Completed only two months before the author's execution in Granada at the age of thirty-eight, La casa de Bernarda Alba marks the completion of Lorca's 'trilogia de la tierra espanola' and is commonly held to be his greatest play. The theme of vitality and repression that runs as a leitmotif through his writings takes on a clearer social dimension in the 'drama de mujeres en los pueblos de Espana', with the presentation of a household of five unmarried daughters tyrannised by their mother's excessive concern with social class and obscurantist village morality. -- .

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.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. From providential apocalypticism to climate change, this ground-breaking ecocritical study traces the performance history of the storm scene in King Lear to explore our shifting, fraught and deeply ideological relationship with stormy weather across time. This Contentious Storm offers a new ecocritical reading of Shakespeare's classic play, illustrating how the storm has been read as a sign of the providential, cosmological, meteorological, psychological, neurological, emotional, political, sublime, maternal, feminine, heroic and chaotic at different points in history. The big ecocritical history charted here reveals the unstable significance of the weather and mobilises details of the play's dramatic narrative to figure the weather as a force within self, society and planet.

What part did Shakespeare play in the construction of a 'white people' and how has his work been enlisted to define and bolster a white cultural and racial identity? Since the court of Queen Elizabeth I, through the early modern English theatre to the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, white people have used Shakespeare to define their cultural and racial identity and authority. White People in Shakespeare unravels this complex cultural history to examine just how crucial Shakespeare's work was to the early modern development of whiteness as an embodied identity, as well as the institutional dissemination of a white Shakespeare in contemporary theatres, politics, classrooms and other key sites of culture. Featuring contributors from a wide range of disciplines, the collection moves across Shakespeare's plays and poetry and between the early modern and our own time to interrogate these relationships. Split into two parts, 'Shakespeare's White People' and 'White People's Shakespeare', it explores a variety of topics, ranging from the education of the white self in Hamlet, or affective piety and racial violence in Measure for Measure, to Shakespearean education and the civil rights era, and interpretations of whiteness in more contemporary work such as American Moor and Desdemona.

Best known as the author of "Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett was one of the most distinguished writers of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969, and his works have secured him a lasting place in the literary canon. The critical response to his fiction has been overwhelming. Numerous books and thousands of articles have been published on Beckett, primarily in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Since he wrote most of his works in French, and then translated them himself into English, critics responded to different versions of his works. This reference book documents the critical response to Beckett from his earliest prose and poetry to the public reaction to his death in 1989. Reviews and scholarly articles representing the response to Beckett's creative works are included. Selections are arranged chronologically, so that the reader may trace the reception of Beckett's works over time. An introduction summarizes Beckett's enormous contribution to literature, and a bibliography lists works for further reading.

Winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature, Irish-born author Samuel Beckett earned a solid reputation for being one of the most important authors of the 20th century. Best known as the author of "Waiting for Godot," Beckett wrote other dramatic works, such as "Endgame" and "Krapp's Last Tape." He wrote several novels, including "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable," and a number of poems and short stories. His innovative approach to language, character, plot, and narrative style was appreciated but sometimes criticized, and his nontraditional concepts of time and space taught readers to approach literature in a new way. Though he experimented with literary forms, his works are within the 20th century intellectual tradition of alienation, isolation, and pessimism.

Through essays and reviews, this reference book documents the critical response to Beckett's poetry, fiction, and drama from his earliest works to the public reaction to his death in 1989. Because Beckett often wrote in French and then translated his works into English, scholars responded to several versions of the same work. Because Beckett also had an exceptional knowledge of world literature, philosophy, mathematics, and the sciences, his works are dense with meaning and have invited a broad range of critical approaches. This reference is divided into several sections that roughly correspond with the different genres Beckett utilized. Within each section, reviews and seminal articles are arranged chronologically, so that the reader may trace the response to Beckett over time. An introductory essay discusses the overall response to Beckett, and a bibliography lists works for further reading.

This volume contains nine essays which debate issues arising from contemporary literary theory in relation to drama of the modern period. The authors propose new theoretical approaches to recent drama which derive from post-structuralism, semiotics, feminism, Bakhtinian theory and psychoanalysis. The essays range over much of the "canonical" drama which has been subjected to literary approaches and suggest ways of re-reading well-known texts.;The introduction examines the playwright's authority over textual meaning and surveys existing work which relates theory and drama. The playwrights discussed include Ann Jellicoe, Alan Bleasdale, Jill Hyem and Anne Valery, Shelagh Delaney, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Howard Brenton, Howard Barker, John McGrath, Joe Orton, Caryl Churchill, Trevor Griffiths and David Hare.

"Staging Motherhood" examines the stage representations of motherhood, centring on post-1956 British women playwrights. Asking to what extent transformations in women's lives have impacted on women's theatre, and what strategies have been employed by women in their writing and performing practices, Jozefina Komporaly examines the interactions between the personal, the political and the theatrical. Contributing to a range of discourses, including gender studies, cultural studies and above all theatre and performance studies, this timely volume is crucial to our understanding of women's drama in this period.

In 1589 the Privy Council encouraged the Archbishop of Canterbury to take steps to control the theatres, which had offended authority by putting on plays which addressed 'certen matters of Divinytie and of State unfitt to be suffred'.
How had questions of divinity and state become entangled? The Reformation had invested the English Crown with supremacy over the Church, and religious belief had thus been transformed into a political statement. In the plentiful chronicle literature of the sixteenth-century, questions of monarchical legitimacy and religious orthodoxy became intertwined as a consequence of that demand for a usable national past created by the high political developments of the 1530s.
Divinity and State explores the consequences of these events in the English historiography and historical drama of the sixteenth century. It is divided into four parts. In the first, the impact of reformed religion on narratives of the national past is measured and described. Part II examines how the entanglement of the national past and reformed religion was reflected in historical drama from Bale to the early years of James I, and focuses on two paradigmatic characters: the sanctified monarch and the martyred subject. Part III considers Shakespeare's history plays in the light of the preceding discussion, and finds that Shakespeare's career as a historical dramatist shows him eventually re-shaping the history play with great audacity. Part IV corroborates this reading of Shakespeare's later history plays by reference to the dramatic ripostes they provoked.

Based on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos, this book provides the most detailed reconstruction ever of one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history. Winner of the 2019-20 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize On 18 June 1933, one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history took place before an audience of 3,000 spectators in the ruins of the Roman Theatre in Merida. Translated into Spanish by philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, staged by the renowned Xirgu-Borras Company and funded by the government, the performance of Seneca's Medea was a triumph of republican culture and widely hailed for its new dramatic and scenic languages. This book provides the most detailed reconstruction of this pivotal production to date, setting it in context and analysing its origin and legacy. Early twentieth-century intellectuals considered Seneca, 'the philosopher from Cordoba', the epitome of Spanishness and the first in an illustrious line of playwrights stretching from Spain's Roman Antiquity to its Silver Age. His play was seen as the ideal vehicle to showcase the Second Spanish Republic's cultural, social and educational agenda but provoked a furious backlash from opponents to the government's progressive programme. The book shows how the performance became a cultural ritual which stood at the centre of critical discussions on national identity, politics, secularism, women's rights and new European aesthetics of theatre-making. Based on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos, it will be of interest to theatre historians, scholars of Classical Reception and historians of the Second Spanish Republic.

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.

KING. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant And breathe short-winded accents of new broils To be commenc'd in stronds afar remote. No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood. No more shall trenching war channel her fields, Nor Bruise her flow'rets with the armed hoofs Of hostile paces. Those opposed eyes Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in the intestine shock And furious close of civil butchery, Shall now in mutual well-beseeming ranks March all one way and be no more oppos'd Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies. The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends, As far as to the sepulchre of Christ- Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross We are impressed and engag'd to fight- Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, Whose arms were moulded in their mother's womb To chase these pagans in those holy fields Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross. But this our purpose now is twelvemonth old, And bootless 'tis to tell you we will go. Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland, What yesternight our Council did decree In forwarding this dear expedience.

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. -- .

Best known as the author of such plays as A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen is one of the most influential figures of modern drama. This book takes Ibsen as a case study for an exploration of early modernist theatre in theory and practice, in text and performance. Modern drama has its roots in the theatrical activity across Europe during the 1880s and 1890s--the period when Ibsen's plays were first being produced in England and France, often by avant-garde or experimental theatrical groups. This study focuses on four of Ibsen's plays and their reception in England and France in the 1890s, specifically in the context of cross-cultural understanding, translation, and the diffusion of ideas. It encompasses performance history, textual and translation analysis in several languages, and theatrical criticism. The main contribution of this study lies in the provision of a better understanding of Ibsen's central role in the radical artistic movements of the period, and particularly in locating the basis for an early modernist theatre in the "new wave" Ibsen created internationally. His immediate impact on the French Symbolist theatre movement, for example, meant that its avant-garde leaders embraced Ibsen's works as an important exposition of their own radical ideas. Through close cross-cultural exchange, plays like Rosmersholm and The Master Builder, which were heralded as explicitly symbolist in France, helped condition the critical reaction to Ibsen as a symbolist playwright in England as well, and directly influenced the development of the theatre in that direction, however briefly.

A reissue of the E. K. Chambers's seminal four-volume account of the private, public, and court stages, together with other forms of drama and spectacle surviving from earlier times, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth until the death of Shakespeare. Haled in its day as a comprehensive compendium of 'practically all the discoverable evidence upon the various parts of the subject, collected, weighed, sorted, classified and built up with immense care into a logical and beautiful structure' (New Statesman), the work is still much consulted by by today's scholars and historians.
From the author's Preface:
'My First Book is devoted to a description, perhaps disproportionate, of the Elizabethan Court, and of the ramifications in pageant and progress, tilt and mask, of that instinct for spectacular mimesis, which the Renaissance inherited from the Middle Ages, and of which the drama is itself the most important manifestation. The Second Book gives an account of the settlement of the players in London, of their conflict, backed by the Court, with the tendencies of Puritanism, and of the place which they ultimately found in the monarchical polity. To the Third and Fourth belong the more pedestrian task of following in detail the fortunes of the individual playing companies and the individual theatres, with such fullness as the available records permit. The Fifth deals with the surviving plays, not in their literary aspect, which lies outside my plan, but as documents helping to throw light upon the history of the institution which produced them.'

Designed to meet the requirements for students at GCSE and A level, this accessible educational edition offers the complete text of The History Boys with a comprehensive study guide. Highlights of Andrew Bruff's guide include: - detailed analyses of character, theme and structure; - a clear introduction to the context of the play and its author; - key quotations and activities both for the student working alone and in the classroom. An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's award-winning and hugely popular play, staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it, about education and its purpose.

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.

Investigates German religious drama since the 1970s, asking the question whether it develops religious themes or only exploits religious motifs, and exploring how it reflects the changing place of religion and spirituality in theworld. Critics often claim that the twenty-first century has seen a sudden "return" of religion to the German stage. But although drama scholarship has largely focused on politics, postmodernity, gender, ethnicity, and "postdramatic" performance, religious themes, forms, and motifs have been a topic and a source of inspiration for German dramatists for several decades, as this study shows. Focusing on works by four major dramatists - Botho Strauss, George Tabori,Werner Fritsch, and Lukas Barfuss - this book examines how, why, and to what effect religion is invoked in German drama since the late 1970s. It asks whether contemporary German drama succeeds in developing religious insights or is at most quasi-religious, exploiting religious signs for aesthetic, theatrical, or dramaturgical ends. It considers the performative and historical intersections between drama and religion, contextualizing the playwrights' treatments of religion by exploring how they lean on or repudiate the traditions of modern European drama, especially that of Strindberg, the Expressionists, Artaud, Grotowski, and Beckett. It also draws on the sociology, anthropology,and psychology of religion, exploring how these works reflect the changing place of religion and spirituality in the world, from secularization to the "alternative" modes of religiosity that have proliferated in Western society since the 1960s. Sinead Crowe is a Teaching Assistant at the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Feted by his contemporaries, Federico Garcia Lorca's status has only grown since his death in 1936. This book shows just why his fame has endured, through an exploration of his most popular works: Romancero Gitano, Poeta en Nueva York and the trilogy of tragic plays - Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba.

This book examines the two-way impacts between Brecht and Chinese culture and drama/theatre, focusing on Chinese theatrical productions since the end of the Cultural Revolution all the way to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Wei Zhang considers how Brecht's plays have been adapted/appropriated by Chinese theatre artists to speak to the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural developments in China and how such endeavors reflect and result from dynamic interactions between Chinese philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics, especially as embodied in traditional xiqu and the Brechtian concepts of estrangement (Verfremdungseffekt) and political theatre. In examining these Brecht adaptations, Zhang offers an interdisciplinary study that contributes to the fields of comparative drama/theatre studies, intercultural studies, and performance studies.

Lycurgus, the king of the Thracian tribe of the Edonians, is the hero of the first attested Greek myth about the resistance against the god Dionysus. According to many scholars, Lycurgus was worshipped as a god among the Thracians, Phrygians, and Syrians. His myth might have been used as a hieros logos in the initiations into the 'Bacchic' and 'Orphic' mysteries in Greece and Rome. This book focuses on Aeschylus' tragic tetralogy Lycurgeia and Naevius' tragedy Lycurgus, the two most important texts that shaped the tradition of the Lycurgus myth, and offers a new and, at times, radically different interpretation of these fragmentary plays and related cultural texts.

A biographically based study of George Bernard Shaw and his milieu, this book offers a non-laudatory reading of Shaw's economic practices and theories, augments feminist and postcolonial critiques that preoccupy the study of literary history in the 1990s, and provides a long overdue revisionist reading of Shaw for an undergraduate readership. It traces the theatrical and political influences on Shaw from his earliest days in London; tracks his interest in socialism as an activist and author of tracts, novels, and plays emphasizing certain polemical traits; and follows his career as a major literary figure into the mid-20th century. The overarching themes of theatre and politics are narrated in relation to attempts by Shaw and his contemporaries to identify an audience and aesthetic for socialist theatre. The bibliographic essay that concludes the book is particularly helpful for student readers, who can benefit from a manageably-sized orientation to the mountain of Shavian scholarship.

David and Bathsheba presents a modernised edition of George Peele's explosive biblical drama about the tangled lives, deadly liaisons, and twisted histories of Ancient Israel's royal family. Martin's critical edition is the first modern single-volume edition of the play since 1912 and opens up this unduly neglected gem of English Renaissance drama to student and scholar alike. The introduction examines such topics as the play's treatment of its biblical and poetic sources, its engagement with Elizabethan politics, and its forceful representations of religious fanaticism, genocide, and sexual violence. Its commentary notes clarify the text's meaning and staging, guide the reader through the play's dramatisation of the turbulent Davidic period of Ancient Israel's history, and place the play in its broader cultural and artistic milieu. Martin's edition aims to encourage new contemporary critical study of Peele's powerful and disturbing drama. -- .

This book looks at the staging and performance of normality in early modern drama. Analysing conventions and rules, habitual practices, common things and objects, and mundane sights and experiences, this volume foregrounds a staged normality that has been heretofore unseen, ignored, or taken for granted. It draws together leading and emerging scholars of early modern theatre and culture to debate the meaning of normality in an early modern context and to discuss how it might transfer to the stage. In doing so, these original critical essays unsettle and challenge scholarly assumptions about how normality is represented in the performance space. The volume, which responds to studies of the everyday and the material turn in cultural history, as well as to broader philosophical engagements with the idea of normality and its opposites, brings to light the essential role that normality plays in the composition and performance of early modern drama.