This book explores shifting representations and receptions of the arms-bearing woman on the British stage during a period in which she comes to stand in Britain as a striking symbol of revolutionary chaos. The book makes a case for viewing the British Romantic theatre as an arena in which the significance of the armed woman is constantly remodelled and reappropriated to fulfil diverse ideological functions. Used to challenge as well as to enforce established notions of sex and gender difference, she is fashioned also as an allegorical tool, serving both to condemn and to champion political and social rebellion at home and abroad. Magnifying heroines who appear on stage wielding pistols, brandishing daggers, thrusting swords, and even firing explosives, the study spotlights the intricate and often surprising ways in which the stage amazon interacts with Anglo-French, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-German, and Anglo-Spanish debates at varying moments across the French revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns. At the same time, it foregrounds the extent to which new dramatic genres imported from Europe -notably, the German Sturm und Drang and the French-derived melodrama- facilitate possibilities at the turn of the nineteenth century for a refashioned female warrior, whose degree of agency, destructiveness, and heroism surpasses that of her tragic and sentimental predecessors.

This book has been specially written for the needs of A-level and undergraduate students. This book enables students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and develop their own critical thinking.Key Features: *Study methods *Introduction to the text *Summaries with critical notes *Themes and techniques *Textual analysis of key passages *Author biography *Historical and literary background *Modern and historical critical approaches *Chronology *Glossary of literary term

Shakespeare and the Young Writer presents fascinating and impressive accounts of primary school children encountering Shakespeare's work for the first time.
Fred Sedgwick shows how careful selection of scenes, lines and images from the plays and sonnets - in their original language - can be used to great effect as the starting point for children's writing. Examples of children's work show just how powerful the stimulus can be. The book will be of great value to all teachers looking for new ideas to improve their practice in teaching literacy.

Lyric Incarnate examines the plays of Aleksandr Blok, the pre-eminent poet of Russian Symbolism and one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Blok's plays have received less attention than his poetry in the West, and this book is the first and only English-language monograph devoted to Blok the playwright. In chronological succession, each of Blok's major plays is examined in detail. Special attention is accorded to Blok's relations with the major directors of his time, particularly Meyerhold and Stanislavsky. Blok's role, for instance, in Meyerhold's formulation of the theatre of the grotesque proved to be critical, and his relation to the Moscow Art Theatre just before the October Revolution helped to define the future course of that theatre. Blok's innovative dramatic technique is carefully studied at each stage in his career, from his earliest "lyric dramas," such as A Puppet Show and The Stranger, to his great tragedy The Rose and the Cross.

Revels stuff. . . .|This Edition of George Chapman's tragedy differs from all other modern editions in being primarily based on the Quarto of 1607 in preference to the much revised Quarto of 1641. N. S. Brooke believes that the earlier text gives a more certain indication of Chapman's intentions and he has supported this view in an introduction and by a bibliographical and critical study of the play. The divergence between the texts of 1607 and 1641 are set out clearly in this volume, which includes the usual textual and critical apparatus found in the Revels series. -- .

"Wendy Wasserstein: A Casebook "contains in-depth discussions of the playwright's major works, including her recent play 1 "An American Daughter." Wasserstein's plays and essays are explored within diverse traditions, including Jewish storytelling, women's writing, and classical comedy. Critical perspectives include feminist, Bakhtinian, and actor/director. Comparisons with other playwrights, such as Rachel Crothers, Caryl Churchill, and Anton Chekhov, provide context and understanding. An interview with the playwright and an annotated bibliography are included.

With its fantasy of magical travel and inexhaustible riches, Thomas Dekker's Old Fortunatus is the quintessential early modern journeying play. The adventures of Fortunatus and his sons, aided by a magical purse and wishing-hat, offers the period's most overt celebration of the pleasures of travel, as well as a sustained critique of the dangers of intemperance and prodigality. Written following a period of financial difficulty for Dekker, the play is also notable for its fascination with the symbolic, mercantile and ethical uses of gold. This Revels Plays edition is the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of Old Fortunatus. It offers scholarly discussion of the play's performance and textual history, including attention to the German version printed and performed in the early seventeenth century. It provides a long overdue critical reappraisal of this unjustly neglected play. -- .

FLAVIUS. Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home. Is this a holiday? What, know you not, Being mechanical, you ought not walk Upon a laboring day without the sign Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? FIRST COMMONER. Why, sir, a carpenter. MARULLUS. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on? You, sir, what trade are you?

Tracing Lyubimov's work play by play, we discover an indivudual doomed to be at odds with the prevailing political and social climate of his literary contemporaries. From this unique book there emerges a clear picture of Lyubimov's mischievous, provocative, fearless, and tireless imagination.
In this fascinating study of Yury Lyubimov's tempestuous career and his liberating style of theatre, Birgit Beumers thoroughly explores the making of a major figure in twentieth-century theatre. She traces the development of Lyubimov's ideas, from his arrival at the Taganka theatre in 1964, through his expulsion in 1984 and his period of exile in the West, until his return in 1989 to a much-changed Russia.

This work undertakes a re-evaluation of Seneca's plays, their relationship to Roman imperial culture and their instrumental role in the evolution of the European theatrical tradition. Following an introduction on the history of the Roman theatre, the book provides dramatic and cultural critique of the whole of Seneca's corpus, analyzing the declamatory form of the plays, their rhetoric, interiority, stagecraft and spectacle, dramatic, ideological and moral structure and their overt theatricality. Each of Seneca's plays is examined in detail, locating the force of Senecan drama not only in the moral complexity of the texts and their representations of power, violence, history, suffering and the self, but the semiotic interplay of text, tradition and culture. The later chapters focus on Seneca's influence on Italian, English and French drama of the Renaissance. A.J. Boyle argues that tragedians such as Cinthio, Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Corneille, and Racine owe a debt to Seneca that goes beyond allusion, dramatic form and the treatment of tyranny and revenge to the development of the tragic sensibility and the metatheatrical mind.

'n Regter bring sy mooi, jong vrou saam na 'n jagplaas om sy laaste trofee te kom skiet. So word vyf mense saamgegooi vir 'n naweek. Jaloesie, konkelary, wedywering en twis oor grondbesit is aan die orde van die dag – en nog 'n verhouding wat nooit sy le kon kry nie. 'n Misterieuse bok maak sy verskyning. Meteens raak die verlede deel van die hede. Nie almal op die plaas weet van die vloek wat oor die grond hang nie. Die omgewing word 'n medespeler wat jare se intrige op die spits dryf.

The volume explores Elizabeth I's impact on English and European culture during her life and after her death, through her own writing as well as through contemporary and later writers. The contributors are codicologists, historians and literary critics, offering a varied reading of the Queen and of her cultural inheritance.

Key features of this text: How to study the text Author and historical background General and detailed summaries Commentary on themes, structure, characters, language and style Glossaries Test questions and issues to consider Essay writing advice Cultural connections Literary terms Illustrations Colour design

"The purpose of these 17 essays . . . is to convey the significance of Chekhov within manageable parameters for readers unable to tackle the considerable body of available Chekhov scholarships." Choice

Post-Colonial Drama is the first full-length study to address the ways in which performance has been instrumental in resisting the continuing effects of imperialism. It brings to bear the latest theoretical approaches from post-colonial and performance studies to a range of plays from Australia, Africa, Canada, New Zealand, the Caribbean and other former colonial regions. Some of the major topics discussed include:
* the interactions of post-colonial and performance theories
* the post-colonial re-stagings of language and history
* the specific enactments of ritual and carnival
* the theatrical citations of the post-colonial body
Post-Colonial Drama combines a rich intersection of theoretical approaches with close attention to a wide range of performance texts.

eBook available with sample pages: 020342106X

This series gathers together a body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. "The Critical Heritage" set is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the sixth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre and a popular poet. This is the fifth volume in a set of seven which comprises a complete edition of all her works.

This series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little-published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation.

Post-Colonial Drama is the first full-length study to address the ways in which performance has been instrumental in resisting the continuing effects of imperialism. It brings to bear the latest theoretical approaches from post-colonial and performance studies to a range of plays from Australia, Africa, Canada, New Zealand, the Caribbean and other former colonial regions. Some of the major topics discussed in Post-Colonial Drama include:
* the interactions of post-colonial and performance theories
* the post-colonial re-stagings of language and history
* the specific enactments of ritual and carnival
* the theatrical citations of the post-colonial body
Post-Colonial Drama combines a rich intersection of theoretical approaches with close attention to a wide range of performance texts.

The political events of "annus mirabilis" 1989 marked a rare turning point in world history, but the significance of the year for German literary history is unique. As the 40-year-old German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, so too did the special circumstances which had fostered a literature separate from and in competition with that of the Federal Republic of Germany. A new period of literary history was delimited almost overnight: Germany Democratic Republic literature now was something to be examined as a whole, cultural movement. At the same time, the literary traditions of the German Democratic Republic have continued to influence the contemporary cultural scene, often in ways that are only gradually becoming clear.
The essays, memoirs, and plays collected in this special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review represent an early attempt to assess and reassess one of the German Democratic Republic's richest cultural domains: its theatre. Contributors include David W. Robinson, C

This series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little-published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation.

This series gathers together a body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation.

Peterson has done a great service to students of African-American theater. . . . Peterson's scholarship is impressive; the book's format is inviting . . . an indispensable reference book for academic libraries. "Choice"

This reference volume addresses an often overlooked area in the history of the American theatre, the contributions of early black playwrights and dramatic writers. At a time when they were denied full participation in many aspects of American life, including the mainstream of the theatre itself, black artists were compiling an impressive record of achievement on the American stage. This book, the most comprehensive on the subject, provides a complete look at these achievements by offering biographical information and a catalog of works for approximately 200 writers, including playwrights, librettists, screenwriters, and radio scriptwriters. From the emergence of black playwrights in the time prior to the Civil War, to the early days of film and radio in this century, the efforts of early black writers are fully documented in this work.

The book begins with an author's preface and is followed by an introductory essay that discusses the development of black American playwrights from the antebellum period to World War II. The heart of the book, the biographical directory, is organized alphabetically, with each entry providing highlights of the author's life and career; collected anthologies that include any works; and an annotated chronological list of individual dramatic works, including genre, length, synopses, production history, prizes and awards, and script sources. Three appendixes offer information on other playwrights and their works, additional librettists and descriptions of their shows, and a chronology of dramatic works by genre. A bibliography cites such information sources as reference books and critical studies, dissertations, play anthologies, and newspapers and periodicals frequently consulted, as well as significant libraries and repositories. The book concludes with title and general indexes and an index to early black theatre organizations. This work will be an important reference source for courses in black American drama and theatre history, and a valuable addition to both public and academic libraries.