Marriage features to a greater or lesser extent in virtually every play Shakespeare wrote - as the festive end of comedy, as the link across the cycles of the history plays, as a marker of the difference between his own society and that depicted in the Roman plays, and, all too often, as the starting-point for the tragedies. Situating his representations of marriage firmly within the ideologies and practices of Renaissance culture, Lisa Hopkins argues that Shakespeare anatomises marriage much as he does kingship, and finds it similarly indispensable to the underpinning of society, however problematic it may be as a guarantor of personal happiness.

Shakespeare in mass media–particularly film, video, and television–is arguably the fastest growing research agenda in Shakespeare studies. Shakespeare after Mass Media provides both students and scholars with the most comprehensive resource available on the market for studying the extraordinary afterlife of Shakespeare’s plays in a wide range of media. From marketing to electronic Shakespeares, comics to romance novels, Star Trek to Kenneth Branagh, radio and popular music to Bartlett’s Quotations, the contributors explore the contemporary cultural significance of Shakespeare with theoretical sophistication and accessible writing.

This book offers a new, accurate and actable translation of one of Euripides' most popular plays, together with a commentary which provides insight into the challenges it sets for production and suggestions for how to solve them. The introduction discusses the social and cultural context of the play and its likely impact on the original audience, the way in which it was originally performed, the challenges which the lead roles present today and Medea's implications for the modern audience. The text of the translation is followed by the 'Theatrical Commentary' section on the issues involved in staging each scene and chorus today, embodying insights gained from a professional production. Notes on the translation, a glossary of names, suggestions for further reading and a chronology of Euripides' life and times round out the volume. The book is intended for use by theatre practitioners who wish to stage or workshop Medea and by students both of drama, theatre and performance and of classical studies.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Othello on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare containsThe complete text of the original playA line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday languageA complete list of characters with descriptionsPlenty of helpful commentary

This study focuses on the ways in which Harold Pinter conceives of and dramatizes time according to the medium in which he is working. It goes beyond Pinter's fascination with false and true memory to trace the various textual and non-textual strategies he employs to distort sequence and duration in his plays. This book shows how Pinter undermines the temporal assumptions of naturalism and realism to form a relativistic world in which time is a central feature.

This unique volume contains studies not only of Corneille's and Racine's tragedies but also of the best work of the lesser French-classical tragic dramatists, too generally neglected, to whom more than half of the book is devoted. Its author brings to his tasks of presentation, criticism, and appraisal a wider acquaintance, perhaps, with the drama of many lands and times than anyone who has previously written at any considerable length on the subject of French-classical tragedy. To the desirable perspective thus obtained, he joins an appreciation of good plays of every type, without prejudice either for or against any type of drama. Numerous, often lengthy, quoted passages (with an English verse translation accompanying the French in every case) exemplify the achievement and exhibit the qualities of the dramas and dramatists discussed. That portion of the author's critical work in this field which has already appeared, as introductions in his volumes of translated plays, has been much appreciated, as witness the following brief excerpts from reviews of those books: "The plays...are discussed with insight and enthusiasm."--(London) Notes and Queries. "Refreshingly original and yet free from specious pleading or naive enthusiasm."--Chattanooga Times. "Thoughtful, discerning appraisals."--Seventeenth Century News. "An excellent critical introduction."--The Library Journal. "A judicious introduction."--Arthur Knodel in The Personalist. "The very best interpretative treatment of Corneille that has appeared."--C. Maxwell Lancaster.

Pussy Sludge is a play about a woman with a broken pussy. There's a woman menstruating crude oil. She lives in a swamp. She's in love with Courtney, but her mother prefers RJ. No one knows who knows what's best. Gracie Gardner's award-winning play sketches a dystopian setting with an eponymous main character who, in a number of absurd encounters, resists stereotypical gender constructions and socially predetermined life models. Far more than just a feisty criticism of patriarchal systems, the play turns power structures upside down and offers a surreal and comic parable of sexual self-determination that challenges conservative gender constructs and our patriarchal status quo with vigor and irony. Pussy Sludge is a tender exploration of questioning authority, suspending shame through intimacy, and very bad advice.

What role did the performance of poetry, music, song, and dance play in the political life of the ancient city? How has philosophy positioned itself and articulated its own ambitions in relation to the poet tradition? The Polis and the Stage poses such questions through a reading of Plato last, longest, and unfinished work, the Laws. Plato's engagement with the Greek poetic tradition has long been recognized as foundational in the history of literary criticism, but the broader critical and philosophical significance of the Laws has been largely ignored. Although Plato is often thought hostile to mimetic art, famously banishing poets from the ideal city of the Republic, this book shows that in his final dialogue Plato made a striking about-face, proposing to rehabilitate Athenian performance culture and envisioning a city, in which poetry, music, song, and dance are instrumental in the cultivation of philosophical virtues. The psychological underpinnings of aesthetic experience and the power of mimetic art to predispose a society to specific kinds of constitutions are central themes throughout this study. Plato's views of the performative properties of language and genre receives systematic treatment in this study for the first time. Performance as a mechanism of sexual construction-a network of social practices uniquely suited to communicate and enforce normative conceptions of gender and erotic pleasure-is another focus, with special attention given to positions occupied by women in the culture envisaged in the Laws. As a whole, Marcus Folch's book provides an integrated interpretation of Plato's final dialogue with the Greek poetic tradition, an exploration of the dialectic between philosophy and mimetic art, which will be of interest to anyone concerned with understanding ancient Greek performance and the emergence of philosophical discourse in fourth-century Athens.

A Schools Edition of The Slab Boys by Scottish playwright John Byrne, a popular set text for SQA Higher English. A semi-autobiographical work, The Slab Boys is set in the slab room of A.F. Stobo & Co Carpet Manufacturers in Paisley and the action takes place on one day in 1957. It explores themes such as rebellion and conformity, social class and social mobility, youth, deception, and frustrated ambition and achievement. This edition includes: - An introduction by John Byrne, who was a 'slab boy' himself before becoming a playwright and artist - The full playscript - Notes, quotations and questions to improve students' understanding of the play and support study/revision - Tasks and activities that build the skills of analysis and evaluation that students must demonstrate in the exam - Assessment advice for the Critical Reading question paper This is the only single-volume version of The Slab Boys, taken from The Slab Boys Trilogy.

Die potlooddief en die engel is 'n hedendaagse blyspel wat losweg gebaseer is op die Middeleeuse mirakel- en moraliteitspele. Alles is moontlik, met die gevolg dat hierdie heerlike en hoogs opvoerbare komedie, wat met groot sukses voorgeskryf is, net sulke prettige leesstof is.

Caring for Red is Mindy Fried's moving and colorful account of caring for her 97-year-old father, Manny - an actor, writer, and labor organizer - in the final year of his life. This memoir chronicles the actions of two sisters as they discover concentric circles of support for their father and attempt to provide him with an experience of ""engaged aging"" in an assisted living facility. The story is also that of a daughter of a powerful and outspoken man who took risks throughout his life and whose political beliefs had an enduring impact on his family. (After Manny was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he was blackballed and his family was shunned.) As an actor, Manny was affiliated with Elia Kazan's Group Theatre and the Federal Theatre Project. He did Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Ibsen, and played everything from the tormented father in Arthur Miller's All My Sons to an infant in a baby carriage in Thornton Wilder's Infancy, from the Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof to - poignantly for this book - the role of Morrie in Tuesdays with Morrie. As she devotes herself to caring for her dying father, Mindy grapples anew with the complexity of their relationship. She questions whether she can be there for him and how to assert her own voice as her father's caregiver in his last days.

In Stagecraft in Euripides, first published in 1985, Professor Michael Halleran examines certain aspects of the dramaturgy of the most extensively preserved Attic tragedian. Although the ancient dramatic texts do not contain performance directions, they do imply stage actions. This work explores the ways Euripides utilises the latter to make a point: to underline some issue, to suggest a contrast, or to shift the focus of the drama. Specifically, Halleran investigates the rearrangement of characters on stage at the major structural junctures of the play: entrances and their announcements; preparation for and surprise in entrances; and dramatic connections between exits and entrances. Three plays from the same era - Herakles, Trojan Women and Ion - are discussed in greater detail to reveal the potential of this approach for illuminating Euripides' 'grammar of dramatic technique'. Stagecraft in Euripides will thus appeal to students of theatre and drama as well as classicists.

Edwardian Shaw covers Shaw's campaigns and crusades in the crucial first ten years of the century, when his career hung in the balance. By going to contemporary documents and highlighting aspects of Shaw's career at this time, particularly his emergence as a moral revolutionary and playwright of original and disquieting power, Leon Hugo depicts a man who confronted a highly conservative world and managed by the force of his genius to stamp his personality on the age.

This is an invaluable introduction to ancient Greek tragedy which discusses every surviving play in detail and provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the plays. Edith Hall argues that the essential feature of the genre is that it always depicts terrible human suffering and death, but in a way that invites philosophical enquiry into their causes and effects, This enquiry was played out in the bright sunlight of open-air theatre, which became a key marker of the boundary between living and dead. The first half of the book is divided into four chapters which address the social and physical contexts in which the plays were performed, the contribution of the poets, actors, funders, and audiences, the poetic composition of the texts, their performance conventions, main themes, and focus on religion, politics, and the family. The second half consists of individual essays on each of the surviving thirty-three plays by the Greek tragedians, and an account of the recent performance of Greek tragic theatre and tragic fragments. An up-to-date 'Suggestions for further reading' is included.

Drawing upon archival material as well as the drama, popular verse and pamphlets, this book reads representations of masters and servants in relation to key Renaissance preoccupations. Apprentices, journeymen, male domestic servants, maidservants and stewards, Burnett argues, were deployed in literary texts to address questions about the exercise of power, social change and the threat of economic upheaval. In this way, writers were instrumental in creating servant 'cultures', and spaces within which forms of political resistance could be realized.

This collection of essays on diverse works of English Renaissance literature is the result of more than 30 years of critical analysis of texts, careful attention to staged and filmed plays, and insightful teaching.

Staging Black Feminisms explores the development and principles of black British women's plays and performance since the late Twentieth century. Using contemporary performance theory to explore key themes (such as migration, motherhood, sexuality, and mixed race identity), it offers close textual readings and production analysis of a range of plays, performance poetry and live art works by practitioners, including Patience Agbabi, Jackie Kay, Valerie Mason John, Winsome Pinnock, Jacqueline Rudet, Debbie Tucker Green, Dorothea Smartt, Su Andi, and Susan Lewis.

This original and scholarly work uses three detailed case studies of plays - Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," "King Lear" and "Cymbeline "- to cast light on the ways in which early modern writers used metaphor to explore how identities emerge from the interaction of competing regional and spiritual topographies.

This book is a major new critical study of the greatest comic writer of ancient Greece. It relates Aristophanes' work to modern literature and modern theory. It offers a new theory of comedy. It will be essential reading for students and specialists of ancient Greek drama and poetry, and also many students and specialists of modern literature.

A materialist account of Wilde's writing career, based on publishing contracts and other documentation as well as detailed evidence of how he composed, this book argues that Wilde was not driven by an oppositional politics, nor was he an aesthetic 'purist'. Rather, he was thoroughly immersed in the contemporary 'commodification of culture' in which books became product. His writing practices, including his 'plagiarism', reflected the pragmatism of a professional.

This is a selectively comprehensive bibliography of the vast literature about Samuel Beckett's dramatic works, arranged for the efficient and convenient use of scholars on all levels. The scholarship devoted to the dramatic writings of Samuel Beckett is so vast that there is a real need for a full and easy-to-use secondary bibliography enabling students and scholars at all levels to locate and select what they need. This requires comprehensive coverage of those publications which can be deemed both substantial and accessible treatments of topics relevant to his career as a dramatist. In Beckett's case, full coverage extends from the influences and origins of his great variety of plays to their presentations on stage, television, film, and radio, in many countries and venues. This essential bibliography offers comprehensive coverage of the thousands of substantial studies in all Roman-alphabet languages, a clear and helpful arrangement by topics and individual plays, and a lucid, uncluttered bibliographical format to make it as user-friendly as possible.

Offering for the first time a student introduction to Aristophanes' most explosive political satire, this volume is an essential guide to the context, themes and later reception of Cavalry. The ancient comedy is a fascinating insight into power relations between slaves and slaveholders and the upper and lower classes in classical Athens, and its political and social themes resonate with a modern audience more now than ever before. Originally performed in 424 BCE, Cavalry targets the Athenian demagogue Cleon, who had risen to prominence since the death of Pericles and to pre-eminence after an audacious victory over Sparta in 425. In Cavalry, Aristophanes attacks Cleon's popularity with the urban underclass, but also targets democracy itself as guilty of gullibility, self-interest, and political short-sightedness. As the play shows, the only hope of escape from this crisis is for Athens to find a leader even more foul-mouthed, depraved, and shameless than Cleon himself. And who better than a sausage-seller, if only because he turns out in the end to have a good heart and a true love of traditional Athenian values?

The first study of the depictions of the Ancient World on the Victorian and Edwardian stage, this book analyzes plays set in and dramatising the histories of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon and the Holy Land. In doing so, it seeks to locate theatre within the wider culture, tracing its links and interaction with other cultural forms.

The first of three histories about Henry VI by William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Part One deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political and personal disputes leading up to the Wars of the Roses.