This is the first comprehensive study of the English crime play, presenting a survey of 250 plays performed in the London West End between 1900 and 2000. The first part is historically orientated while the second one establishes a tentative poetics of the genre. The third part presents an analysis of some 20 plays adapted from detective fiction.

This volume presents the proceedings of the international conference "Theatre Cultures within Globalising Empires: Looking at Early Modern England and Spain", held in 2012 as part of the ERC Advanced Grant Project Early Modern European Drama and the Cultural Net (DramaNet). Implementing the concept of culture as a virtual network, it investigates Early modern European drama and its global dissemination. The 12 articles of the volume - all written by experts in the field teaching in the United Kingdom, the USA, Russia, Switzerland, India and Germany - focus on a selection of English and Spanish dramas from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Analysing and comparing motifs, formal parameters as well as plot structures, they discuss the commonalities and differences of Early modern drama in England and Spain.

John Fletcher's Rome is the first book to explore John Fletcher's engagement with classical antiquity. Like Shakespeare and Jonson, Fletcher wrote, alone or in collaboration, a number of Roman plays: Bonduca, Valentinian, The False One and The Prophetess. Unlike Shakespeare's or Jonson's, however, Fletcher's Roman plays have seldom been the subject of critical discussion. Domenico Lovascio's ground-breaking study examines these plays as a group for the first time, thus identifying disorientation as the unifying principle of Fletcher's portrayal of imperial Rome. John Fletcher's Rome argues that Fletcher's dramatization of ancient Rome exudes a sense of detachment and scepticism as to the authority of Roman models resulting from his irreverent approach to the classics. The book sheds new light on Fletcher's intellectual life, his vision of history, and the interconnections between these plays and the rest of his canon. -- .

The purpose of this book is to investigate what it was Euripides intended to convey to the theatre-going public of his day when he wrote his most exciting and most gruesome play, the Bacchae. The meanings which are to be attached to the action of a play are woven by an audience, both during and after the performance, into a single dramatic experience, labelled in this book as 'audience response'. After some introductory chapters dealing with the history of the interpretation of the Bacchae and with the theory of audience response, the main part of the book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the action of the play (chapters 4 and 5), and to a study of Dionysus in his various apects in Athenian life and in his appearances in earlier literature and on the tragic stage. The discussion of the choruses concentrates on the choruses' repeated utterances about cleverness and wisdom, which form the core of the Dionysian propaganda of the play. The most immediate results of this new interpretation of the Bacchae are that the widely-accepted view of Pentheus as a dark puritan, a man possessed by the Dionysian qualities of his divine opponent, proves to be untenable, and that that which in the past has been rightly called the overriding theme of the play - the god's epiphany - also contains the poet's most serious and ironical discussion of divinity and of man's treatment of it. The problems of the Greek text are given full discussion, mainly in the nots and appendices. In many cases new solutions are proposed; some new problems are however added.

With a Foreword by Dan Rebellato, this book offers up a detailed exploration of Scottish playwright David Greig's work with particular attention to globalization, ethics, and the spectator. It makes the argument that Greig's theatre works by undoing, cracking, or breaking apart myriad elements to reveal the holed, porous nature of all things. Starting with a discussion of Greig's engagement with shamanism and arguing for holed theatre as a response to globalization, for Greig's works' politics of aesthethics, and for the holed spectator as part of an affective ecology of transfers, this book discusses some of Greig's most representative political theatre from Europe (1994) to The Events (2013), concluding with an exploration of Greig's theatre's world-forming quality.

This is an extended meditation on ethics in literature across the Senecan corpus. There are two chapters on the Moral Letters, asking how one is to read philosophy or how one can write about being. Moving from the Letters to the Natural Questions and Dialogues, Professor Gunderson explores how authorship works at the level both of the work and of the world, the ethics of seeing, and the question of how one can give up on the here and now and behold instead some other, better ethical sphere. Seneca's tragedies offer words of caution: desire might well subvert reason at its most profound level (Phaedra), or humanity's painful separation from the sublime might be part of some cruel divine plan (The Madness of Hercules). The book concludes by considering what, if anything, we are to make of Seneca's efforts to enlighten us.

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.

Miss Julie (1888), written in a fortnight, was regarded by Strindberg as his masterpiece, 'the first naturalistic tragedy of the Swedish drama'. Shocking in subject-matter, revolutionary in technique, it was fiercely attacked on publication for immorality. On Midsummer Eve, Miss Julie, the daughter of a count, sleeps with her father's valet, Jean. The subsequent conflict between sexual passion and social position, which leads to her suicide, is presented with startling modernity. The play's premiere at Strindberg's experimental theatre in Denmark in 1889 was banned by the censor and its first public production three years later in Berlin aroused such protests that it was withdrawn after one performance. Miss Julie has since become one of Strindberg's most popular and frequently performed plays. Commentary and notes by David Thomas and Jo Taylor.

This lavishly illustrated book offers the first full, interdisciplinary investigation of the historical evidence for the presence of ancient Greek tragedy in the post-Restoration British theatre, where it reached a much wider audience - including women - than had access to the original texts. Archival research has excavated substantial amounts of new material, both visual and literary, which is presented in chronological order. But the fundamental aim is to explain why Greek tragedy, which played an elite role in the curricula of largely conservative schools and universities, was magnetically attractive to political radicals, progressive theatre professionals, and to the aesthetic avant-garde. All Greek has been translated, and the book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Greek tragedy, the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, theatre history, British social history, English studies, or comparative literature.

How does the entrance of a character on the tragic stage affect their visibility and presence? Beginning with the court culture of the seventeenth century and ending with Nietzsche's Dionysian theater, this monograph explores specific modes of entering the stage and the conditions that make them successful-or cause them to fail. The study argues that tragic entrances ultimately always remain incomplete; that the step figures take into visibility invariably remains precarious. Through close readings of texts by Racine, Goethe, and Kleist, among others, it shows that entrances promise both triumph and tragic exposure; though they appear to be expressions of sovereignty, they are always simultaneously threatened by failure or annihilation. With this analysis, the book thus opens up possibilities for a new theory of dramatic form, one that begins not with the plot itself but with the stage entrance that structures how characters appear and thus determines how the plot advances. By reflecting on acts of entering, this book addresses not only scholars of literature, theater, media, and art but anyone concerned with what it means to appear and be present.

Originally published in 1944, this book examines how Sophocles' inventive use of the ancient Greek language and style justifies his place as, arguably, the greatest Athenian tragedian. Earp analyses in great detail Sophocles' use of Greek words by listing those words used in the plays that appear nowhere else in the canon of ancient literature, as well as linguistic overlap between Sophocles and other ancient authors, and his use of idiom and metre. This thoroughly-researched book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Sophoclean tragedy and textual criticism.

John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's comedy Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid (1615) is an innovative and provocative play that explores the struggle of two transgender siblings, Lucio and Clara, who have been brought up as members of their opposite genders. After twenty years of separation, they are forced to switch around their gender identities, facing fierce scrutiny from their family and the cruelly heteronormative society of early modern Seville. This Revels Plays volume is the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of the play ever to be published. The text has been modernised and is accompanied by full commentary. The introduction presents ground-breaking research on the play's remarkable engagement with its Spanish literary sources, and it provides a full discussion of its dating, authorship, and reception by literary critics and in the theatre. -- .

This book addresses a deceptively simple question: what accounts for the global success of A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen's most popular play? Using maps, networks, and images to explore the world history of the play's production, this question is considered from two angles: cultural transmission and adaptation. Analysing the play's transmission reveals the social, economic, and political forces that have secured its place in the canon of world drama; a comparative study of the play's 135-year production history across five continents offers new insights into theatrical adaptation. Key areas of research include the global tours of nineteenth-century actress-managers, Norway's soft diplomacy in promoting gender equality, representations of the female performing body, and the sexual vectors of social change in theatre.

An important contribution to the understanding of the theatrical output of major figure of Spanish literary canon. Drawing on anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory, this book uses the image of the trickster to argue for a fresh and original reading of Garcia Lorca's plays, highlighting androgyny, male fantasy, masochism, masqueradeand the carnivalesque. The study includes detailed textual analyses of Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin, Asi que pasan cinco anos and El publico, as well as extensive examination of La zapatera prodigiosa and Bodas de sangre; in addition it makes reference to the lesser known El sueno de la vida, Retablillo de Don Cristobal, Dragon and El loco y la loca, together with a relevant selection of Garcia Lorca's drawings and prose. Dr SARAH WRIGHT lectures in Hispanic Studies at the University of Hull.

This book focuses on the role that the Oxford classical curriculum has had in shaping Oscar Wilde's aestheticism. It positions Wilde as a classically trained intellectual and outlines the path he took to gain recognition as a writer and promoter of the aesthetic movement. This narrative is conveyed through a broad range of literary sources, including Wilde's travel poetry, American lectures, and canonical works like 'The Critic as Artist', The Soul of Man, The Picture of Dorian Gray and De Profundis. This study proposes that Wilde approached aestheticism as a personalised, self-directed learning experience - a mode of self-culture - which could be used to maintain an intellectual life outside of the university. It also explores Wilde's thoughts on education and considers the significance of male friendship at Oxford, and in Wilde's life and literature.

This book asserts the extraordinary quality of mid-twentieth century playwright Terence Rattigan's dramatic art and its basis in his use of subtext, implication, and understatement. By discussing every play in chronological order, the book also articulates the trajectory of Rattigan's darkening vision of the human potential for happiness from his earlier comedies through his final plays in which death appears as a longed for peace. New here is the exploration through close analysis of Rattigan's style of writing dialogue and speeches, and how that style expresses Rattigan's sense of life. Likewise, the book newly examines how Rattigan draws on sources in Greek and Roman history, literature, and myth, as well as how he invites comparison with the work of other playwrights, especially Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare. It will appeal broadly to college and university students studying dramatic literature, but also and especially to actors and directors, and the play-going, play-reading public.

From the controversy in 1995 that heralded "Blasted," to her death in February 1999, Sarah Kane built a reputation as an established playwright of international stature. This is the first volume of collected essays by some of the leading scholars in their field, providing a comprehensive approach to the body of work she produced in this brief period. Essays included cover the political, literary, and theatrical identities that have exerted influence on Kane's work, as well as a discussion and assessment of her innovative theatrical experiments and the performative issues that arise from within the plays. "Sarah Kane in Context" examines one of the most controversial and influential dramatists who emerged during the "In-Yer Face" generation of British dramatists in the 1990s and provides an essential guide to Kane for students and scholars alike.

This book is a close taxonomic study of the pivotal role of games in early modern drama. The presence of the game motif has often been noticed, but this study, the most comprehensive of its kind, shows how games operate in more complex ways than simple metaphor and can be syntheses of emblem and dramatic device. Drawing on seventeenth-century treatises, including Francis Willughby's Book of Games, which only became available in print in 2003, and divided into chapters on Dice, Cards, Tables (Backgammon), and Chess, the book brings back into focus the symbolism and divinatory origins of games. The work of more than ten dramatists is analysed, from the Shakespeare and Middleton canon to rarer plays such as The Spanish Curate, The Two Angry Women of Abington and The Cittie Gallant. Games and theatre share common ground in terms of performance, deceit, plotting, risk and chance, and the early modern playhouse provided apt conditions for vicarious play. From the romantic chase to the financial gamble, and in legal contest and war, the twenty-first century is still engaging the game. With its extensive appendices, the book will appeal to readers interested in period games and those teaching or studying early modern drama, including theatre producers, and awareness of the vocabulary of period games will allow further references to be understood in non-dramatic texts.

Playing the Martyr is a book about the interplay between theater and religion in early modern France. Challenging the standard narrative of modernity as a process of increased secularization Christopher Semk demonstrates the centrality of religious thought and practices to the development of neoclassical poetics. Engaging with a broad corpus of religious plays, poetic treatises, devotional literature, and contemporary theory, Semk shows that religion was a vital interlocutor in early modern discussions concerning the definition of verisimilitude, the nature and purpose of spectacle, the mechanics of acting, and the position of the spectator. Well researched and persuasively argued, Playing the Martyr makes the case for a more complicated approach to the relationship between religion and literature, namely, one that does not treat religion as a theme deployed within literary works, but as an active player in literary invention. Indeed, it makes the case for a serious reconsideration of the role that religion plays in the development of modern, secular literary forms.

This book explores an important moment in Italian women's theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women. Because they featured only female roles, they concentrated on aspects of specifically women's experience, be it their spirituality, their future lives as wives and mothers, their present lives as workers or students, or their relationships with friends, sisters and mothers. Most often performed in a Catholic environment, they were meant to both entertain and educate, reflecting the specific issues that both performers and spectators had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the beginning of the economic miracle. Drawing on material never before researched, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II Italy: A Stage of Their Own recovers the life and works of forgotten women playwrights while also discussing the role models that educational theatre offered to the young Italian women coming of age in the post-war years.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. You do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods No more obey the heavens than our courtiers Still seem as does the King's. SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what's the matter? FIRST GENTLEMAN. His daughter, and the heir of's kingdom, whom He purpos'd to his wife's sole son- a widow That late he married- hath referr'd herself Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. She's wedded; Her husband banish'd; she imprison'd. All Is outward sorrow, though I think the King Be touch'd at very heart.

Ike Holter's taut and fast-paced The Wolf at the End of the Block tells the story of a young Latino named Alejandro, known as Abe, who seeks justice after being beaten by a Chicago policeman. A mystery that envelops Abe, his protective sister, and his boss, as well as the police department and a zealous investigative reporter, the play slowly discloses the hidden motives of the characters and the nature of a community long subjected to institutionalized oppression and neglect. The Wolf at the End of the Block complicates and illuminates this urgent and timely story of police violence by avoiding the clichEs of faultless victims and two-dimensional villains. Praised for its power and grace, the play is one of Holter's most unforgettable. The Wolf at the End of the Block is one of seven plays in Holter's Rightlynd Saga, set in Chicago's fictional fifty-first ward. The other plays in the cycle are Rightlynd, Exit Strategy, Sender, Prowess, Red Rex, and Lottery Day.

This book critically engages with the study of theatre and performance in colonial India, and relates it with colonial (and postcolonial) discussions on experience, freedom, institution-building, modernity, nation/subject not only as concepts but also as philosophical queries. It opens up with the discourse around 'Indian theatre' that was started by the orientalists in the late 18th century, and which continued till much later. The study specifically focuses on the two major urban centres of colonial India: Bombay and Calcutta of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It discusses different cultural practices in colonial India, including the initiation of 'Indian theatre' practices, which resulted in many forms of colonial-native 'theatre' by the 19th century; the challenges to this dominant discourse from the 'swadeshi jatra' (national jatra/theatre) in Bengal, which drew upon earlier folk and religious traditions and was used as a tool by the nationalist movement; and the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) that functioned from Bombay around the 1940s, which focused on the creation of one national subject - that of the 'Indian'. The author contextualizes the relevance of the concept of 'Indian theatre' in today's political atmosphere. She also critically analyses the post-Independence Drama Seminar organized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1956 and its relevance to the subsequent organization of 'Indian theatre'. Many theatre personalities who emerged as faces of smaller theatre committees were part of the seminar which envisioned a national cultural body. This book is an important contribution to the field and is of interest to researchers and students of cultural studies, especially Theatre and Performance Studies, and South Asian Studies.

This book is a study of the plays, performances and writings of Christina Reid. It explores Reid's work through her own words, both in interviews and writings; through theoretical engagements in other disciplines, such as psychology and geography; and through responses to her plays in production. It is a compilation of sorts, gathering together interviews, critical material, unpublished works and theatrical reviews to reflect the breadth and depth of Reid's contribution to the theatrical culture of Northern Ireland, during the Troubles and beyond.