"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.

'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.

This book examines six plays by Shakespeare ("Love's Labour's Lost", "Hamlet", "As You Like It", "Twelfth Night", "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest") as dramatizations of the Renaissance Court in its developing history - a history searched by Shakespeare to disclose its most characteristic gains and losses. For these plays do not simply celebrate Tudor and Stuart rule: they scrutinize it too, in the centre of its institutional theatre of power, the Court. This book shows how, if the plays came into Court, the Court also came into the plays, with its most salient features - its competitiveness, its inner tensions and its contradictions, its language, its cultural life and its entertainments - exposed to the scrutiny of an art-form that proved itself to be a new mode of historical understanding.

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

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.

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.

A fresh look at a play usually regarded as the first component of a three-part historical epic, this edition argues that Henry VI Part 1 is a 'prequel', a freestanding piece that returns for ironic and dramatic effect to a story already familiar to its audience. The play's ingenious use of stage space is closely analysed, as is its manipulation of a series of setpiece combats to give a coherent syntax of action. Discussion of the dramatic structure created by the opposing figures of Talbot and Jeanne la Pucelle, and exploration of the critical controversies surrounding the figure of Jeanne, lead to a reflection on the nature of the history play as genre in the 1590s.

Samuel Beckett's 1976 Television play Ghost Trio is one of his most beautiful and mysterious works. It is also the play that most clearly demonstrates Beckett's imaginative and aesthetic engagement with the visual arts and the history of painting in particular. Drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried, On Ghost Trio demonstrates Beckett's exploration of the relationship between theatricality, absorption and objecthood, and shows how his work anticipates the development of video and installation art. In doing so Conor Carville develops a new and highly original reading of Beckett's art, rooted in both archival sources and philosophical aesthetics.

In critical history, Shakespeare's The Tempest has been interpreted as a reticent play, a fascinating and yet mysterious blend of magic and verisimilitude, narrative and drama, spectacle and meditation on death. The Tempest seems to raise fundamental issues without ever exhausting them, it captures and appropriates existing motifs and modes, and allows for later appropriations and re-mediations. Is its signifying potential still alive in the third millennium? Does it still speak to us? Revisiting The Tempest aims to explore that potential and examine the play's more 'intractable material' as a fertile source of significance.The essays that make up this collection range from investigations of the play's position within the European early modern dramatic heritage to its 'domestic' re-writings and/or adaptations in diverse theatrical contexts and media, while also interrogating the play's own resistance to interpretation. Rather than providing new meanings, Revisiting The Tempest explores how this drama makes meaning and reanimates it through time.

Good evening, I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock... The original version of the global hit play created by Mischief. After benefiting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. Hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure. Can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? This one-act version of Mischief's world famous The Play That Goes Wrong originally premiered at the Old Red Lion Theatre in London in 2012. Since then, the expanded two-act version has taken the world by storm and has been performed in over 35 countries across 5 continents, winning multiple awards including the WhatsOnStage and Olivier Award for Best New Comedy plus a Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Scenic Design of a Play. This edition features the original one-act edition of the play that's perfect to be enjoyed on the page as well as in performance. A true global phenomenon, it is guaranteed to leave you aching with laughter.

"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" is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

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 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

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.

KING JOHN. Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us? CHATILLON. Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France In my behaviour to the majesty, The borrowed majesty, of England here. ELINOR. A strange beginning- 'borrowed majesty'! KING JOHN. Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.

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

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 Critical Heritage 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 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 is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

Entries provide the likely sources for a name; describe historical and mythological backgrounds; examine Shakespeare's presentation of a character or place; and suggest various interpretations of a name. Each entry contains line citations to William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Wells and Taylor, Oxford University Press (1986).

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.

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

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theatre, a popular poet and author of the influential novel "Oroonoko". This is a seven-volume set of all her works. Volumes 5,6 and 7 are scheduled for publication in early 1996.

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.

"Shakespeare, Theory and Performance" is an exciting collection of essays, bringing a full range of contemporary critical perspectives to bear upon the practical questions of performing Shakespeare. During recent years, a new revolution in critical theory has called into question a number of assumptions about the performance of Shakespeare which had long gone unchecked.
In this volume, contributors from theater, literary and Shakespearean studies collaborate to offer a productive rnterplay, employing a variety of discourses--including feminism, post-colonialism, and semiotics--to challenge and interrogate the practice of Shakespearean performance. Issues include implications of gender, race and class for audience response; the impact of technology on the study of performance as text; and the appropriation of Shakespeare by foreign cultures.