The world of Macbeth, with its absolutes of good and evil, seems very remote from the shifting perspectives of Antony and Cleopatra, or the psychological and political realities of Coriolanus. Yet all three plays share similar thematic concerns and preoccupations: the relation of power to legitimating authority, for instance, or of male and female roles in the imagination of (male) heroic endeavour.;In this acclaimed study, Nicholas Grene shows how all nine plays written in Shakespeare's main tragic period display this combination of strikingly different milieu balanced by thematic interrelationships. Taking the English history play as his starting point, he argues that Shakespeare established two different modes of imagining: the one mythic and visionary, the other sceptical and analytic. In the tragic plays that followed, themes and situations are dramatised, alternately, in sacred and secular worlds. A chapter is devoted to each tragedy, but with a continuing awareness of companion plays: the analysis of Julius Caesar informing that of Hamlet, discussion of Troilus and Cressida counterpointed by the critique of Othello and the treatment of King Lear growing out from the limitati

This work focuses on Marlowe's works as an index of the major transformation of Elizabethan theatrical practices. In the opening chapter, Cole reviews the unusually intriguing historical record of Marlowe's life outside the theatre. The body of the book addresses Marlowe's individual plays as experiments in extending and redefining the traditional concepts and techniques of tragic drama, and suggests how his contemporaries and followers made use of his innovations. Intended as an introduction to the subject, this book provides an insightful approach to Marlowe's work and the study of Elizabethan thought and theatre.

Extolled and maligned, Eugene O'Neill was unquestionably the first American playwright of international stature, and his major plays, such as" The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night," remain giants of the American stage. Acres of print have been devoted to O'Neill by theatre critics and literary scholars. This new collection assesses the full range of critical response, considered historically through the entire oeuvre and covering major themes and critical stances. It culls from opening night reviews of premieres and revivals as well as scholarly essays from influential critics and anonymous writers, from boosters and detractors, with the uniqueness of the critical observation being the main criterion for selection. An introduction outlines the major issues and avenues of O'Neill discourse, and a selective bibliography provides additional sources for O'Neill study.

"Literature and Weather. Shakespeare - Goethe - Zola" is dedicated to the relation between literature and weather, i.e. a cultural practice and an everyday phenomenon that has played very different epistemic roles in the history of the world. The study undertakes an archaeology of literature's affinity to the weather which tells the story of literature's weathery self-reflection and its creative reinventions as a medium in different epistemic and social circumstances. The book undertakes extensive close readings of three exemplary literary texts: Shakespeare's The Tempest, Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther and Zola's The Rougon-Macquarts. These readings provide the basis for reconstructing three distinct formations, negotiating the relationship between literature and weather in the 17th, the 18th and the 19th centuries. The study is a pioneering contribution to the recent debates of literature's indebtedness to the environment. It initiates a rewriting of literary history that is weather-sensitive; the question of literature's agency, its power to affect, cannot be raised without understanding the way the weather works in a certain cultural formation.

Bacchus in Romantic England describes real drunkenness among writers and ordinary people in the Romantic age. It grounds this 'reality' in writings by doctors and philanthropists from 1780 onwards, who describe an epidemic of drunkenness. These commentators provide a context for the different ways that poets and novelists of the age represent drunkards. Wordsworth writes poems and essays evaluating the drunken career of his model Robert Burns. Charles Lamb's essays and letters reveal a real and metaphorical preoccupation with his own drinking as a way of disguising his personal suffering; his companion Coleridge writes drinking songs, essays about drunkenness, and meditations about his own weakness of will that show both festive inebriety and consciousness of an inward abyss; Coleridge's son Hartley, whose fate his father had prophesied, experiences drunkenness as the life-long humiliation described in his poems and letters. Keats's complex dionysianism runs through 'Endymion' and the late odes, setting him at odds with his temperate hero Milton. Men in the Romantic age, such as Sheridan, Byron, Moor, and Clare, celebrate rowdy friendship with tales and songs of drinking; Romantic women novelists such as Smith, Edgeworth and Wollstonecraft depict these men stumbling home to abuse their wives. Although excessive drinking is real in the period, observers and participants can still maintain ambivalence about its power to release or to debase the human being.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is in many ways a unique play; it is one of the few for which there is no immediate source. This is a commentary to the work of a great dramatist who, as the author observes, 'approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful.'

Shakespeare's tutor: The influence of Thomas Kyd adds to the critical and scholarly discussion that seeks to establish the early modern playwright Thomas Kyd's dramatic canon, and indicates where and how Kyd contributed to the development of Shakespeare's drama through influence, collaboration, revision and adaptation. A further, complementary aim of the book is to demonstrate various ways in which it is possible to combine statistical analysis with reading plays as literary and performative works. The book summarises, extends, and corrects all of the scholarship on Kyd's authorship of anonymous plays, and reveals the remarkable extent to which Shakespeare was influenced by his dramatic predecessor. The book represents a significant intervention in the field of early modern authorship studies and aims to revolutionise our understanding of Shakespeare's dramatic development. -- .

For this updated edition of one of Shakespeare's most problematic plays, Tom Lockwood has added a new introductory section on the latest scholarly trends, performance and adaptation practices which have occurred over the last two decades. Investigating the latest critical frames through which the play has been interpreted, the updated introduction also focuses on recent international performances on stage and screen (including Al Pacino's performances on film and in Daniel Sullivan's production in New York, the Habima National Theatre's production for the Globe to Globe Festival, Jonathan Munby's touring production for the Globe performed in London, New York and Venice, and Rupert Goold's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company). Finally, new forms of adaptation are considered: a performance transposed to the different generic mode of a New York auction room, and the remaking of the play in Howard Jacobson's 2016 novel, Shylock Is my Name.

When Shakespeare's Sonnets were published in 1609 a poem called A Lover's Complaint was included by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, who was notorious for several irregular publications. Many scholars have doubted its authenticity, but recent editions of the Sonnets have accepted it as Shakespeare's work. Now Vickers, in this text, the first full study of the poem, shows it to be un-Shakespearian both in its language and in its attitude to women. It is awkwardly constructed and uses archaic Spenserian diction, including many unusual words that never occur in Shakespeare. It frequently repeats stock phrases and rhymes, distorts normal word order far more often and more clumsily than Shakespeare did, while its attitude to female frailty is moralizing and misogynistic. By close analysis Vickers attributes the poem to John Davies of Hereford (1565-1618), a famous calligrapher and writing-master who was also a prolific poet. Vickers' book will re-define the Shakespeare canon.

Professor John Halder is a 'good' man. But 'good' men must adapt to survive. As the world faces its Second World War, Halder finds himself pulled into a movement with unthinkable consequences. Good is a story about a liberal-minded university professor who drifts well-meaningly into a position in the upper reaches of the Nazi administration. John Halder, a professor of literature, seems to be a good man; he diligently visits his blind and senile mother and looks after his vacant wife and three children. He is unremarkable, other than an unusual neurotic tic: the imaginary sound of band music plays in the background of his life, particularly at moments of high emotion. But by writing a book - the result of his own experience - discussing euthanasia for senile elderly people and by lecturing on the delicacy of German literary culture, John has unintentionally made himself a very desirable acquisition for the Nazi party. A profound and alarming examination of passivity and the rationalisation of evil. Originally published in 1982, this new edition was published to coincide with the West End revival in 2022 starring David Tennant.

Victorian Shakespeare (Volume 2): Literature and Culture explores some of the responses to Shakespeare by leading nineteenth-century novelists, poets and critics including Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin. Through certain key plays, especially Hamlet and Othello, Shakespeare provided them with ways of thinking about the authority of the past, about the emergence of a new mass culture, about the relations between artistic and industrial production, about the nature of creativity, about racial and sexual difference, about individual and national identity.

This study of Shaw is an attempt to provide a record of the impact Shaw made on his contemporaries and of the way in which he presented himself and his opinions in published interviews. Shaw is seen here through the eyes of many of his famous contemporaries as well as lesser-known witnesses. The interviews bear the stamp of Shaw's characteristically lively and provocative style and throw light on his attitudes towards a wide range of autobiographical, theatrical, political, economic and social topics. The recollections, drawn from autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters and other sources, build up a complex account of Shaw in his various public and private roles.

The Merchant of Venice and Othello are the two Shakespeare plays which serve as touchstones for contemporary understandings and responses to notions of 'the stranger' and 'the other'. This groundbreaking collection explores the dissemination of the two plays through Europe in the first two decades of the 21st-century, tracing how productions and interpretations have reflected the changing conditions and attitudes locally and nationally. Packed with case studies of productions of each play in different countries, the volume opens vistas on the continent's turbulent history marked by the instability of allegiances and boundaries, and shifting senses of identity in a context of war, decolonization and migration. Chapters examine productions in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Italy, France, Portugal and Germany to shed light on wide-scale European developments for the first time in English. In a final section, performance insights are offered by interviews with three directors: Karin Coonrod on directing The Merchant in Venice at the Venetian Ghetto in 2016, Plamen Markov on his 2020 Othello for the Varna Theatre (Bulgaria) and Arnaud Churin, whose Othello toured France in 2019. In drawing attention to the ways in which historical circumstances and collective memory shape and refashion performance, Shakespeare's Others in 21st-century European Performance offers a rich review of European theatrical engagements with Otherness in the productions of these two plays.

This exciting new title investigates the explosion of Shakespeare films during the 1990s and beyond. It reflects upon the contexts determining the production of different cinematic ventures, and it provides an innovative understanding of Shakespeare's constitution as a guardian of enshrined values and a figure associated with play and reinvention. Linking fluctuating "Shakespeares" with the growth of a global marketplace, the dissolution of national borders and technological advances, this book produces a fresh awareness of our contemporary cultural moment.

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.

Women have claimed a spot at the center of American theatre, and the characters they craft, the stories they tell, the questions they pose, and the ideas they materialize have the potential to shape the cultural imagination of a large group of theatre-goers as a complex new era unfolds. Sarah Ruhl is the early twenty-first century's most widely produced and frequently honored American female playwright. While critics have heretofore emphasized the whimsical elements of her dramaturgy, this study highlights her feminist engagement with current social and ethical concerns. Ruhl's popular, feminist plays are best appreciated when they are read in concert with the work of her contemporaries - Lisa Loomer, Diana Son, Joan Didion, Jenny Schwartz, Young Jean Lee, Kate Fodor, Yasmina Reza, Bathsheba Doran, Lynn Nottage, and Kia Corthron - whose writing also wrestles with the vexing issues facing Americans in the new century.

"This lively, lucid book undertakes a detailed and provocative study of Shakespeare's fascination with clowns, fools, and fooling. Through close reading of plays over the whole course of Shakespeare's theatrical career, Bell highlights the fun, wit, insights, and mysteries of some of Shakespeare's most vibrant and often vexing figures"--

This new Chronology allows for quick and easy retrieval of all the major dates pertaining to Christopher Marlowe's life and career. It also helpfully gives dates relevant to the real people and historical events dramatized in his plays and to those who acted in, produced them, the dates of publication of the works which he used as sources, the dates of principal revivals of his works, and the dates at which various key facts about his life and works were later rediscovered.

"The text of any Shakespeare play is a living negotiable entity: scholarship and theatre practice work together to keep the plays alive and vividly present." - Greg Doran, RSC Artistic Director Emeritus Developed in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, this Complete Works of William Shakespeare combines exemplary textual scholarship with beautiful design. Curated by expert editors Sir Jonathan Bate and Professor Eric Rasmussen, the text in this collection is based on the iconic 1623 First Folio: the first and original Complete Works lovingly assembled by Shakespeare's fellow actors, and the version of Shakespeare's text preferred by many actors and directors today. This stunning revised edition goes further to present Shakespeare's plays as they were originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed on stage. Along with new colour photographs from a vibrant range of RSC productions, a new Stage Notes feature documenting the staging choices in 100 RSC productions showcases the myriad ways in which Shakespeare's plays can be brought to life. Now featuring the entire range of Shakespeare's plays, poems and sonnets, this edition is expanded to include both The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover's Complaint. Along with Bate's excellent general introduction and short essays, this collection includes a range of aids to the reader such as on-page notes explaining unfamiliar terms and key facts boxes providing plot summaries and additional helpful context. A Complete Works for the 21st century, this versatile and highly collectable edition will inspire students, theatre practitioners and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.

Inspired by new approaches in performance studies, theatre history, research in material culture and dress history, a rich discussion of the many aspects of costume in Shakespearean performance has begun. Shakespeare and Costume furthers this research, bringing together varied and stimulating essays by leading scholars that consider costume from literary, dramatic, design, performative and theatrical perspectives, as well as interviews with renowned theatre practitioners Jane Greenwood and Robert Morgan. The volume amply demonstrates how an analysis of the meaning of costume enriches our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. Beginning with an overview of the stage history of Shakespeare and costume, the volume looks at the historical context of clothing in the plays, considering topics such as royal self-fashioning, festive livery practices, and conceptions of race and gender exhibited in clothing choice, as well as costume in performance. Drawing on documentary evidence in designers' renderings, illustrations in periodicals, paintings, photographs, newspaper reviews and actors' memoirs, the volume also explores costume designs in specific Shakespeare productions from the re-opening of the London theatres in 1660 to the present day.

SUFFOLK. As by your high imperial Majesty I had in charge at my depart for France, As procurator to your Excellence, To marry Princess Margaret for your Grace; So, in the famous ancient city Tours, In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil, The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne, and Alencon, Seven earls, twelve barons, and twenty reverend bishops, I have perform'd my task, and was espous'd; And humbly now upon my bended knee, In sight of England and her lordly peers, Deliver up my title in the Queen To your most gracious hands, that are the substance Of that great shadow I did represent: The happiest gift that ever marquis gave, The fairest queen that ever king receiv'd.

'Hamlet' and World Cinema reveals a rich history of cinematic production extending across the globe. Making a case for Hamlet as the world's most frequently filmed text, and using specially commissioned interviews with cast, directors and screenwriters, it discusses films from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The book argues that the play has been taken up by filmmakers world-wide to allegorise the energies, instabilities, traumas and expectations that have defined the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In so doing, it rejects the Anglophone focus which has dominated criticism up to now and explores instead the multiple constituencies that have claimed Shakespeare's most celebrated work as their own. 'Hamlet' and World Cinema uncovers a vital part of the adaptation story. This book facilitates a fresh understanding of Shakespeare's cinematic significance and newly highlights Hamlet's political and aesthetic instrumentality in a vast range of local and global contexts.

Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century, examines how, in these first decades of the twenty-first century, contemporary European theatre-makers have sought to consider the disastrous events of the twentieth century as the 'unfinished business' of the contemporary. Kear argues that by thinking through the logic of the event, and the theatre event especially, contemporary performance practice enables an affective interrogation of 'the event' of the European century.Examining the work of leading theatre companies, Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century offers detailed expositions and engaged analyses of key works by Needcompany (Belgium), Jaunais Rigas Teatris (Latvia), Societas Raffaello Sanzio (Italy), National Theatre Wales (UK), and Studios Kabako (France/Democratic Republic of the Congo). This book offers an original conception of the theatre event as an event which exists in relation to, and performatively historicises, other 'events', requiring a critical and creative practice of spectatorship to animate its political affects.

This is the first book to deploy the methods and ensemble of questions from Afro-pessimism to engage and interrogate the methods of Early Modern English studies. Using contemporary Afro-pessimist theories to provide a foundation for structural analyses of race in the Early Modern Period, it engages the arguments for race as a fluid construction of human identity by addressing how race in Early Modern England functioned not only as a marker of human identity, but also as an a priori constituent of human subjectivity. Chapman argues that Blackness is the marker of social death that allows for constructions of human identity to become transmutable based on the impossibility of recognition and incorporation for Blackness into humanity. Using dramatic texts such as Othello, Titus Andronicus, and other Early Modern English plays both popular and lesser known, the book shifts the binary away from the currently accepted standard of white/non-white that defines "otherness" in the period and examines race in Early Modern England from the prospective of a non-black/black antagonism. The volume corrects the Afro-pessimist assumption that the Triangle Slave Trade caused a rupture between Blackness and humanity. By locating notions of Black inhumanity in England prior to chattel slavery, the book positions the Triangle Trade as a result of, rather than the cause of, Black inhumanity. It also challenges the common scholarly assumption that all varying types of human identity in Early Modern England were equally fluid by arguing that Blackness functioned as an immutable constant. Through the use of structural analysis, this volume works to simplify and demystify notions of race in Renaissance England by arguing that race is not only a marker of human identity, but a structural antagonism between those engaged in human civil society opposed to those who are socially dead. It will be an essential volume for those with interest in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Shakespeare, Contemporary Performance Theory, Black Studies, and Ethnic Studies.