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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gregory Dobrov's Figures of Play explores the reflexive aspects of ancient theatrical culture across genres. Fifth-century tragedy and comedy sublimated the agonistic basis of Greek civilization in a way that invited the community of the polis to confront itself. In the theatre, as in the courts and assemblies, a significant subset of the Athenian public was spectator and judge of contests where important social and ideological issues were played to it by its own members. The "syntax" of drama is shown to involve specific "figures of play" through which the theatrical medium turns back upon itself to study the contexts of its production. Figures of Play is at the forefront of new developments in scholarly approaches to the Greek theatre, bringing the younger methods of literary criticism and performance theory to bear on the study of classics.

Tony Pastor, a vaudeville performer and manager, was known as the Dean of Vaudeville. He is credited with cleaning up the bawdy variety shows of the mid 1800s, resulting in their appeal to women and the middle classes. He opened his first vaudeville house in 1865 and continued to present shows at a series of New York houses until shortly before his death in 1908. He achieved his greatest hits with parodies of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, but he also presented parodies, or burlesques, of Shakespearean productions and those of contemporary authors, as well as melodramatic works in the popular style of the day. The plays, or afterpieces, and the function they served for both the audience and the theatre, are examined within the context of the culture and conditions under which the plays were written. Thirteen plays are included, each preceded by a production history. Issues addressed in each play are analyzed, such as prevailing societal attitudes, including those toward class and gender. Discourse on the parodies includes an examination of the original play, detailing the reasons why particular sections were chosen to parody.

This examination of Tony Pastor's scripts will appeal to theatre scholars, especially those interested in vaudeville, since until recently the plays were mostly kept in private collections. Students of American culture, particularly culture at the turn of the century, will find valuable material in the plays as they shed light on the daily life of the lower and middle classes, and subsequently on the issues that concerned them. Since the plays were formerly not widely available, this study, including the texts of the original scripts, provides a valuable resource to scholars as well as to those with a general interest in the theatre and vaudeville.

In the late nineteenth century, Asian American drama made its debut with the spotlight firmly on the lives and struggles of Asians in North America, rather than on the cultures and traditions of the Asian homeland. Today, Asian American playwrights continue to challenge the limitations of established theatrical conventions and direct popular attention toward issues and experiences that might otherwise be ignored or marginalized. While Asian American literature came into full bloom in the last 25 years, Asian American drama has yet to receive the kind of critical attention it warrants. This reference book serves as a versatile vehicle for exploring the field of Asian American drama from its recorded conception to its present stage.

Included are alphabetically arranged entries for 52 Asian American dramatists of origins from India, Pakistan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and China. Each entry includes relevant biographical information that contextualizes the works of a playwright, an interpretive description of selected plays that spotlights recurring themes and plots, a summary of the playwright's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary works. The entries are written by expert contributors and reflect the ethnic diversity of the Asian American community. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography, which includes anthologies, scholarly studies, and periodicals.

Breaking new ground in this century, this wide-ranging collection of essays is the first of its kind to address the work of contemporary international women playwrights. The book considers the work of established playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Marie Clements, Lara Foot-Newton, Maria Irene Fornes, Sarah Kane, Lisa Kron, Young Jean Lee, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Djanet Sears, Caridad Svich, and Judith Thompson, but it also foregrounds important plays by many emerging writers. Divided into three sections-Histories, Conflicts, and Genres-the book explores such topics as the feminist history play, solo performance, transcultural dramaturgies, the identity play, the gendered terrain of war, and eco-drama, and encompasses work from the United States, Canada, Latin America, Oceania, South Africa, Egypt, and the United Kingdom. With contributions from leading international scholars and an introductory overview of the concerns and challenges facing women playwrights in this new century, Contemporary Women Playwrights explores the diversity and power of women's playwriting since 1990, highlighting key voices and examining crucial critical and theoretical developments within the field.

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.

The Austrian composer Hanns Eisler was Bertolt Brecht's closest friend and most politically committed collaborator. In these conversations with Hans Bunge which took place over a period of four years, from 1958 until his death in 1962, Eisler offers a compelling and absorbing account of his and Brecht's period of exile in Europe and the USA between 1933 and 1947, and of the quality of artistic, social and intellectual life in post-war East Germany. Brecht, Music and Culture includes a discussion of a number of Brecht's principal plays, including Life of Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, considers the place of music in Brecht's work and discusses the time that Brecht was brought before The House of Un-American Activities Committee. It includes lively accounts of Brecht's meetings with key cultural figures, including Arnold Schoenberg, Charlie Chaplin and Thomas Mann, and offers throughout a sustained response to the question of the purpose of art in a time of political turmoil. Throughout the conversations, Eisler provides illuminating and original insights into Brecht's work and ideas and gives a highly entertaining first-hand account of his friend's personality and attitudes. First published in Germany in 1975, and now published in English for the first time, the conversations provide a fascinating account of the lives and work of two of the twentieth century's greatest artists.

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.