Napoleon's biographers often note his fondness for theatre, but as we approach the bicentenary of the Emperor's death, little remains known about the nature of theatre at the time. This is particularly the case for tragedy, the genre in which France considered itself to surpass its neighbours. Based on extensive archival research, this first sustained study of tragedy under Napoleon examines how a variety of agents used tragedy and its rewriting of history to make an impact on French politics, culture and society, and to help reconstruct the French nation after the Revolution. This volume covers not just Napoleon's efforts, but also those of other individuals in government, the theatrical world, and the wider population. Similarly, it uncovers a public demand for tragedy, be it the return of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire to the Comedie-Francaise, or new hits like Les Templiers (1805) and Hector (1809). This research also sheds new light on Napoleonic propaganda and censorship, exposing their incoherencies and illustrating how audiences reacted to these processes. In short, Tragedy and Nation in the Age of Napoleon argues that Napoleonic tragedy was not simply tired and derivative; it engaged its audiences, by chomping at the poetic bit, allowing for a retrial of the Revolution, and offering a vision of the new French nation.

This third edition of Othello offers a completely new introduction by Christina Luckyj, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of early modern theatre and culture, and demonstrating how careful attention to Shakespeare's language, staging and dramaturgy can open up fresh interpretations of the play. Tracing critical and performance trends up to the present day, Luckyj shows how the drama taps into contemporary cultural paradoxes surrounding blackness, marriage, and politics to create a powerful double perspective, illuminating the creative and destructive power of stories and of human love itself. Supplemented by an updated reading list and extensive illustrations, this edition also features revised commentary notes, offering the very best in contemporary criticism of this great tragedy.

Hierdie title gee 'n basiese inleiding tot die moderne dramateorie asook praktiese riglyne oor hoe om 'n dramateks te analiseer, en is 'n gids vir dosente en studente. Die invloed van die opvoeringsgerigtheid van 'n drama op aspekte soos die karakters, die tyd en ruimte asook die drama se struktuur, word behandel. Die teorie word deurgaans verduidelik en geillustreer aan die hand van voorbeelde uit meer as 30 bekende Afrikaanse dramas.

Both lecturers and students will find this book useful as it gives a basic introduction to modern drama theory as well as practical guidelines on the analysis of a play. The influence of the performance orientation of a play on aspects such as the characters, time and space, as well as the play's structure, is dealt with. The theory is constantly explained and illustrated by means of examples taken from more than 30 well-known English South African plays.

The noted British literary scholar turns her attention to the rarely examined topic of narrative in the plays and offers some new insight into the playwright's craft. Shakespeare makes narrative theatrical and it is as prominent in his craft and language as characterization and imagery. Hardy analyzes key structures, including reflexive narrative and the narrative compoundings used to begin and end plays. She also examines narrative subtleties in the works of Plutarch, Holinshed, Brooke, and Sidney that Shakespeare read. Finally, she explores common narrative techniques -- memory, forecast, and gendered story -- and extensively analyzes these issues in three plays: Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth.

In eighteenth-century Europe, artistic production was characterised by significant geographical and cultural transfer. For innumerable musicians, composers, singers, actors, authors, dramatists and translators - and the works they produced - state borders were less important than style, genre and canon. Through a series of multinational case studies a team of authors examines the mechanisms and characteristics of cultural and artistic adaptability to demonstrate the complexity and flexibility of theatrical and musical exchanges during this period. By exploring questions of national taste, so-called cultural appropriation and literary preference, contributors examine the influence of the French canon on the European stage - as well as its eventual rejection -, probe how and why musical and dramatic materials became such prized objects of exchange, and analyse the double processes of transmission and literary cross-breeding in translations and adaptations. Examining patterns of circulation in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, Bohemia, Austria, Italy and the United States, authors highlight: the role of migrant musicians in breaching national boundaries and creating a 'musical cosmopolitanism'; the emergence of a specialised market in which theatre agents and local authorities negotiated contracts and productions, and recruited actors and musicians; the translations and rewritings of major plays such as Sheridan's The School for scandal, Schiller's Die Rauber and Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Reue; the refashioning of indigenous and 'national' dramas in Europe under French Revolutionary and imperial rule.

In the final decade of the eighteenth century, theatre was amongst the most important sites for redefining France's national identity. In this study, Annelle Curulla uses a range of archival material to show that, more than any other subject matter which was once forbidden from the French stage, Roman Catholic religious life provided a crucial trope for expressing theatre's patriotic mission after 1789. Even as old rules and customs fell with the walls of the Bastille, dramatic works by Gouges, Chenier, La Harpe, and others depicted the cloister as a space for reimagining forms of familial, individual, and civic belonging and exclusion. By relating the dramatic trope of religious life to shifting concepts of gender, family, religiosity, and nation, Curulla sheds light on how the process of secularization played out in the cultural space of French theatre.

Is there anything more to say on Hamlet? Hide fox, and all after, a casual quip of the Prince, as he and his enemy the King start to hunt each other down, is taken as the title for this closely-considered survey of the play. J D Winter finds question after question in it raised and unanswered, as if the plays dramatic method were in part to create uncertainty in its audience and so draw them in. He adopts three phrases from the text to provide a context for his approach: the plays the thing, a rhapsody of words, and the invisible event. The first phrase suggests the spectacle itself, without regard to what has been written about it. There is no reference to outside opinion nor is another literary work named. The second indicates an awareness of the text as poem. While the tremendous sweep of Shakespearean blank verse, the prose-paragraphs on fire with their own poetry, the whispering gallery of metaphor, can scarcely be accorded proper respect in a prose commentary, certain rhapsodic effects are everywhere noted. Finally, the play is contained within a mystery. So much seems to happen; so little seems to happen. Almost all the major characters are subject to a pattern of error in their dealings as they are swept on from one catastrophic misjudgement to another. The level to which the play is focussed upon the blind time between events is unusually high. This too draws in the audience; it is a part of the spectators own internal experience. There can be no definitive answer to Hamlet or Hamlet. But like a signpost in a swarming mist, the third phrase may offer a faint clue: the invisible event.

This Play Guide is specifically written for A Level students who are studying Hedda Gabler as part of the AQA A Level Drama & Theatre specification. It provides structured support for Component 1: Section A - Drama and theatre. / This book is divided into three sections: How to explore a text for A level Drama and Theatre, with vocabulary-building sections on acting, directing and design; An extended exploration of the play to enrich students' understanding and response to the text; Targeted examination preparation to improve writing and test-taking skills. / Fully supports the written examination and helps students develop their key knowledge and understanding of key A Level drama & theatre skills. / Knowledge and understanding of the play are developed with a synopsis, character and scene studies, contextual and practical exploration. / Includes a wide range of practical drama tasks, activities, and research and revision exercises. / Advice on how to interpret and prepare for exam questions with examples of effective responses.

"It's moral vision, as well as the Miller voice, which remains as strong and unrelenting as a prophet's, that distinguish Broken Glass." - The New York Times When Sylvia Gellburg, a young Jewish woman living in Brooklyn, becomes partially paralyzed from the waist down, her husband Phillip is shocked: what could've caused this sudden condition? The answer is Kristallnacht, the horrific, anti-Semitic event occurring halfway around the world. As the Gellburgs reckon with this pogrom and with the breakdown of their own marriage, a terrifying thought emerges: will the Jewish people ever be able to avoid persecution? Broken Glass is one of Miller's most moving and personal works, touching on themes of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, winning him the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1994. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ambika Singh, and Nupur Tandon, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker,) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

"Stage Directions" covers half a lifetime and the whole range of Frayn's theatrical writing, right up to a new piece about his latest play, "Afterlife". It is also a reflection on his path into theatre: the 'doubtful beginnings' of his childhood, his subsequent scorn as a young man and, surprisingly late in life, his reluctant conversion. Whatever subjects he tackles, from the exploration of the atomic nucleus to the mechanics of farce, Michael Frayn is never less than fascinating, delightfully funny and charming. This book encapsulates a lifetime's work and is guaranteed to be a firm favourite with his legions of fans around the world.

Hierdie studie is die eerste van ’n reeds voltooide tweeluik in Afrikaans oor die 44 oud-Griekse dramas wat vir ons in geheel uit die verre Oudheid bewaar gebly het. In hierdie eerste boekdeel word die vroeë, klugtige ontstaan en daarna tegniese ontwikkeling van die oud-Griekse komedie bespreek.

Daarna volg ’n indringende analise van elkeen van die skrywer Aristophanes (ongeveer 448-380 v.C.) se elf komedies.

In Aristophanes se komedies vind ons ’n uiters lagwekkende ontmaskering van die menslike verwaandheid, kleinlikheid en dwaasheid wat die politieke leiers van Athene tydens die Peloponnesiese Oorlog gekenmerk het.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 are specifically designed for AS & A2 students to help you get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced experts to give you an in-depth understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber (9781447913153) Doctor Faustus (9781447913177) Frankenstein (9781447913214) The Great Gatsby (9781447913207) The Kite Runner (9781447913160) Macbeth (9781447913146) Othello (9781447913191) Wuthering Heights (9781447913184) Jane Eyre (9781447948834) Hamlet (9781447948872) A Midsummer Night's Dream (9781447948841) Northanger Abbey (9781447948858 Pride & Prejudice (9781447948865) Twelfth Night (9781447948889)

Going Down to Morocco (Bajarse al moro), is one of the most emblematic and best known theatrical work of recent times in Spain. It both contributed to and documented La Movida, a drug-fuelled youth movement that placed Madrid firmly on the global cultural map in the early 1980s. Alonso de Santos' play, a commercial and critical success when first staged in 1985, was made into a film starring Antonio Banderas in 1989. Chusa, a free-spirited and spontaneously generous young drug smuggler introduces Elena, a middle-class runaway, to the apartment she shares with her cousin Jaimito and her boyfriend Alberto, a rookie policeman. The result is chaos in their previously disorderly but happy life. The comedy explores opposing lifestyles of young people in 1980s Spain, during a period of radical social change. It is characterised by humour, creative use of contemporary slang, and intertextual film references. Duncan Wheeler's translation of the original play marks with footnotes the changes made in the new version done in 2008 for a high-profile revival to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary. This edition also includes an unpublished interview conducted by Duncan Wheeler with Alonso de Santos in 2010.

Lorca in English examines the evolution of translations of Federico Garcia Lorca into English as a case of rewriting and manipulation through politically and ideologically motivated translation. As new translations of Federico Garcia Lorca continue to appear in the English-speaking world and his literary reputation continues to be rewritten through these successive re-translations, this book explores the reasons for this constant desire to rewrite Lorca since the time of his murder right into the 21st century. From his representation as the quintessential Spanish Republican martyr, to his adoption through translation by the Beat Generation, to his elevation to iconic status within the Queer Studies movement, this volume analyzes the reasons for this evolution and examines the current direction into which this canonical author is heading in the English-speaking world.

The mid-eighteenth century witnessed a particularly intense conflict between the Enlightenment philosophes and their enemies, when intellectual and political confrontation became inseparable from a battle for public opinion. Logan J. Connors underscores the essential role that theatre played in these disputes. This is a fascinating and detailed study of the dramatic arm of France's war of ideas in which the author examines how playwrights sought to win public support by controlling every aspect of theatrical production - from advertisements, to performances, to criticism. An expanding theatre-going public was recognised as both a force of influence and a force worth influencing. By analysing the most indicative examples of France's polemical theatre of the period, Les Philosophes by Charles Palissot (1760) and Voltaire's Le Cafe ou L'Ecossaise (1760), Connors explores the emergence of spectators as active agents in French society, and shows how theatre achieved an unrivalled status as a cultural weapon on the eve of the French Revolution. Adopting a holistic approach, Connors provides an original view of how theatre productions 'worked' under the ancien regime, and discusses how a specific polemical atmosphere in the eighteenth century gave rise to modern notions of reception and spectatorship.

Winner of The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021 Luke Kennard recasts Shakespeare's 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party. A physicist explains dark matter in the kitchen. A crying man is consoled by a Sigmund Freud action figure. An out-of-hours doctor sells phials of dark red liquid from a briefcase. Someone takes out a guitar. Wry, insolent and self-eviscerating, Notes on the Sonnets riddles the Bard with the anxieties of the modern age, bringing Kennard's affectionate critique to subjects as various as love, marriage, God, metaphysics and a sad horse. 'Luke Kennard has the uncanny genius of being able to stick a knife in your heart with such originality and verve that you start thinking "aren't knives fascinating... and hearts, my god!" whilst everything slowly goes black.' - Caroline Bird A Poetry Book Society Recommendation

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This third edition of Twelfth Night retains the text edited and annotated by Elizabeth Story Donno for the first edition of 1985, and features an updated introduction by Penny Gay, which focuses on recent scholarship and performance history. Building on her Introduction to the second edition, Gay stresses the play's theatricality, its elaborate linguistic games and its complex use of Ovidian myths. She analyses the delicate balance Shakespeare strikes in Twelfth Night between romance and realism, and explores representations of gender, sexuality and identity in the text. A selection of new photographs completes the edition.

A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their otherwise fractious lives, where's the incentive to put things right? DNA is a poignant and, sometimes, hilarious tale with a very dark heart. A contemporary play for younger people,DNA opened at the National Theatre in February 2008

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of "Macbeth "on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare contains

• The complete text of the original play
• A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday language
• A complete list of characters with descriptions
• Plenty of helpful commentary

This 11-volume collection contains titles originally published between 1931 and 1992. It examines the genre of comedy, from its roots in ancient Greece, through the centuries, to the relatively modern stand-up variety. The individual titles include the theory of comedy; perspectives on women and comedy; comedy in film; European comedy; Restoration comedy and more. This set will be a valuable resource for those students interested in comedy in both literature and drama.

Originally published in 1973 and 1977 respectively, these two volumes, now available together for the first time examine the history of French drama. The first traces tragedy, from its origins in the sixteenth century through to the last years of Louis XVI's reign. The second covers comedy, from the Renaissance, extending beyond Louis XVI into the eighteenth century and right up to the eve of the Revolution. Accessible to the general reader they would also be particularly useful for students of French drama.

Sade's rehabilitation as a major Enlightenment writer has hitherto not extended to a re-evaluation of his dramatic works. With a theoretical framework inspired by psychoanalysis and dramatic theory, and attentive to eighteenth-century theoretical debates, Thomas Wynn demonstrates the value of these neglected works. This is the first study to consider the nature and implications of Sade's dramatic aesthetic, and to define the erotic quality of spectatorship in his experimental plays. Challenging the assumption that the gaze is sadistic, the author uses insights from film theory to argue that Sade adapts contemporary theatrical texts and practice to create an aesthetic distinct from that of his novels. Rather than replicate the style of such works as Les Cent vingt journees de Sodome, Sade's drama anticipates a masochistic model, as theorised by Theodor Reik and Gilles Deleuze. This analysis of Sadean spectatorship takes a thematic rather than chronological or text-by-text approach. The author argues that Sade, as an atheist materialist, focuses on the structural elements of theatre to produce visual pleasure rather than moral improvement, and that he elaborates an insistently visual dramatic aesthetic, a mode analogous to the linguistic saturation of the novels' tout dire. With reference to eighteenth-century obscene drama, theatre architecture and the history of visuality, the author explores the paradox that Sade's theatre is meant not for the stage, but for the private imagination. His visionary theatre is an example of the late eighteenth-century sublime, an aesthetic of the ineffable and the unrepresentable which, in its emphasis on the survival of the demeaned individual, structurally resembles masochism. Without deforming his technique or strategy, the author shows that Sade's voluptuous theatre - like his fiction - addresses an individual whose sovereignty in a godless world is intimately linked to the independent imagination. This book will be of interest to all those working in eighteenth-century drama and theory of spectatorship.

I'm really looking forward to robbing this bank! Mischief's smash-and-grab hit The Comedy About A Bank Robbery is a fast, fabulous comedy caper and the funniest show in the West End! Summer 1958. Minneapolis City Bank has been entrusted with a priceless diamond. An escaped convict is dead set on pocketing the gem with the help of his screwball sidekick, trickster girlfriend... and the maintenance man. With mistaken identities, love triangles and hidden agendas, even the most reputable can't be trusted. In a town where everyone's a crook, who will end up bagging the jewel? Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, the creators of the Olivier Award-winning Best New Comedy The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery opened at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End in April 2016. 'The best new comedy to open straight into the West End in decades' Time Out 'Thrilling and daringly inventive' The Guardian