Shakespeare is one of the world's most widely taught and most demanding authors. Fortunately, many of his plays have been adapted for film and television, and these productions are a valuable aid for helping students understand and respond to his works. This reference shows teachers and students how to master the techniques of discussing productions of his plays on film and television. It distinguishes the advantages and limitations of film and television as media for representing Shakespeare's dramas. The book then examines strategies for incorporating film and television productions in the classroom and provides many specific examples of how to write about these adaptations of the plays. The volume describes numerous educational resources, both in print and on cassette. This reference will prove invaluable to teachers and students of Shakespeare at all levels, particularly at a time when Shakespeare films are being produced at an unprecedented pace. Although Shakespeare is one of the world's most widely taught authors, he is also one of the world's most demanding. Because of the popularity and sophistication of his works, numerous film and television adaptations of his plays have been made-some decades ago and others very recently. Shakespeare films are coming out at an unprecedented rate, as audiences continue to respond to the richness of his works. These productions are a valuable means of introducing students to Shakespeare's plays, for the film and television versions reflect different interpretations of his works. Although some productions are generally considered better than others, and all have various faults and virtues, each of them teaches us something about the play and the medium. This reference book is a convenient guide for helping teachers and students master the techniques of discussing productions of the plays on film and television. It makes important distinctions between the two media, particularly about the conceptual and physical space available in each and the choices that space, or lack of it, impose on production. Central to the book is the concept of script, the words from which productions are generated. Because even weak productions are nonetheless interpretations of Shakespeare's scripts, they can be used effectively to explore the complex issues in his plays. The volume includes many suggestions about how to help students write well by comparing in very specific terms small segments from different productions. It lists the resources available in this rapidly growing field, both on cassette and in print, and gives many examples of critical commentary, looking at genre, editing, allusion, setting, and the script in historical context. Productions discussed include the Edzard As You Like It, the Branagh A Midwinter's Tale, the Parker Othello, the Loncraine Richard III, and seventy years of Hamlet. Students and teachers of Shakespeare at all levels will find this book to be an invaluable guide to his plays.

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Uniquely, this guide analyses the play's critical and performance history and recent criticism, as well as including five essays offering radically new paths for contemporary interpretation. The subject matter of these essays is rich and diverse, ranging across the play's philosophical identification of sexual love with self-realization, the hermeneutic implications of an editor's textual choices, the minor characters of the play in relation to Renaissance performance traditions, Romeo and Juliet in opera and ballet, and the play's Italian sources and afterlives. The guide also contains a chapter on the key resources available, including scholarly editions and easily available DVDs, and discusses the ways in which they can be used in the classroom to aid understanding and provoke further debate. Edited by leading scholar Julia Reinhard Lupton, this is an essential guide for both students and scholars of Shakespeare.

The Afterlife of Ophelia presents Ophelia in a broader and more comprehensive range of contexts than previous scholarship and forges connections among fields that are typically pursued as separate lines of inquiry within Shakespeare studies, including: film and new media studies; theatre and performance studie; historicist and contextual perspectives; and studies of popular culture--

"The theatrical works of Millay, Cummings, and Dos Passos, which have largely been marginalized in discussions of theater history and literary scholarship, offer a hybrid theater that integrates the popular with the formal, the mainstream with the experimental. Fahy examines the integration of and challenges to popular culture found in their works and offers new readings with an eye to American cultural studies and the impact of mass entertainment on modern life"--

How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of his day? For the first time this disc offers listeners the chance to hear England's greatest playwright performed by a company of actors using the pronunciation of his time. Under the guidance of Ben Crystal, actor, author of Shakespeare on Toast and an expert in original Shakespearian pronunciation, the company performs some of Shakespeare's best-known poems, solo speeches and scenes from the plays. Hear new meanings uncovered, new jokes revealed, poetic effects enhanced. The CD is accompanied by an introductory essay by Professor David Crystal. An essential purchase for every student and lover of Shakespeare.

This is the first scholarly study devoted to Shakespeare's girl characters and conceptions of girlhood. It charts the development of Shakespeare's treatment of the girl as a dramatic and literary figure, and explores the impact of Shakespeare's girl characters on the history of early modern girls as performers, patrons, and authors.

This Handbook provides an introductory guide to Richard II offering a scene-by-scene theatrically aware commentary, contextual documents, a brief history of the text and first performances, case studies of three or four key performances and productions, a survey of film and TV adaptations, a wide sampling of critical opinion and further reading.

Ethical Exchanges in Translation, Adaptation and Dramaturgy examines compelling ethical issues that concern practitioners and scholars in the fields of translation, adaptation and dramaturgy. Its 11 essays, written by academic theorists as well as scholar-practitioners, represent a rich diversity of philosophies and perspectives, and reflect a broad international frame of reference: Asia, Europe, North America, and Australasia. They also traverse a wide range of theatrical forms: classic and contemporary playwrights from Shakespeare to Ibsen, immersive and interactive theatre, verbatim theatre, devised and community theatre, and postdramatic theatre. In examining the ethics of specific artistic practices, the book highlights the significant continuities between translation, adaptation, and dramaturgy; it considers the ethics of spectatorship; and it identifies the tightly interwoven relationship between ethics and politics.

One of Shakespeare's four major tragedies, "Othello" has captivated audiences for centuries. In its treatment of jealousy and racial tension, it offers an enduring study of universal themes. Part of the Greenwood Guides to Shakespeare, this reference book provides students with a comprehensive overview of the play. The early chapters discuss significant differences between Quarto and Folio texts of "Othello" and explore the play's sources and historical contexts--in particular, how "Othello" contributes to early seventeenth century discourses on racial otherness and the role of women. The book then analyzes the dramatic structure of the play, including its settings, action, and patterns of language.

The play hinges on Shakespeare's characters, and the volume discusses his complex presentation of Desdemona, Iago, and Othello. It then examines the tragedy's significant themes: the outsider in society, the gap between empirical evidence and intuitive faith, and the monsters and demons of sexual jealousy and the human imagination. This discussion is followed by a review of the critical response to "Othello" from the early seventeenth century to the present. A final chapter covers the play in performance, with special attention to versions available on film and videotape. Included are photographs from several major productions. The volume concludes with a bibliographical essay.

Bertolt Brecht has been perceived as an ardent proponent of social change, an avid advocate of a just world that he defined in terms of socialism, and an adamant foe of capitalism for whose demise he hoped. He is justly regarded as one of the great innovators of theater theory and practice in the 20th century, and his influence has extended to Latin America and Asia. This reference book surveys Brecht's enormous contribution to world drama. Chapters by expert contributors assess his dramatic innovations, his poetry and prose, and topics of special interest to Brecht studies. With the centennial of his birth approaching in 1998, Bertolt Brecht's controversial reception in general and in the United States in particular, is coming into clearer focus. One of the great dramatists of the 20th century, Brecht has been viewed as an ardent proponent of social change, an avid advocate of a just world that he defined in terms of socialism, and an adamant foe of capitalism for whose demise he hoped. With the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the political and economic milieu of Europe has changed drastically, and socialist writers are now being studied from a fresh perspective. This volume surveys and assesses Brecht's enormous contribution to the arts. Chapters by expert contributors explore his innovative dramatic theory and theatrical practice. Though best known for his contribution to the stage, Brecht also wrote poetry and prose fiction, and his poems and prose are examined in this work. Brecht's influence is also considered, and chapters examine topics of special interest, such as Brecht and film, the role of music in his works, feminist and Marxist approaches to his writings, the problem of translating Brecht into English, and the reception and appropriation of his plays and dramatic theory in various countries. While the chapters are historical in focus, the contributors also demonstrate the continuing relevance of Brecht in general and the Brechtian theater in particular in the 1990s.

A comprehensive reassessment of Middleton's cultural importance, this wide-ranging study examines the writer's dramatic and non-dramatic texts to show how he laid bare the complicit interests at work behind assumptions about sex, morality, society, and politics in late feudal culture. Middleton's importance has long been acknowledged in the modern theatre, but academic criticism still seems distracted by questions regarding his morals and 'Puritanism'. Swapan Chakravorty argues against the reductivism of such enquiries, and demonstrates the complexity behind the texts' disengagement from received ideological premisses and generic formulae. Combining close reading with lively historical analysis, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton reveals Middleton to have been a pioneer of politically self-conscious theatre. Full of insight, this study brings alive the plays' meanings by engaging with the social, political, and cultural concerns of Middleton's day.

Widely acclaimed as one of America's most distinguished female playwrights, Lillian Hellman made an entrance into a largely male-dominated field in 1934 with" The Children's Hour," a drama that rocked the literary establishment with its frank treatment of lesbianism while calling attention to her writing talents. Written between 1934 and 1963, Hellman's dramatic canon includes eight original plays and four adaptations. Two of these, "Watch on the Rhine" (1941) and "Toys in the Attic" (1960), received Drama Critics' Circle Awards. In addition to her dramatic activities, she wrote three memoirs and a novella, contributed articles to national magazines, edited ChekoV's letters and Dashiell Hammett's mysteries, and penned several screenplays. She is probably best known for "The Little Foxes" (1939), her drama about a family of predatory entrepreneurs who seek to build an industrial fortune on the ruins of the old South.

Both a quick reference guide and an exhaustive resource, this volume provides broad and thorough coverage of Hellman's dramatic career. It begins with a critical overview of her life, along with a chronology of her accomplishments. The bulk of the book, which treats her eight original plays and four adaptations, all written for the Broadway stage, provides detailed plot summaries, stage histories, and critical overviews. The next section offers an annotated bibliography of primary sources. This is followed by an annotated secondary bibliography, which is divided into sections on reviews, books, and articles. Entries in the bibliographies are first arranged chronologically and then alphabetically, so that the reader can gain a fuller sense of the development of Hellman's career and the response to her works over time. Detailed indexes conclude the volume and offer full alphabetical access to its contents.

Since the beginning of theatre history, scandals have taken place and the variety of causes, processes and types of interactions makes them an interesting object of study. Theatre scandals often indicate clashes with a dominant ideology or with the ideology of a particular group in society. Sometimes, following a scandal, the attacked ideology changes and incorporates the possibility of the aesthetics or themes that caused the clash. In this way, scandals can cause dynamic changes within cultural systems. Next to theoretical considerations the contributors, all members of the IFTR Theatrical Event Working Group, present in their various case studies a wide cultural and chronological diversity of theatre scandals, all of which were experienced as very shocking moments in theatre history.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Euripides provides a comprehensive account of the influence and appropriation of all extant Euripidean plays since their inception: from antiquity to modernity, across cultures and civilizations, from multiple perspectives and within a broad range of human experience and cultural trends, namely literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, opera and dance, stage and cinematography. A concerted work by an international team of specialists in the field, the volume is addressed to a wide and multidisciplinary readership of classical reception studies, from experts to non-experts. Contributors engage in a vividly and lively interactive dialogue with the Ancient and the Modern which, while illuminating aspects of ancient drama and highlighting their ever-lasting relevance, offers a thoughtful and layered guide of the human condition.

"Hamlet" has inspired four outstanding film adaptations that continue to delight a wide and varied audience and to offer provocative new interpretations of Shakespeare's most popular play. "Cinematic Hamlet" contains the first scene-by-scene analysis of the methods used by Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, and Michael Almereyda to translate Hamlet into highly distinctive and remarkably effective films. Applying recent developments in neuroscience and psychology, Patrick J. Cook argues that film is a medium deploying an abundance of devices whose task it is to direct attention away from the film's viewing processes and toward the object represented. Through careful analysis of each film's devices, he explores the ways in which four brilliant directors rework the play into a radically different medium, engaging the viewer through powerful instinctive drives and creating audiovisual vehicles that support and complement Shakespeare's words and story. "Cinematic Hamlet" will prove to be indispensable for anyone wishing to understand how these films rework Shakespeare into the powerful medium of film.

Ibsen and the Irish Revival examines Henrik Ibsen's influence on the Irish Revival and the reception of his plays in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Dublin. It highlights the international dimension of the Irish Literary Revival and offers new perspectives on W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Lennox Robinson, James Joyce, George Moore and Sean O'Casey.

This timely book challenges conventional critical wisdom about the work of Ben Jonson. Looking in particular at his Jacobean and Caroline plays, it explores his engagement with concepts of republicanism. Julie Sanders investigates notions of community in Jonson's stage worlds - his 'theatrical republics' - and reveals a Jonson to contrast with the traditional image of the writer as conservative, absolutist, misogynist, and essentially 'anti-theatrical'. The Jonson presented here is a positive celebrant of the social and political possibilities of theatre.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus explores the various ways Aeschylus' tragedies have been discussed, parodied, translated, revisioned, adapted, and integrated into other works over the course of the last 2500 years. Immensely popular while alive, Aeschylus' reception begins in his own lifetime. And, while he has not been the most reproduced of the three Attic tragedians on the stage since then, his receptions have transcended genre and crossed to nearly every continent. While still engaging with Aeschylus' theatrical reception, the volume also explores Aeschylus off the stage--in radio, the classroom, television, political theory, philosophy, science fiction and beyond.

The Victorians, having once been seen as 'them', the age responsible for the mistakes of the past, were transformed by the new theatrical forms of the 1960s into 'us', a metaphor for what the nation thinks (and fears) about itself. And, since the 1980s and the rise of new biographical forms in the theatre, the emphasis has shifted further, from 'we' to 'me': plays about individuals, great and small, and their struggles for personal validation. This study argues powerfully that the stage portrayal of the Victorians in recent times is a key reference point in understanding notions of Britishness, heritage and nostalgia, and the profound politicisation of national identity over the last four decades. Using many examples drawn from theatre archives, and throwing new light on works by canonical playwrights like Bond, Edgar, and Churchill, it charts the decline in class-based narratives of the British people and the move towards plays reflecting a more atomised, individuated society, preoccupied with identity and the past but no longer able to provide a convincing account of itself as a nation.

Staging the Impossible explores the most recent critical thinking on the relationship between the literary mode of the fantastic and the literary genre of drama with respect to modern theatre. While a few monographs treat a particular dimension of the fantastic in drama, the Gothic or the fairy tale for instance, no other volume provides a critically sophisticated introduction to the diversity of fantastic drama written and performed in this century. The essays here lay to rest the illusion that realism is the only genuine form of theatrical expression and the notion that cinema special effects have rendered science fiction and the stage incompatible. Competing with the realism of the first half of the twentieth century and the "new realism" of the second half have been a range of successful theatrical repertoire, including the absurd, the horrific, the supernatural, the mythic, the dream-vision quest, the postmodern, the hyper-realistic, and the science fictional. Wide ranging in time and space, this volume comprises fourteen essays on the fantastic on the modern stage, assessing dramatic works from the United States, Ireland, England, Western Europe, and the Caribbean. Canonical figures, such as Strindberg, Yeats, Beckett, Ionesco, Cocteau, and Stoppard are studied, along with neglected figures, such as Wassily Kandinsky, better known as an expressionist painter, and Halper Leivick, author of the Yiddish play The Golem, and innovative new performance troupes and individual artists, such as Squat Theatre and Spalding Gray. Concluding essays are devoted to contemporary experimental theatre and postmodern drama. A study of science fiction on stage includes an annotated listing of fortyEnglish-language plays. Concerned with the interstice of theatre and the fantastic, this work will be valuable to students and scholars of both, of genre studies, and of contemporary literature in general.

This the first sustained study of the interest of John Ruskin in the theatre of his time. It examines Ruskin's active engagement with and influence on the Victorian popular theatre. Ruskin was an enthusiastic and catholic theatre-goer, enjoying pantomime as much as Shakespeare. Through the lens of Ruskin's discussions of pantomime, melodrama, Shakespearean tragedy, and painting and the stage, Newey and Richards offer a new view of the late Victorian stage focusing on London's West End in its heyday.