Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and foster spectatorial critique and engagement? This open access book examines the forms and functions of political drama in what has been described as a post-Marxist, post-ideological, even post-political moment. It argues that Bertolt Brecht's concept of dialectical theatre represents a privileged theoretical and dramaturgical method on the contemporary British stage as well as a valuable lens for understanding 21st-century theatre in Britain. Establishing a creative philosophical dialogue between Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Ranciere, the study analyses seminal works by five influential contemporary playwrights, ranging from Mark Ravenhill's 'in-yer-face' plays to Caryl Churchill's 21st century theatrical experiments. Engaging critically with Brecht's theatrical legacy, these plays create a politically progressive form of drama which emphasises notions of negativity, ambivalence and conflict as a prerequisite for spectatorial engagement and emancipation. This book adopts an interdisciplinary and intercultural theoretical approach, reuniting English and German perspectives and innovatively weaving together a variety of theoretical strands to offer fresh insights on Brecht's legacy, on British theatre history and on the selected plays. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: - Essays on the play's critical and performance history - A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play - A selection of new essays by leading scholars - A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online Antony and Cleopatra is among Shakespeare's most enduringly popular tragedies. A theatrical piece of extraordinary political power, it also features one of his most memorable couples. Both intellectually and emotionally challenging, Antony and Cleopatra also tests the boundaries of theatrical representation. This volume offers a stimulating and accessible guide to the play that takes stock of the past and current situation of scholarship while simultaneously opening up fresh, thought-provoking critical perspectives.

This is the first book-length study of Plautus' shortest surviving comedy, Curculio, a play in which the tricksy brown-nosed title character ("The Weevil") bamboozles a shady banker and a pious pimp to secure the freedom of the enslaved girl his patron has fallen for while keeping her out of the clutches of a megalomaniacal soldier. It all takes place in the Greek city Epidaurus, the most important site for the worship of the healing god Aesculapius, an unusual setting for an ancient comedy. But a mid-play monologue by the stage manager shows us where the action really is: in the real-life Roman Forum, in the lives and low-lifes of the audience. This study explores the world of Curculio and the world of Plautus, with special attention to how the play was originally performed (including the first-ever comprehensive musical analysis of the play), the play's plots and themes, and its connections to ancient Roman cultural practices of love, sex, religion, food, and class. Plautus: Curculio also offers the first performance and reception history of the play: how it has survived through more than two millennia and its appearances in the modern world.

This is our best-selling York Notes Advanced title. This book will be packed with features to help the students improve their grade. Talking extensively to teachers, examiners and students there seems to be a need for more information outside what the students already know. Features like check the book, check the film and check the net will now offer students more opportunity to develop their researching skills and provide that extra information. More importantly there will be features that address the specific needs of students studying for the new AS and A2 exams. There will now be text boxes in the margin labelled 'Context' which will describe the literary, historical, cultural, religious, or philisophical context of specific references in the text (contextualisation is the new buzz word in the exam syllabuses). There will be at least 20 of these boxes in every book. The glossaries are now integrated in the text so that students don't need to turn the page to find out the meaning of a word. There will also be regular exam questions integrated in the text which will help students revise. Summaries will be cut down and bulleted where appropriate to make way for extra features (meaning extent remains the same) so that the books are now not only appropriate for students who buy the book to cram, they are also important for higher-level students who need more information to get themselves the top grade.

The essays in this collection provide in-depth analyses of Samuel Beckett's major works in the context of his international presence and circulation, particularly the translation, adaptation, appropriation and cultural reciprocation of his oeuvre. A Nobel Prize winner who published and self-translated in both French and English across literary genres, Beckett is recognized on a global scale as a preeminent author and dramatist of the 20th century. Samuel Beckett as World Literature brings together a wide range of international contributors to share their perspectives on Beckett's presence in countries such as China, Japan, Serbia, India and Brazil, among others, and to flesh out Beckett's relationship with postcolonial literatures and his place within the 'canon' of world literature.

Curated from the first four volumes of Peter Lang's Playing Shakespeare's Characters series, this omnibus edition selects the most practical essays for actors and directors wanting to play and produce Shakespeare's plays. The dozen contributors in this volume explore ways to play Shakespeare's lovers, villains, monarch, madmen, rebels, and tyrants. It gives critical guidance for directors and producers wanting to stage Shakespeare in the age of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. The book is a valuable companion for students, actors, directors, and designers who want insight into playing Shakespeare today.

Romeo and Juliet always use 'thou' to each other, but they are the only pair of lovers in Shakespeare to do this. Why? All the women in Richard III address Richard as 'thou', but no man ever does. Why? When characters address the dead, they use 'thou' - except for Hamlet, who addresses Yorick as 'you'. Why? Shakespeare's contemporaries would have known the answers to these questions because they understood what 'thou' signified, but modern actors and audiences are in the dark. Through performance-oriented analysis of extracts from the plays, this book explores the language of 'trulls' and termagants, true loves and unwelcome wooers, male impersonators, smothering mothers, warring spouses and fighting men, as well as investigating lese-majeste, Freudian slips, crisis moments and rhetorical flourishes. Drawing on work with RSC actors, as well as the author's experience of playing a range of Shakespearean roles, the book equips the reader with a new tool for tracking emotions, weighing power relations and appreciating dazzling complexity.

Classical Greek Tragedy offers a comprehensive survey of the development of classical Greek tragedy combined with close readings of exemplary texts. Reconstructing how audiences in fifth-century BCE Athens created meaning from the performance of tragedy at the dramatic festivals sponsored by the city-state and its wealthiest citizens, it considers the context of Athenian political and legal structures, gender ideology, religious beliefs, and other social forces that contributed to spectators' reception of the drama. In doing so it focuses on the relationship between performers and watchers, not only Athenian male citizens, but also women and audiences throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. This book traces the historical development of these dynamics through three representative tragedies that span a 50 year period: Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, and Euripides' Helen. Topics include the role of the chorus; the tragic hero; recurring mythical characters and subject matter; Aristotelian assessments of the components of tragedy; developments in the architecture of the theater and their impact on the interactions of characters, and the spaces they occupy. Unifying these discussions is the observation that the genre articulates a reality beyond the visible stage action that intersects with the characters' existence in the present moment and resonates with the audience's religious beliefs and collective psychology. Human voices within the performance space articulate powerful forces from an invisible dimension that are activated by oaths, hymns, curses and prayers, and respond in the form of oracles and prophecies, forms of discourse which were profoundly meaningful to those who watched the original productions of tragedy.

Much Ado About Nothing presents a world of glittering surfaces and exquisite social performances. The language of the play sparkles with a fireworks of wit and dazzling bouts of repartee, most memorably in the "merry war" of words between the reluctant lovers, Benedick and Beatrice. A closer look at the language of the play, however, reveals it to be laced with violence and charged with the desire to humiliate others. Wit is deployed as a weapon to ridicule one's opponent; much of the humour circulates incessantly around the theme of cuckoldry, a major source of male anxiety in the period. The most drastic use of language is to slander Hero by accusing her of a lack of chastity - an accusation that spelt social death for a woman in the early modern age. The death that Hero feigns mirrors accurately the devastating effects of the assassination of her character by the smart set of young noblemen in the play. This study guide focuses on examining the array of the uses of language that the play displays, and probes into the ideas about language that it explores. The book looks at key film versions of the play by Kenneth Branagh and Joss Whedon which are often used on courses, whilst also offering practical questions and tips to help students develop their own critical writing skills and deepen their understanding of the play.

This new introduction to Euripides' fascinating interpretation of the story of Electra and her brother Orestes emphasizes its theatricality, showing how captivating the play remains to this day. Electra poses many challenges for those drawn to Greek tragedy - students, scholars, actors, directors, stage designers, readers and audiences. Rush Rehm addresses the most important questions about the play: its shift in tone between tragedy and humour; why Euripides arranged the plot as he did; issues of class and gender; the credibility of the gods and heroes, and the power of the myths that keep their stories alive. A series of concise and engaging chapters explore the functions of the characters and chorus, and how their roles change over the course of the play; the language and imagery that affects the audience's response to the events on stage; the themes at work in the tragedy, and how Euripides forges them into a coherent theatrical experience; the later reception of the play, and how an array of writers, directors and filmmakers have interpreted the original. Euripides' Electra has much to say to us in our contemporary world. This thorough, richly informed introduction challenges our understanding of what Greek tragedy was and what it can offer modern theatre, perhaps its most valuable legacy.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and textual studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on all the major areas of current research, notably the Shakespeare manuscripts; the printed text and paratext in Shakespeare's early playbooks and poetry books; Shakespeare's place in the early modern book trade; Shakespeare's early readers, users, and collectors; the constitution and evolution of the Shakespeare canon from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century; Shakespeare's editors from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century; and the modern editorial reproduction of Shakespeare. The Handbook also devotes separate chapters to new directions and developments in research in the field, specifically in the areas of digital editing and of authorship attribution methodologies. In addition, the Companion contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and textual studies.

Eubanks Winkler and Schoch reveal how - and why - the first generation to stage Shakespeare after Shakespeare's lifetime changed absolutely everything. Founder of the Duke's Company, Sir William Davenant influenced how Shakespeare was performed in a profound and lasting way. This open access book provides the first performance-based account of Restoration Shakespeare, exploring the precursors to Davenant's approach to Restoration Shakespeare, the cultural context of Restoration theatre, the theatre spaces in which the Duke's Company performed, Davenant's adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, acting styles, and the lasting legacy of Davenant's approach to staging Shakespeare. The eBook editions of this work are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Queens University Belfast.