Philip Massinger's tragedy The Roman Actor, was first performed in 1626, as King James I's reign came to an end and his son Charles I acceded to the throne. Three years later, when the play was published, relations between the king and many in parliament and the country had worsened. The Roman Actor - until recently neglected in the theatre but regarded by many critics, and Massinger himself, as his finest play - explores the balance between private and public moralities, effectively condemns tyranny, and defends plays, anatomising both the theatre of power and the power of theatre. This new Revels Plays volume provides a modernised text, with a thorough introduction that sets out Massinger's intervention in the political tensions of his own time and examines his clear-eyed portrayal of the pleasures and perils of performance. It also includes a detailed commentary on the play designed to be of value to students, specialist readers and performers, and an appendix discussing the play's textual history. The edition focuses on the play's theatrical life in its own time and ours and, in addition to a detailed stage history, includes an interview with Sir Antony Sher, who played the role of the tyrannical Roman emperor, Domitian, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's acclaimed production in 2002. -- .

In an innovative and wide-ranging collection of essays, The Performing Century looks at modes of performance and forms of theatre in Nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland. From the vogue for fairy plays to the acting styles of melodrama, from the work of a single impresario to the nature of a genre, from ship-launches in Belfast to royal weddings in England, from the representation of economics to the work of a parliamentary committee in regulating theatres, the authors bring new perspectives on familiar material and radically redefine what theatre and performance in the Nineteenth century might be.

This four-volume "Companion to Shakespeare's Works," compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism.

Complementing David Scott Kastan's "A Companion to Shakespeare "(1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context, these volumes examine each of his plays and major poems using all the resources of contemporary criticism from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analyses.

Scholars from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States - have joined in the writing of new essays addressing virtually the whole of Shakespeare's canon from a rich variety of critical perspectives. A mixture of younger and more established scholars, their work reflects some of the most interesting research currently being conducted in Shakespeare studies.

Arguing for the persistence and utility of genre as a rubric for teaching and writing about Shakespeare's works, the editors have organized the four volumes in relation to generic categories: namely, the tragedies, the histories, the comedies, and the poems, problem comedies and late plays. Each volume thus contains individual essays on all texts in the relevant category as well as more general essays looking at critical issues and approaches more widely relevant to the genre.

This ambitious project offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twentieth-first century.This companion to Shakespeare's poems, problem comedies and late playscontains original essays on "Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, All's Well That EndsWell, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece," and "The Sonnets," as well as "Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Henry VIII "and "The Two Noble Kinsmen. "In addition, it includes eleven essays on such topics as the reception history of the sonnets, collaboration in Shakespeare's middle and late plays, the generic classification of Shakespeare's late plays, "The Tempest "in performance, and the relation of Shakespeare's "problem plays" to the work of contemporary dramatists.

SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms; And, countrymen, my loving followers, Plead my successive title with your swords. I am his first born son that was the last That ware the imperial diadem of Rome; Then let my father's honours live in me, Nor wrong mine age with this indignity. BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right, If ever Bassianus, Caesar's son, Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome, Keep then this passage to the Capitol; And suffer not dishonour to approach The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, To justice, continence, and nobility; But let desert in pure election shine; And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.

This new study of one of Britain's greatest modern playwrights represents the first major, extended discussion of Edward Bond's work in over twenty years. The book combines rigorous and readable analysis and discussion of Bond's plays and ideas about drama and society. For the first time, there is also discussion of selected plays from his later, post-2000 period, including "Innocence" and "There Will Be More," alongside explorations of widely studied plays such as "Saved."

Focusing on Shakespeare and race, this book addresses the status of Othello in our culture. Erickson shows that contemporary writers' revisions of Shakespeare can have a political impact on our vision of America.

This ground-breaking study analyses Beckett's television plays in relation to the history and theory of television. It argues that they are in dialogue with innovative television traditions connected to Modernism in television, film, radio, theatre, literature and the visual arts. Using original research from BBC archives and manuscript sources, the book provides new perspectives on the relationships between Beckett's television dramas and the wider television culture of Britain and Europe. It also compares and contrasts the plays for television with Beckett's Film and broadcasts of his theatre work including the recent Beckett on Film season. Chapters deal with the production process of the plays, the broadcasting contexts in which they were screened, institutions and authorship, the plays' relationships with comparable programmes and films and reaction to Beckett's screen work by audiences and critics. This book is a major contribution to Beckett scholarship and to studies of television drama. It will be essential reading in literature and drama studies, television historiography and for devotees of Beckett's work. -- .

Aristotle's neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics, ch. 9), historians and playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past - arguably since Antiquity, but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges historiographers to differentiate their "emplotments" (White) from literary inventions, this thirteen-essay collection takes a fresh look at the production of historico-political knowledge in literature and the intricacies of reality and fiction. Written by experts who teach in Germany, Austria, Russia, and the United States, the articles provide a thorough interpretation of early modern drama (with a view to classical times and the 19th century) as an ideological platform that is as open to royal self-fashioning and soteriology as it is to travestying and subverting the means and ends of historical interpretation. The comparative analysis of metapoetic and historiosophic aspects also sheds light on drama as a transnational phenomenon, demonstrating the importance of the cultural net that links the multifaceted textual examples from France, Russia, England, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Eugene O'Neill is the only American dramatist ever to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote over 50 plays; a number are virtually unknown by the general public; several are considered classics of the American stage; all of them demonstrate, in one way or another, how O'Neill challenged the conventional boundaries of the drama of his time and thereby paved the way for modern American theatre. This volume will provide guides to eight of O'Neill's plays that are most often studied in schools and colleges: The Hairy Ape, Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones, Desire Under the Elms, Ah, Wilderness!, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. More than almost any other author in any fictional genre, O'Neill's works are highly autobiographical. The love/hate relationships he had with the members of his own family resonate throughout his dramatic works. The son of an alcoholic and a morphine addict, he struggled with chemical dependency throughout his life, but determined to be "an artist or nothing," he eventually gave up drinking and fulfilled his artistic ambitions, transforming the traumatic experiences of his life into compelling drama. O'Neill's drama provides insights into the complexities of human behavior and raises questions about the forces, both external and internal, that shape human lives.

This is a comprehensive introduction to "The Duchess of Malfi" that introduces its critical and performance history, the current critical landscape and new directions in research. John Webster's classic revenge tragedy "The Duchess of Malfi" was first performed in 1614 and published in 1623. This guide offers students and scholars an introduction to its critical and performance history, including recent versions on stage and screen. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays presenting new critical positions on the text include gender and political perspectives on the idea of secrecy in the play and debates surrounding Webster's religio-political allegiances. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research. "Continuum Renaissance Drama" offers practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performative contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Each guide introduces the text's critical and performance history but also provides students with an invaluable insight into the landscape of current scholarly research through a keynote essay on the state of the art and newly commissioned essays of fresh research from different critical perspectives.

In this book, Derek Cohen studies the relationship of Shakespearean drama to the Western culture of violence. He argues that violence is an inherent feature and form of patriarchy and that its production and control is one of the dominant motives of the political system. Shakespeare's plays supply examples of the way in which the patriarchy of his plays - and hence, perhaps, of modern Western culture - absorbs, naturalizes, and legitimizes violence in its attempts to maintain political control over its subjects.

While the past decade proved to be some of the most tumultuous times in modern US history, the Black community has been resilient, opening up dialogues and sustaining advocacy. Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the Obie Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival in New York City. Since being founded in 2009, this theater festival has become the destination for emerging and early career playwrights from the African diaspora. Inequality in education and healthcare, skewed and negative images of Black people in mainstream media, racism in policing, widespread gentrification and its effects on multi-generational Black neighbourhoods, and the growth of Black love; these conversations have been happening in the US, and The Fire This Time Festival has borne witness. 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theater reflects this fantastic legacy, containing 25 ten-minute plays originally produced by the eponymous festival. Together, these pieces bookend the Black experience in the US from 2009 to the present day: from the hope for further progress and equity under the Obama administration, to the existential threat faced by Black people under the Trump presidency. Edited and curated by Kelley Nicole Girod, the anthology divides the plays into seven thematic sections concerning multi-faceted aspects of the Black experience, featuring work by seminal writers such as Katori Hall, Antoinette Nwandu, Dominique Morisseau, C.A. Johnson, and Marcus Gardley. Both timely and timeless, 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival presents an exciting, eclectic mix of 21st century theater that is perfect for study, performance, and reflection.

'Moliere on Stage' takes the reader onstage, backstage and into the audience of Moliere's plays, analyzing the performance of his works in both his own time and in ours. Written by a professional stage director with over fifty years' experience directing and translating Moliere, this text explores how the playwright strove to create a communal experience of shared laughter, and investigates four key topics relating to this achievement: Moliere's early experiences that lead to his later theater experiences; his central great plays of love and lust; his comedic genius and his passion for the stage; and the final words and performances of his life.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of "Richard III" 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

A Companion to Sophocles presents the first comprehensive collection of essays in decades to address all aspects of the life, works, and critical reception of Sophocles. * First collection of its kind to provide introductory essays to the fragments of his lost plays and to the remaining fragments of one satyr-play, the Ichneutae, in addition to each of his extant tragedies * Features new essays on Sophoclean drama that go well beyond the current state of scholarship on Sophocles * Presents readings that historicize Sophocles in relation to the social, cultural, and intellectual world of fifth century Athens * Seeks to place later interpretations and adaptations of Sophocles in their historical context * Includes essays dedicated to issues of gender and sexuality; significant moments in the history of interpreting Sophocles; and reception of Sophocles by both ancient and modern playwrights

The five volumes of "A Shakespeare Music Catalogue" provide documentation of all music, published and unpublished, from Shakespeare's day to the 20th century, relating to Shakespeare's life and work. The music includes operas, ballets, overtures, tone-poems, songs and various types of incidental music for stage, radio, film and television productions. Each composition is cited with information on its vocal and instrumental requirements, its publication history and, when known, its first performance. The first three deal with music and musical stage-directions for the plays and settings of the sonnets and narrative poems. The fourth volume contains indices of Shakespeare's titles and lines, the titles of musical works, composers, arrangers, editors and librettists. The final volume provides an annotated bilbiography of writings, in all language, on the subject of Shakespeare and music.

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 four-volume "Companion to Shakespeare's Works," compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism.

Complementing David Scott Kastan's "A Companion to Shakespeare "(1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context, these volumes examine each of his plays and major poems using all the resources of contemporary criticism from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analyses.

Scholars from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States - have joined in the writing of new essays addressing virtually the whole of Shakespeare's canon from a rich variety of critical perspectives. A mixture of younger and more established scholars, their work reflects some of the most interesting research currently being conducted in Shakespeare studies.

Arguing for the persistence and utility of genre as a rubric for teaching and writing about Shakespeare's works, the editors have organized the four volumes in relation to generic categories: namely, the tragedies, the histories, the comedies, and the poems, problem comedies and late plays. Each volume thus contains individual essays on all texts in the relevant category as well as more general essays looking at critical issues and approaches more widely relevant to the genre.

This ambitious project offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twentieth-first century.

This companion to Shakespeare's comediescontains original essays on every comedy from "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" to "Twelfth Night." In addition, thevolume features twelve articles on such topics as the humoral body in Shakespearean comedy, Shakespeare's comedies on film, Shakespeare's relation to other comic writers of his time, Shakespeare's cross dressing comedies, and the geographies of Shakespearean comedy.

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 volume offers critical and theoretical perspectives on some of the major figures in European drama in the 20th century. There are 13 essays, covering Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Anouilh, Fernando Arrabal, Jean Genet, Peter Weiss, Vaclav Havel, contemporary German theatre, and Dario Fo and Franca Fame. These essays combine contemporary theory with a discussion of the dramatic work and theories of theatre and drama of the playwrights who created modern drama in Europe. Brian Docherty is the co-editor of "Nineteenth-Century Suspense: From Poe to Conan Doyle", and editor of "American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre", "American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King", "Twentieth Century American Drama", "American Modernist Poetry", "Twentieth Century British Poetry 1900-50", Twentieth Century British Poetry 1950-90" and "The Beat Generation".

POET. Good day, sir. PAINTER. I am glad y'are well. POET. I have not seen you long; how goes the world? PAINTER. It wears, sir, as it grows. POET. Ay, that's well known. But what particular rarity? What strange, Which manifold record not matches? See, Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power Hath conjur'd to attend! I know the merchant. PAINTER. I know them both; th' other's a jeweller.

Shakespeare has been misread for centuries as having modern ideas about sex and gender. This book shows how in the Restoration and Eighteenth century, Shakespeare's plays and other Renaissance texts were adapted to make them conform to these modern ideas. Through readings of Shakespearean texts, including "King Lear," "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Othello," and other Renaissance drama, the book reveals a sexual world before heterosexuality. "Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature Before Heterosexuality" shows how revisions and criticism of Renaissance drama contributed to the emergence of heterosexuality. It also shows how changing ideas about status, adultery, friendship, and race were factors in that emergence.

A thorough and scholarly study of Spenser and Shakespeare and their contrary artistry, covering themes of theology, psychology, the depictions of passion and intellect, moral counsel, family hierarchy, self-love, temptation, folly, allegory, female heroism, the supernatural and much more. Renaissance psychologies examines the distinct and polarised emphasis of these two towering intellects and writers of the early modern period. It demonstrates how pervasive was the influence of Spenser on Shakespeare, as in the "playful metamorphosis of Gloriana into Titania" in A Midsummer Night's Dream and its return from Spenser's moralizing allegory to the Ovidian spirit of Shakespeare's comedy. It will appeal to students and lecturers in Spenser studies, Renaissance poetry and the wider fields of British literature, social and cultural history, ethics and theology. -- .