Queen's coroner was summoned to their meeting place. A body lay on the floor. After an inquest, the dead man was taken to a nearby churchyard busy at the time receiving victims of the plague. According to the official report, England's foremost playwright was interred without fanfare or marker. Soon, plays attributed to William Shakespeare began to appear on the London stage, plays so undeniably similar to Marlowe's that noted scholars have since declared that Shakespeare wrote as if he had been Marlowe's apprentice.

"Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare" explores the possibility that persecution of a writer who dared to question authority may have led to the greatest literary cover-up of all time.

CHORUS. Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, naught could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Seeking to restore a holistic approach to the study of the person, Professor Cochran explores and refines an innovative method of analysis based on the use of dramaturgical concepts. The author's approach reflects a dissatisfaction, shared by many in the field of personology, with the fragmented view of the person that typically emerges from quantitative, statistically based studies. His own method offers alternative ways of conducting research based upon two units. The first is story, a completed action or drama with a beginning, middle, and end. The other is position, a way of being or an emotional or existential condition. Showing these to be natural units of human experience, the author demonstrates, through a series of illustrative investigations, how they may be applied to research. Among the topics covered are the life plot, or the means by which a person comes into being, the meaning of significant action, how actions in a person's life form a theme with variations over time, and the integration of character and story. The author also discusses different life themes and their significance, and he tests the validity of dramatic principles as means of reality construction.

This Critical Companion to the work of one of Ireland's most famous and controversial playwrights, Sean O'Casey, is the first major study of the playwright's work to consider his oeuvre and the archival material that has appeared during the last decade. Published ahead of the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland with which O'Casey's most famous plays are associated, it provides a clear and detailed study of the work in context and performance. James Moran shows that O'Casey not only remains the most performed playwright at Ireland's national theatre, but that the playwright was also one of the most controversial and divisive literary figures, whose work caused riots and who alienated many of his supporters. Since the start of the 'Troubles' in the North of Ireland, his work has been associated with Irish historical revisionism, and has become the subject of debate about Irish nationalism and revolutionary history. Moran's admirably clear study considers the writer's plays, autobiographical writings and essays, paying special attention to the Dublin trilogy, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. It considers the work produced in exile, during the war and the late plays. The Companion also features a number of interviews and essays by other leading scholars and practitioners, including Garry Hynes, Victor Merriman and Paul Murphy, which provide further critical perspectives on the work.

This expansive, inter-disciplinary guide to Renaissance plays and the world they played to gives readers a colorful overview of England's great dramatic age.

In its pages, today's best Renaissance scholars chart the cross-currents of belief and daily experience that illuminate the meaning of works by Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton or Webster, as it has changed over time, place and audience. They explain why the plays do or say what they do, and raise provocative possibilities of what the plays might have said to Tudor and Stuart playgoers by discussing values, attitudes, and the material conditions of performance, along with the lives and particular ideas of individual playwrights.

Within these short pages, Evans captures the sweep of English drama, from the miming "oculator" of the early ages to Noel Coward and J.B. Priestley.

This anthology should be a must' for all serious students of Aristophanes. It brings together for the first tinme in one volume all the most important contributions to the study of Aristophanes published over the last several decades - providing an ideal resource for anyone studying the plays. Aristophanes is the only surviving author of Greek Attic comedy who has left us more than fragments, and his eleven surviving plays reflect the spirit of Athens in the golden age - and its unique freedom of speech. The book deals not only with the better known comedies like Clouds and Birds , but also the later, more unusual works like The Assembywomen and Wealth , which represent important stages towards the evolution of modern comedy. Subjects range from the classic question of Aristophanes' relationship to contemporary politics to more modern issues such as feminism, gender, performance context, and the interaction between fifth century comedy and tragedy. Many of the contributions are not otherwise readily available to students and teachers, coming from foreign journals and books, difficult to obtain. This book is intended for students of classical literature, especially Greek comedy.

On 19 April 1621, a woman named Elizabeth Sawyer was hanged at Tyburn. Her story was on the bookstalls within days and within weeks was adapted for the stage as The Witch of Edmonton. The devil stalks Edmonton in the shape of a large black dog and, just as Elizabeth Sawyer makes her demonic pact, the newlywed Frank Thorney enters into his own dark bargain in the shape of a second, bigamous marriage. Torn between sympathy for Sawyer and Thorney and a clear-eyed assessment of their crimes, the play was the finest and most nuanced treatment of witchcraft that the stage would see for centuries. Lucy Munro's introduction provides students and scholars with a detailed understanding of this complex play.

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.

'Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899-1949' offers a theoretically innovative reconsideration of drama produced in the Irish Renaissance, as well as an engagement with non-canonical drama in the under-researched period 1926-1949.

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