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.

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 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 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 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.

"Alice Birch's new play is scored like a piece of music ... It is an extraordinary echoing text, full of pain and strange beauty. The three stories play out simultaneously on stage, the dialogue from one scene overlapping with the other two in a manner that borders on the choral ... Birch has provided a text that explores these ideas in a formally invigorating way." The Stage Three generations of women. For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy. A powerful, unflinching look at a family afflicted with severe depression and mental illness. Presented as a triptych of plays performed side by side, this groundbreaking play reverberates with audiences and readers. Published for the first time in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, this edition features a brand new introduction by Ava Davies.

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.

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 comprehensive, detailed study of Wilder's entire dramatic oeuvre is the only one to place the works in their broad aesthetic and philosophical context and to integrate literary analysis of the plays with interpretation of their theatrical techniques. Its sources include Gilbert Harrison's "authorized" 1983 biography of the dramatist and the published selections from Wilder's journals for the years 1939-1961, as well as unpublished material--letters, diaries, and notes--in the Yale Collection of American Literature Wilder papers. Lifton discusses the symbolist, naturalist, expressionist, Brechtian, futurist, Pirandellian, and existentialist elements in Wilder's plays, as well as parallels between Wilder's theatre and that of such diverse cultures as the classical Greek and Roman, medieval European, Elizabethan, Renaissance Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese.

An original and energetic examination of the relationship between theology, faith, religious history and national politics in the works of Oscar Wilde, which focuses in particular on his life-long attraction to Catholicism. Wilde's Protestant heritage is also scrutinized, and its continued influence on him, as well as his antagonism towards it, is related to the narrative modes he chose and the philosophical positions he adopted.

Theatre has often found itself at the centre of recent debates over censorship and the arts, as a result of coverage of events such as the protests against the play "Behzti" and the controversy over "Jerry Springer: The Opera." This book offers the first sustained study of censorship of the British stage from 1968 into the twenty-first century.

This book redefines the plays and theatrical culture of the years 1625 to 1642 as something more than simply post-Shakespearean in character. Scholars reveal the drama's mixture of political engagement, urbane cosmopolitanism, and commercial ingenuity. They urge us to recalibrate our histories to account for the innovations of the Caroline period.

The language of early Greek epic, exemplified primarily by Homer, contains numerous descriptions of inner states and uses a specific vocabulary to do so. Scholars understand these descriptions in a general way; but the precision of the expressions remains a mystery. In this work, one of the most important of these words, "thumos," is examined in each of its contexts. This synchronic formulaic analysis is carried out according to the contexts of "thumos": the cognitive/intellectual, the emotional, and the physical. Two additional contexts, deliberation and motivation, are discussed separately. Within the discussion of each context, the functional synonyms of thumos, particulary "phren/phrenes," and other frequent associates of "thumos," are examined. "Thumos" has associations with words relating to winds and storms, a fact which helps clarify its significance in all contexts. Because this work is a discussion of "thumos" in all contexts, and also contains an appendix of the relevant passages, it should be useful to scholars engaged in research on Homeric vocabulary.

'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.

The contributions to this volume by a team of international experts illustrate how the linguistic study of Greek comedy can deepen our knowledge of the intricate connections between the dramatic texts and their literary and socio-cultural environment. While the main focus is on comedy, the diversity of the approaches adopted (including narratology, pragmatics, lexicology, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and textual criticism) ensures that much of the work applies to different genres and is relevant also to linguists and literary scholars.

"Drama and the Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century England" is the first book-length study of the relationship between early modern drama and sacramental ritual and theology. The book examines a range of dramatic forms, including morality plays, Tudor interludes and the Elizabethan professional stage. Offering new insights into the religious practices on which early modern subjectivity is founded, David Coleman both uncovers neglected texts and documents, and offers radical new ways of reading canonical Renaissance plays.

The Humorous Magistrate is a seventeenth-century satiric comedy extant in two highly distinctive manuscripts. This, the earliest and clearly working draft of the play is bound with three other plays (including The Emperor's Favourite, published by the Malone Society in 2010) in a volume in the library of the Newdigate family of Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The second version, showing yet another stage of revision not found in the Arbury manuscript and orientated towards performance, was purchased by the University of Calgary from the English antiquarian Edgar Osborne in 1972. The relationship between the manuscripts was discovered in 2005. The anonymous play has been attributed to John Newdigate III (1600-1642). Like The Emperor's Favourite, it takes aim at the court; its particular object of satire is governmental strategies under the Personal Rule of Charles I. The play appears in print for the first time in these separate editions. The volumes are illustrated with several plates, some provided for comparative purposes. -- .

A fascinating intertextual study of the classic biblical tragedy of Saul, the first king of Israel, as first narrated in biblical narrative and later reworked in Lamartine's drama Saul: Trag+--die and Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Plot and characterization are each explored in detail in this study, and in each of the narrations the hero's tragic fate emerges both as the result of a character flaw and also as a consequence of the ambivalent role of the deity, showing a double theme underlying not only the biblical vision but also its two very different retellings nearer to our own times.

Dylan Thomas: A Literary Life offers an account of the poet's life, along with a critical reading of his work, that is designed to close what has been called 'the yawning gap' between Dylan Thomas's popular and critical reputations.

Product information not available.

Christopher Marlowe is known not only as Shakespeare's most notable contemporary playwright, but also as one of the most intriguing figures of the English Renaissance. The mystery of his death in a fray at the age of 29 has inspired writers around the world, and his fiery career is no less intriguing. This New Casebook offers a wide-ranging selection of essays on Marlowe's major plays. Articles from the last two decades by leading critics of English early modern drama provide a variety of fresh, controversial and enlightening critical perspectives on five of Marlowe's plays: Tamburlaine the Great Parts One and Two, The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, and Edward II.