The earliest complete morality play in English, The Castle of Perseverance depicts the culture of medieval East Anglia, a region once known for its production of artistic objects. Discussing the spectator experience of this famed play, Young argues that vision is the organizing principle that informs this play's staging, structure, and narrative.

The plays of Plautus have long been recognized as a unique mine of information about the spoken Latin of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. But detailed and up-to-date linguistic treatments of the Plautine meters and other phenomena in his plays have hitherto been lacking. This book seeks to remedy that gap by presenting a series of case-studies to glean information about the synchronic grammar of Plautine Latin, in particular the rhythmic organization of Latin speech and the effects of syntactic processes on Latin prosodic phonology. Some of the topics, such as enjambement and the aphaeresis of "est", have never before received such treatment, while others, such as Meyer's and Luchs's laws, split resolutions, and iambic shortening, are provided a firmer linguistic footing, and fuller discussion of allied issues, than hitherto. Topics in Italic syntax (such as the syntactic structure of adpositional phrases and their history) and in Indo-European morphophonology (such as the prosodic status of finite verbs) are dealt with as well, as is an investigation into the effects of pragmatics on the rhythmic organization of phrases. The book will be of interest to classicists, comparative philologists, and general linguists.

This study reads Auden's poetry and plays through the shifts from modernism to postmodernism. It analyzes the experiments in Auden's writings for their engagement with crucial contemporary problems: that of the individual in relation to others, loved ones, community, society, but also transcendental truths. It shows that, rather than providing firm answers, Auden's poetry emphasizes the absence of certainties. Yet far from becoming nihilistic, it generates hope, affection, and most importantly, an ethical challenge of responsibility out of its discoveries.

From the Left Bank chronicles the intimate, behind-the-scenes encounters of an American Francophile and the stars of the French Avant Garde theater and literary worlds. It reflects the author's extensive, first-hand experience of the modern French theater and with those artists who wrote and staged the work that has revolutionized the way we think of theater. The book contains a distillation of Bishop's best original writings on such pivotal figures as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Louis Barrault, Eugne Ionesco, Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus in theater and Claude Simon, Robert Pinget, Philippe Sollers, and Alain Robbe-Grillet in fiction. Bishop knew these creative artists personally, and his insightful analyses provide an informative, entertaining insider's look at the development and workings of the French Avant Garde.

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.

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.

"Listen to the dialogue: no other American dramatist has this feel for the ordinary talk of ordinary people, or the knowledge of what they do. This is more than a writer's craft, it is a psychological and moral openness to humanity, an act not of imitating, but of sharing". Sunday Times This fourth anthology features Arthur Miller's two early plays, The Golden Years, a historical tragedy about Montezuma's destruction at the hands of Cortez, and The Man Who Had All the Luck, a fable about human freedom and individual responsibility, are brought together in this volume. It also features two of his contemporary shorter plays, I Can't Remember Anything and Clara, first presented on a double bill as Danger! Memory. The latter focus on the importance and dangers of remembering the past, while the early plays, written at the time of the Second World War, mark the emergence of a drama in which public issues are rooted in private anxieties and chart the beginning of Miller's career that was one of the most distinguished in dramatic history. First produced in 1944 and revived in London in 2008, The Man Who Had All the Luck is a mesmerising drama in which the author's brilliance and characteristic qualities are already evident: The fourth volume of Miller's plays has been reissued with a new cover and features an introduction by the author and a chronology of his work.

This book analyzes the interaction of crimes, punishments, and Bernard Shaw in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores crimes committed by professional criminals, nonprofessional criminals, businessmen, believers in a cause, the police, the Government, and prison officials. It examines punishments decreed by judges, juries, colonial governors, commissars, and administered by the police, prison warders, and prison doctors. It charts Shaw's view of crimes and punishments in dramatic writings, non-dramatic writings, and his actions in real life. This book presents him in the context of his contemporaries and his world, inviting readers to view crimes and punishments in their context, history, and relevance to his ideas in and outside his plays, plus the relevance of his ideas to crimes and punishments in life.

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.

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.

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 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.

By concentrating on Sam Shepard's visual aesthetics, Emma Creedon argues that a consideration of Shepard's plays in the context of visual and theoretical Surrealism illuminates our understanding of his experimental approach to drama.

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.

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.

This work is the first major commentary on Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris to appear in English in more than 65 years. It offers detailed analysis of a fascinating play that scholars so far had considered mainly as a source of information about Athenian cult and viewed as a romantic adventure story with happy end. Apart from including sober assessments of textual, linguistic and metrical problems, the commentary sheds new light on the play's treatment of myth, its intricate structure, presentation of character, and place in Euripides' work. In particular it offers fresh insights into the play's relationship to the literary tradition, especially its treatment of the crimes of the Pelopids, and its presentation of the complex, ambiguous relationship of humans and gods as well as that of Greeks and barbarians. Unlike most other tragedies, Iphigenia in Tauris does not feature any villain and avoids concentrating on past crimes and their corrosive influence on the characters' present. The Taurians are not portrayed simply as savage and slow barbarians and Iphigenia, the most intelligent character, fails to transcend her limitations. Religion and cult in both myth and contemporary Athens are a mixture of traditional and invented elements and the play as a whole turns out to be an intriguing and unique experiment in Euripides' career.

Butler Plays: Two brings together a selection of Leo Butler's work, currently both published and previously unpublished, covering the years 2007 to 2013. It showcases his incredible variety in style and tone, and brings together some of his best-loved works alongside some of his lesser known pieces. Airbag (Royal Court, Rough Cuts, 2007) an old woman is lying on her death bed, imagining that she is being terrorised by gorillas. Butler's play is an exploration of death and the dying. I'll Be The Devil (RSC/Tricycle Theatre, 2008): With a poetic fearlessness, Leo Butler looks at what happens when a brutal foreign power is in intimate and callous contact with the primitive heart of an ancient society. Faces in the Crowd (Royal Court Theatre, 2008): Faces in the Crowd is a darkly comic play that offers a unique insight into twenty-first century London and the debts we accrue in the wake of seeking out our ambitions. Juicy Fruits (Paines Plough and Oran Mor, 2011): a one-act comedy set in a coffee shop in which two old friends from university meet again after many years. 69 (Natural Shocks Theatre Company; Pleasance, 2012): a series of 69 short vignettes, all on the subject of sex, offering a glimpse on a whole range of issues surrounding sexuality. Do It! (Royal Court, Open Court Season, 2013) is an unsettling journey through the secrets and innermost thoughts of a group of pedestrians, unwittingly watched over by a violent force. The volume includes an introduction by the playwright.

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.

"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"--

"This is the first sustained study of Samuel Beckett and testimony. It offers new readings of the problem of unspeakability in Beckett in relation to testimonial expression and the problems of knowledge which arise in recent theoretical conceptions of testimony and the archive"--

The conventional view of Aristophanes bristles with problems. Important testimony for Alcibiades' paramount role in comedy is consistently disregarded, and the tradition that "masks were made to look like the komodoumenoi, so that before an actor spoke a word, the audience would recognize who was being attacked" is hardly ever invoked. If these testimonia are taken into account, a fascinating picture emerges, where the komodoumenoi are based on the Periclean household: older characters on Pericles himself, younger on Alcibiades. Aspasia, Pericles' mistress, and Hipparete, Alcibiades' wife, lie behind many female characters, and Alcibiades' ambiguous sexuality also allows him to be shown on the stage as a woman, notably as Lysistrata. There is a substantial overlap between the anecdotal tradition relating to the historical figures and the plotting of Aristophanes' plays. This extends to speech patterns, where Alcibiades' speech defect is lampooned. Aristophanes is consistently critical of Alcibiades' mercurial politics, and his works can also be seen to have served as an aide-memoire for Thucydides and Xenophon. If the argument presented here is correct, then much current scholarship on Aristophanes can be set aside.

This is an English translation of Aristophanes' popular comedy in which the god Dionysus seeks to bring the great dramatist Euripides from Hades, where he encounters another great Classical playwright, Aeschylus. Includes background material on the historical and cultural context of this work, suggestions for further reading, and notes. The Focus Classical Library provides close translations with notes and essays to provide access to understanding Greek culture and the roots of contemporary thought.

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.

Beyond the Fifth Century brings together 13 scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Ancient History, Mediaeval Studies) to explore interactions with Greek tragedy from the 4th century BCE up to the Middle Ages. The volume breaks new ground in several ways. Its chronological scope encompasses periods that are not usually part of research on tragedy reception, especially the Hellenistic period, late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The volume also considers not just performance reception but various other modes of reception, between different literary genres and media (inscriptions, vase paintings, recording technology). There is a pervasive interest in interactions between tragedy and society-at-large, such as festival culture and entertainment (both public and private), education, religious practice, even life-style. Finally, the volume features studies of a comparative nature which focus less on genealogical connections (although such may be present) but rather on the study of equivalences.