The Victorians, having once been seen as 'them', the age responsible for the mistakes of the past, were transformed by the new theatrical forms of the 1960s into 'us', a metaphor for what the nation thinks (and fears) about itself. And, since the 1980s and the rise of new biographical forms in the theatre, the emphasis has shifted further, from 'we' to 'me': plays about individuals, great and small, and their struggles for personal validation. This study argues powerfully that the stage portrayal of the Victorians in recent times is a key reference point in understanding notions of Britishness, heritage and nostalgia, and the profound politicisation of national identity over the last four decades. Using many examples drawn from theatre archives, and throwing new light on works by canonical playwrights like Bond, Edgar, and Churchill, it charts the decline in class-based narratives of the British people and the move towards plays reflecting a more atomised, individuated society, preoccupied with identity and the past but no longer able to provide a convincing account of itself as a nation.

This the first sustained study of the interest of John Ruskin in the theatre of his time. It examines Ruskin's active engagement with and influence on the Victorian popular theatre. Ruskin was an enthusiastic and catholic theatre-goer, enjoying pantomime as much as Shakespeare. Through the lens of Ruskin's discussions of pantomime, melodrama, Shakespearean tragedy, and painting and the stage, Newey and Richards offer a new view of the late Victorian stage focusing on London's West End in its heyday.

The only book to treat in detail all the plays of contemporary English playwright David Storey, this study focuses on the major themes found in his work: the worlds of madness, work, and the family. Storey's developing technique as a dramatist is closely examined and attention is given to his experimental concerns. In addition, Liebman identifies relationships between Storey's fiction and his drama, highlighting how similar themes and characters appear in both his novels and his plays. The study also includes discussion of contemporary thinking on Storey by scholars, critics, and theatre professionals.

Arthur Miller's" Death of a Salesman," the third volume in the Dialogue series, covers six major and controversial topics dealing with Miller's classic play. The topics include feminism and the role of women in the drama, the American Dream, business and capitalism, the significance of technology, the legacy that Willy leaves to Biff, and Miller's use of symbolism. The authors of the essays include prominent Arthur Miller scholars such as Terry Otten and the late Steven Centola as well as young, emerging scholars. Some of the essays, particularly the ones written by the emerging scholars, tend to employ literary theory while the ones by the established scholars tend to illustrate the strengths of traditional criticism by interpreting the text closely. It is fascinating to see how scholars at different stages of their academic careers approach a given topic from distinct perspectives and sometimes diverse methodologies. The essays offer insightful and provocative readings of "Death of a Salesman" in a collection that will prove quite useful to scholars and students of Miller's most famous play.

Provides a representative selection of O'Neill's voluminous correspondence written over a fifty-year period to intimate friends and family and to literary and theatrical personalities.

This ambitious work features forty of Etherege's poems and three plays, which are still popular after 300 years. The concordance provides an easy-to-use identification system that helps determine lexical shading, isolate word clusters that suggest patterns of meaning, and examine changes in language over several decades. Speech prefixes in the body of the concordance allow readers to see who is the speaker of a specific line of drama. An appendix of word frequency and cross-references to compound words are also included.

Filling a critical void, this book examines French women dramatists of the nineteenth-century who staged works prior to the lifting of censorship laws in 1864. Though none staged overtly feminist drama, Sophie de Bawr, Sophie Gay, Virginie Ancelot, and Delphine Girardin questioned patriarchal dominance and reconstructed ideals of womanhood.

Reflections on the late Arthur Miller from over seventy writers, actors, directors and friends, with 'Arthur Miller Remembers' an interview with the writer from 1995. Following his death in February 2005, newspapers were filled with tributes to the man regarded by many as the greatest playwright of the twentieth century. Published as a celebration and commemoration of his life, Part I of Remembering Arthur Miller is a collection of over seventy specially commissioned pieces from writers, actors, directors and friends, providing personal, critical and professional commentary on the man who gave the theatre such timeless classics as All my Sons, A View from the Bridge, The Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible. Contributors read like a Who's Who of theatre, film and literature: Edward Albee, Alan Ayckbourn, Brian Cox, Richard Eyre, Joseph Fiennes, Nadine Gordimer, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Vanessa Redgrave and Tom Stoppard, to name but a few. Part II, 'Arthur Miller Remembers', is an in-depth and wide-ranging interview conducted with Miller in 1995. commentary and analysis both of Miller's life and the life of twentieth century America, including Miller's upbringing in Harlem, the Depression, marriage to Marilyn Monroe, post-war America, being sentenced to prison by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956, and his presidency of the writer's organisation, PEN International, as well as commentary and analysis of his many plays and his reflections on the theatre in America. October 2005 sees the 90th anniversary of Miller's birth. The much acclaimed new Broadway production of Death of a Salesman opened to rave reviews at the Lyric Theatre, London, in May 2005, starring Brian Dennehy. Miller is a perennial of the theatre. His plays are constantly revived all over the world; and studied on school and university courses. Arthur Miller was born in New York in 1915. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he started a career as a playwright, which resulted in more than 25 important plays. He has also written fiction, screenplays, and non-fiction. He died on February 10 2005.

This book examines the dramatic work of Dickens, Browning, Collins, and Tennyson, their interaction with the theatrical world, and their attempts to develop their reputations as playwrights. These major Victorian writers each authored several professional plays, but why has their achievement been overlooked?

"Antigone" is Sophocles' masterpiece, a seminal influence on a wide range of theatrical, literary, and intellectual traditions all over the world. This volume sets the play in the contexts of its ancient mythical background, its original circumstances of performance, its relation to the culture and thought of contemporary Athens, and the rich and complicated history of its reception. But its main aim is to encourage readers to engage with the text at first hand and to appreciate the inexhaustible richness that makes this play in particular so hard to pin down, so enduringly thought-provoking, and hence so rewarding to study. Though Creon's actions prove disastrous and Antigone's are vindicated, the "Antigone" (it is argued) is no simple study in the excesses of tyranny or the virtues of heroic resistance, but a more complex and nuanced exploration of conflicting views of right and wrong and of the conditions that constrain human beings' efforts to control their own destinies and secure their own happiness.The book's chapters consider the extent of the original audience's acquaintance with earlier versions of the legends of Antigone's family, the structure of the plot as it unfolds in theatrical performance, the presentation of the characters and the motivations that drive them, the major political, social, and ethical themes that the play raises, and the resonance of those themes in the ways that the play has been interpreted, adapted, performed, and appropriated in later periods.

Geo-spatial identity and early Modern European drama come together in this study of how cultural or political attachments are actively mediated through space. Matei-Chesnoiu traces the modulated representations of rivers, seas, mountains, and islands in sixteenth-century plays by Shakespeare, Jasper Fisher, Thomas May, and others.

Spectral Shakespeares is an illuminating exploration of recent, experimental adaptations of Shakespeare on film, TV, and the web. Drawing on adaptation studies and media theory as well as Jacques Derrida's work, this book argues that these adaptations foreground a cluster of self-reflexive "themes" - from incorporation to reiteration, from migration to addiction, from silence to survival - that contribute to the redefinition of adaptation, and Shakespearean adaptation in particular, as an unfinished and interminable process. The "Shakespeare" that emerges from these adaptations is a fragmentary, mediatized, and heterogeneous presence, a spectral Shakespeare that leaves a mark on our contemporary mediascape.

The highly performative categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are in need of critical address, prompted by recent changes in Irish society, the arts industry and modes of critical inquiry. This book broaches this task by considering Irish expressive culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies.

Plautus, Rome's earliest extant poet, was acclaimed by ancient critics above all for his mastery of language and his felicitous jokes; and yet in modern times relatively little attention has been devoted to elucidating these elements fully. In Funny Words in Plautine Comedy, Michael Fontaine reassesses some of the premises and nature of Plautus' comedies. Mixing textual and literary criticism, Fontaine argues that many of Plautus' jokes and puns were misunderstood already in antiquity, and that with them the names and identities of some familiar characters were misconceived. Central to his study are issues of Plautine language, style, psychology, coherence of characterization, and irony. By examining the comedian's tendency to make up and misuse words, Fontaine sheds new light on the close connection between Greek and Roman comedy. Considerable attention is also paid to Plautus' audience and to the visual elements in his plays. The result is a reappraisal that will challenge many received views of Plautus, positioning him as a poet writing in the Hellenistic tradition for a knowledgeable and sophisticated audience. All quotations from Latin, Greek, and other foreign languages are translated. Extensive indices, including a "pundex," facilitate ease of reference among the many jokes and plays on words discussed in the text.

Clifford Odets through his plays, which include "Waiting for Lefty" and "Awake" and "Sing!," was the champion of the oppressed, avenger for the poor. He and his plays, as presented by the influential Group Theatre, were the conscience of America during the Depression. Author Margaret Brenman-Gibson, a respected psychoanalyst and close personal friend, penned what is considered the classic biography of Odets. Based on exhaustive research, including access to his personal papers, plus her own insights into the man and his career, it is at last back in prtin. The book is richly annotated, with a thorough bibliography, personal chronology, a list of Odets' works, published and unpublished, and a section of rare photographs.

The Irish Theatre in Transition explores the ever-changing Irish Theatre from its inception to its vibrant modern-day reality. This book shows some of the myriad forms of transition and how Irish theatre reflects the changing conditions of a changing society and nation.

Although Eugene O'Neill's work has generated much scholarship, his one-act plays have not received the critical attention they deserve. Given that O'Neill began his career writing such plays, including his justly famous "Sea Plays," associated with the Provincetown Players, it is surprising that his one-acts have been largely neglected. This collection aims to fill the gap by examining these texts, during what can be considered O'Neill's formative writing years, and the foundational period of American drama. A wide-ranging investigation into O'Neill's one-acts, the contributors shed light on a less-explored part of his career and assist scholars in understanding O'Neill's entire oeuvre.

Euripides' Phoenissae bears one of the richest tragic plots: multiple narrative levels are interwoven by means of various anachronies, focalizers offer different and often challenging points of view, while a complex mythical matrix is deftly employed as the backdrop against which the exploration of the mechanics of tragic narrative takes place. After providing a critical perspective on the ongoing scholarly dialogue regarding narratology and drama, this book uses the former as a working tool for the study and interpretation of the latter. The Phoenissae is approached as a coherent narrative unit and issues like the use of myth, narrators, intertext, time and space are discussed in detail. It is within these contexts that the play is seen as a Theban mythical 'thesaurus' both exploring previous mythical ramifications and making new additions. The result is rewarding: Euripides constructs a handbook of the Theban saga that was informative for those mythically untrained, fascinating for those theatrically demanding, but also dexterously open upon each one's reception.

This is the first major critical study of three late plays of Euripides: Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians. Matthew Wright offers a sustained reading of the plays, arguing that they are a thematically connected trilogy. He re-examines central themes such as myth, geography, cultural identity, philosophy, religion, and (crucially) genre. These are not separate topics, but are seen as being joined together to form an intricate nexus of ideas. The book has implications for our view of Euripides and the tragic genre as a whole.

A wonderfully helpful survey of the drama of Sam Shepard. It is bound to find many eager readers among those who are either intrigued or baffled--or both--by the plays of this still-young playwright whom many think contemporary America's finest. Choice America's most highly acclaimed contemporary playwright continues to puzzle critics, even as his reputation grows and his imagination seeks new creative channels. Finding the dramatist difficult to classify, critics and scholars continue to search for the central direction of Shepard's creative development. Lynda Hart's study, which focuses on ten representative plays, is the first book to examine Shepard's growth and development as a dramatist within and against the historical tradition. Offering a unified critical perspective, the author considers the plays from both a literary standpoint and as texts for performance. Resources include a bibliography that offers the most complete listing of relevant critical writings.

The Dublin stage of the Restoration and the 18th century has largely been dismissed as "West British" and its plays for the most part have been forgotten. This book examines the works by Protestant dramatists that reveal the complex alliance and fissures of Anglo-Irish society during the age of the Penal Laws. From Richard Head's Hic et Ubique (1663) to Mary O'Brien's The Fallen Patriot (1790), Wheatley shows how selected plays demonstrate that the Irish Protestants were far from a monolithic caste united by the shared interest of maintaining control over the Catholic majority. He traces the slow transition by which the English of Ireland came to think of themselves as Irish - without necessarily being prepared to allow Irish emancipation. Precisely because drama is the product of a complex interaction between text, company and audience, these plays reveal the many divergent factions and conflicting impulses that shaped Ireland between about 1660 and 1800, the traces of which remain in Irish society today. Beneath Ierne's Banners: Irish Protestant Drama of the Restoration and 18th Century offers an important picture of how these Protestant playwrights thought about the world, and is a valuable resource for Irish studies and drama scholars.

The boundaries separating Literary Studies from other kinds of humanistic inquiry are more permeable now than at any moment since the Enlightenment, when disciplinary categories began to acquire their modern definition. "The Forms of Renaissance Thought" celebrates scholarship at a number of these frontiers. The contributors address works of the European Renaissance as they relate both to the textured world of their origins and to a modern scholarly culture that turns to the early moderns for methodological provocation and renewal. In this way, the volume charts the most important developments in the field since the turn towards cultural and ideological features of the Renaissance imagination.

Christopher Marlowe's drama, The Jew of Malta, has become an increasingly popular source for scholarly scrutiny, staged productions, and, most recently, a filmed version. The play follows the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, often outrageous fortunes of its villainous protagonist, the Jew Barabas. In recent years the play has provoked as much interpretive controversy as any work in the Marlowe canon. This unique volume is therefore especially timely, providing fresh, varied approaches to the many enigmatic elements of the play.