Weyward Macbeth, a volume of entirely new essays, provides innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the various ways Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' has been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial constructions. Comprehensive in its scope, this collection addresses the enduringly fraught history of 'Macbeth' in the United States, from its appearance as the first Shakespearean play documented in the American colonies to a proposed Hollywood film version with a black diasporic cast. Over two dozen contributions explore 'Macbeth's' haunting presence in American drama, poetry, film, music, history, politics, acting, and directing - all through the intersections of race and performance.

Joyce Rogers sheds new light upon Shakespeare's last public words through her study of medieval and Renaissance ecclesiastical and testamentary laws and custom. Professor Rogers provides extensive background material on English legal history and shows that the legal documents of the time do give legal answer to the doubts and speculations that have grown up around Shakespeare's will. She shows how the will is replete with elements of civil and common as well as ecclesiastical law and custom, making more understandable the disputed points of Shakespeare's will, and establishing that the will was as correct, incontestable, and conventional as possible.

The main thrust of the book, however, is not on the law as such. It is on how the law was used by Shakespeare to serve the best interests and needs of the women and children in his family as well as the friends named therein. As such, the book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Elizabethan society and to all Shakespearean scholars.

A.M. Gibbs provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of the life, career and associations of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), one of the most eminent and influential literary figures of the modern age. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished material, this work illuminates the complex fabric of Shaw's extraordinary career as playwright, novelist, critic, orator, political activist, social commentator, avant-garde thinker and controversialist. Images of Shaw's daily private life, and of his tangled love affairs, flirtations and friendships, are intertwined with the records of his prodigiously productive career as public figure and creative writer, in a fully documented study which is both a scholarly resource and a lively biographical portrait. An introductory chapter explores theoretical issues in biography raised by the chronology form; and a chapter on Shaw's ancestry and family supplies new evidence about his Irish background. A Who's Who section contains thumbnail sketches of over two hundred contemporaries of Shaw who had significant associations with him.

Mr. Loftis provides the first comprehensive account of the relationship of restoration drama to the Spanish drama of the golden Age.

This book explores the development of the global phenomenon of Prison Shakespeare, from its emergence in the 1980s to the present day. It provides a succinct history of the phenomenon and its spread before going on to explore one case study the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble's (Australia) Shakespeare Prison Project in detail. The book then analyses the phenomenon from a number of perspectives, and evaluates a number of claims made about the outcomes of such programs, particularly as they relate to offender health and behaviour. Unlike previous works on the topic, which are largely individual case studies, this book focuses not only on Prison Shakespeare's impact on the prisoners who directly participate, but also on prison culture and on broader social attitudes towards both prisoners and Shakespeare.

Magical Mischief On a midsummer night a group of mortals becomes ensnared in a magical realm by Oberon the King of Fairies and Puck his faithful servant. This delightful romp is Shakespeare's most enduring and popular play. Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, And the youth mistook by me Pleading for a lover's fee; Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be

Shakespeare's four-hundred-year performance history is full of anecdotes - ribald, trivial, frequently funny, sometimes disturbing, and always but loosely allegiant to fact. Such anecdotes are nevertheless a vital index to the ways that Shakespeare's plays have generated meaning across varied times and in varied places. Furthermore, particular plays have produced particular anecdotes - stories of a real skull in Hamlet, superstitions about the name Macbeth, toga troubles in Julius Caesar - and therefore express something embedded in the plays they attend. Anecdotes constitute then not just a vital component of a play's performance history but a form of vernacular criticism by the personnel most intimately involved in their production: actors. These anecdotes are therefore every bit as responsive to and expressive of a play's meanings across time as the equally rich history of Shakespearean criticism or indeed the very performances these anecdotes treat. Anecdotal Shakespeare provides a history of post-Renaissance Shakespeare and performance, one not based in fact but no less full of truth.

Shakespeare and Ireland examines the complex relationship between the most celebrated icon of the British establishment and Irish literary and cultural traditions. Addressing Shakespearean representations of Ireland as well as Irish writers' responses to the dramatist, it ranges widely across theatrical performances, pedagogical practices, editorial undertakings and political developments. The writings of Joyce, Heaney and Yeats are considered, in addition to recent nationalist discourses. In so doing, the collection establishes the multiple 'Shakespeares' and competing 'Irelands' that inform the Irish imagination.

Shakespeare among the Animals examines the role of animal-metaphor in the Shakespearean stage, particularly as such metaphor serves to underwrite various forms of social difference. Working through texts such as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jonson’s Volpone, and Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the chapters of the study focus upon the allegedly natural character of femininity, masculinity, ethnicity, and the nature of the natural world itself as it appears on the Renaissance stage. Addressing each of these topics in turn, Shakespeare among the Animals explores the notions of cultural order that underlie early modern conceptions of the natural world, and the ideas of nature implicit in early modern social practice.

"Literature and Culture Handbooks" are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including:

- Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts

- Guides to key critics, concepts and topics

- An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research

- Case studies in reading literary and critical texts

- Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms.

"The Shakespeare Handbook" is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare and early modern literature.

Tracing the history of tragedy and comedy from their earliest beginnings to the present, this book offers readers an exceptional study of the development of both genres, grounded in analysis of landmark plays and their context. It argues that sacrifice is central to both genres, and demonstrates how it provides a key to understanding the grand sweep of Western drama. For students of literature and drama the volume serves as an accessible companion to over two millennia of drama organised by period, and reveals how sacrifice represents a through-line running from classical drama to today's reality TV and blockbuster movies. Across the chapters devoted to each period, Day explores how the meanings of sacrifice change over time, but never quite disappear. He charts the influences of religion, social change and politics on the status and purposes of theatre in each period, and on the drama itself. But it is through a close study of key plays that he reveals the continuities centred around sacrifice that persist and which illuminate aspects of human psychology and social organisation. Among the many plays and events considered are Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia, Aristophanes' Women at the Thesmorphia, Menander's The Bad-Tempered Man, the spectacles of the Roman Games, Seneca's The Trojan Women, Plautus's The Rope, the Cycle plays and Everyman from the Middle Ages, Shakespeare's King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, Thomas Otway's The Orphan, William Wycherley's The Country Wife, Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, Beckett' Waiting for Godot, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, Sarah Kane's Blasted and Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy. A conclusion examines the persistence of ideas of sacrifice in today's reality TV and blockbuster movies.

The Routledge Companion to Actors? Shakespeare is a window onto how today's actors contribute to the continuing life and relevance of Shakespeare's plays.

The process of acting is notoriously hard to document, but this volume reaches behind famous performances to examine the actors? craft, their development and how they engage with playtexts. Each chapter relies upon privilieged access to its subject to offer an unparalleled insight into contemporary practice.

This volume explores the techniques, interpretive approaches and performance styles of the following actors:

Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Judi Dench, Kate Duchene, Colm Feore, Mariah Gale, John Harrell, Greg Hicks, Rory Kinnear, Kevin Kline, Adrian Lester, Marcelo Magni, Ian McKellen, Patrice Naiambana, Vanessa Redgrave, Piotr Semak, Anthony Sher, Jonathan Slinger, Kate Valk, Harriet Walter

This twin volume to The Routledge Companion to Directors? Shakespeare is an essential work for both actors and students of Shakespeare.

Modern British and Irish dramatic works are widely enjoyed by general readers and high school students. But because they are rooted in literary Modernism and generally reflect particular historical and cultural concerns, they can also be difficult for students to understand. This volume concisely and conveniently introduces 10 masterpieces of British and Irish drama in an accessible manner. The book begins with an introductory essay on the historical context of early Modernism, the nature of theater at the beginning of the 20th century, and the trends that have shaped modern Irish and British drama. Each of the chapters that follow is devoted to a particular play. These include: The Playboy of the Western World Saint Joan Juno and the Paycock Private Lives Waiting for Godot Look Back in Anger The Birthday Party Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Translations And Top Girls. Each chapter provides a brief biography, a plot summary, a discussion of major themes and characters, an overview of the play's historical background, an analysis of the play's dramatic style, a survey of the play's critical reception, and suggestions for further reading.

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.

Tempests After Shakespeare shows how the 'rewriting' of Shakespeare’s play serves as an interpretative grid through which to read three movements - postcoloniality, postpatriarchy, and postmodernism - via the Tempest characters of Caliban, Miranda/Sycorax and Prospero, as they vie for the ownership of meaning at the end of the twentieth century. Covering texts in three languages, from four continents and in the last four decades, this study imaginatively explores the collapse of empire and the emergence of independent nation-states; the advent of feminism and other sexual liberation movements that challenged patriarchy; and the varied critiques of representation that make up the 'postmodern condition'.

This study examines the profound changes that twentieth-century performance has wrought on Shakespeare's complex drama of war and politics. What was accepted at the turn of the century as a patriotic celebration of a national hero has emerged in the modern theatre as a dark and troubling analysis of the causes and costs of war. The book details the theatrical innovations and political insights that have turned one of Shakespeare's most traditional-bound plays into one of his most popular and provocative. Henry V gives details analyses of several important modern productions. Beginning with a consideration of the play's political significance in Elizabethan London, the book goes on the reveal its subsequent reinvention, both as patriotic pageant and anti-war manifesto. Individual chapters consider important productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and other British and North American companies, as well as the landmark film versions. A compelling account of the theatrical revolution that has transformed one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays. -- .

Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans.

In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy:

• introduces Shakespeare's life and works in context, providing crucial historical background
• looks at each of Shakespeare's plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contemporary criticism and performance history
• provides detailed discussion of twentieth-century Shakespearean criticism, exploring the theories, debates and discoveries that shape our understanding of Shakespeare today
• looks at contemporary performances of Shakespeare on stage and screen
• provides further critical reading by play
• outlines detailed chronologies of Shakespeare's life and works and also of twentieth-century criticism

The companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/shaughnessy contains student-focused materials and resources, including an interactive timeline and annotated weblinks.

Challenging our understanding of ideas about psychology in Shakespeare's time, Shakespeare's Imagined Persons proposes we should view his characters as imagined persons. A new reading of B.F. Skinner's radical behaviourism brings out how - contrary to the impression he created - Skinner ascribes an important role in human behaviour to cognitive activity. Using this analysis, Peter Murray demonstrates the consistency of radical behaviourism with the psychology of character formation and acting in writers from Plato to Shakespeare - an approach little explored in the current debates about subjectivity in Elizabethan culture. Murray also shows that radical behaviourism can explain the phenomena observed in modern studies of acting and social role-playing. Drawing on these analyses of earlier and modern psychology, Murray goes on to reveal the dynamics of Shakespeare's characterizations of Hamlet, Prince Hal, Rosalind, and Perdita in a fascinating new light.

Focusing on England, Hungary and on some other European countries, the book explores the latent religious patterns in the appropriation of Shakespeare from the 1769 Stratford Jubilee to the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth in 1864. It shows how the Shakespeare cult used quasi-religious (verbal and ritual) means of reverence, how it made use of some romantic notions, and how the ensuing quasi-transcendental authority was utilized for political purposes. The book suggests a theoretical framework and a comprehensive anthropological context for the interpretation of literature.

This bibliography provides a comprehensive record of verse drama in modern literature. The volume begins with an introduction, which discusses the significance of verse drama in modern theater, and which overviews the history and intent of modern verse drama. The bibliography that follows provides entries for more than 500 plays written in verse or in verse and prose between 1935 and 1992. Included are works by renowned playwrights such as T.S. Eliot, Christopher Fry, and John Arden, as well as plays by lesser-known dramatists. The plays are organized alphabetically by the name of the author. Included are anthologies of plays as well. Each entry is accompanied by an annotation that succinctly overviews the major themes and significance of the work. Title and subject index conclude the reference.

"This collection asks pressing questions about how and why we study performances of Renaissance drama, challenging prevailing views and suggesting new methodologies for the field. How does an emphasis on Shakespeare limit us? What can we learn from non-traditional theatre? Why should we rethink the value of studying what happens onstage?"--

Dramatist, theatre practitioner, novelist, and painter, August Strindberg's diverse dramatic output embodied the modernist sensibility. He was above all one of the most radical innovators of Western theatre.

This book provides an insightful assessment of Strindberg's vital contribution to the dramatic arts, while placing his creative process and experimental approach within a wider cultural context. Eszter Szalczer explores Strindberg's re-definition of drama as a fluid, constantly evolving form that profoundly influenced playwriting and theatrical production from the German Expressionists to the Theatre of the Absurd. Key productions of Strindberg's plays are analysed, examining his theatre as a living voice that continues to challenge audiences, critics, and even the most innovative directors.

August Strindberg provides an essential and accessible guide to the playwright's work and illustrates the influence of his drama on our understanding of contemporary theatre.

First published in English in 1965, this book discusses the roots and development of the dumb show as a device in Elizabethan drama. The work provides not only a useful manual for those who wish to check the occurrence of dumb shows and the uses to which they are put; it also makes a real contribution to a better understanding of the progress of Elizabethan drama, and sheds new light on some of the lesser known plays of the period.