Bringing together scholars from literature and the history of ideas, Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture explores new ways of negotiating the boundaries between cognitive and bodily models of emotion, and between different versions of the will as active or passive. In the process, it juxtaposes the historical formation of such ideas with contemporary philosophical debates. It frames a dialogue between rhetoric and medicine, politics and religion, in order to examine the relationship between mind and body and between experience and the senses. Some chapters discuss literature, in studies of Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton; other essays concentrate on philosophical arguments, both Aristotelian and Galenic models from antiquity, and new mechanistic formations in Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. A powerful sense of paradox emerges in treatments of the passions in the early modern period, also reflected in new literary and philosophical forms in which inwardness was displayed, analysed and studied"the autobiography, the essay, the soliloquy"genres which rewrite the formation of subjectivity. At the same time, the frame of reference moves outwards, from the world of interior states to encounter the passions on a public stage, thus reconnecting literary study with the history of political thought. In between the abstract theory of political ideas and the inward selves of literary history, lies a field of intersections waiting to be explored. The passions, like human nature itself, are infinitely variable, and provoke both literary experimentation and philosophical imagination. Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture thus makes new connections between embodiment, selfhood and the emotions in order to suggest both new models of the self and new models for interdisciplinary history.

Courtesans - women who achieve wealth, status, or power through sexual transgression - have played both a central and contradictory role in literature: they have been admired, celebrated, feared, and vilified. This study of the courtesan in Renaissance English drama focuses not only on the moral ambivalence of these women, but with special attention to Anglo-Italian relations, illuminates little known aspects of their lives. It traces the courtesan from a wry comedic character in the plays of Terence and Plautus to its literary exhaustion in the seventeenth-century dramatic works of Dekker, Marston, Webster, Middleton, Shirley and Brome. The author focuses especially on the presentation of the courtesan in the sixteenth century - dramas by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Lyly view the courtesan as a symbol of social disease and decay, transforming classical conventions into English prejudices. Renaissance Anglo-Italian cultural and sexual relations are also investigated through comparisons of travel narratives, original source materials, and analysis of Aretino's representations of celebrated Italian courtesans. Amid these fascinating tales of aspiration, desire and despair lingers the intriguing question of who was the 'dark lady' of Shakespeare's sonnets.

King Lear is a prosperous but older man who plans to distribute his wealth among his three daughters in accordance to their declarations of love. Two shower him with compliments while the other is unable to participate in a false display of affection. King Lear decides to step down from the throne and gift his daughters with the spoils of his kingdom. As a test, the size of their inheritance will correlate with how well they flatter him. The two older children, Goneril and Regan, honor him with praise, but his youngest, Cordelia remains quiet. She genuinely loves her father but doesn't engage in the pageantry. Due to her reluctance, King Lear disowns Cordelia, while his other daughters receive his riches. Once they are settled, Goneril and Regan, begin to marginalize their father, refusing to support him in his old age. This eventually drives him mad as he's forced to acknowledge the error of his ways. The Tragedy of King Lear is a heartbreaking cautionary tale. The king's downfall is a direct consequence of his own arrogance. It's a powerful story that still resonates centuries after its first performance in the 1600s. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Tragedy of King Lear is both modern and readable.

The English Renaissance has long been considered a period with a particular focus on imitation; however, much related scholarship has misunderstood or simply marginalized the significance of emulative practices and theories in the period. This work uses the interactions of a range of English Renaissance plays with ancient and Renaissance rhetorics to analyze the conflicted uses of emulation in the period (including the theory and praxis of rhetorical imitatio, humanist notions of exemplarity, and the stage's purported ability to move spectators to emulate depicted characters). This book emphasizes the need to see emulation not as a solely (or even primarily) literary practice, but rather as a significant aspect of Renaissance culture, giving insight into notions of self, society, and the epistemologies of the period and informed by the period's own sense of theory and history. Among the individual texts examined here are Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, Jonson's Catiline, and Massinger's The Roman Actor (with its strong relation to Jonson's Sejanus).

Focusing on Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Webster and John Milton, Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England argues that the English tragedians reflected an unease within the culture to acts of religious violence. David Anderson explores a link between the unstable emotional response of society to religious executions in the Tudor-Stuart period, and the revival of tragic drama as a major cultural form for the first time since classical antiquity. Placing John Foxe at the center of his historical argument, Anderson argues that Foxe's Book of Martyrs exerted a profound effect on the social conscience of English Protestantism in his own time and for the next century. While scholars have in recent years discussed the impact of Foxe and the martyrs on the period's literature, this book is the first to examine how these most vivid symbols of Reformation-era violence influenced the makers of tragedy. As the persecuting and the persecuted churches collided over the martyr's body, Anderson posits, stress fractures ran through the culture and into the playhouse; in their depictions of violence, the early modern tragedians focused on the ethical confrontation between collective power and the individual sufferer. Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England sheds new light on the particular emotional energy of Tudor-Stuart tragedy, and helps explain why the genre reemerged at this time.

The marriage between a duke and Amazon queen sparks a massive celebration, which leads to a congregation of woodland residents, Fairyland creatures and surprising lovers. Set in Athens, A Midsummer Night's Dream follows unsuspecting couples as they fall prey to a supernatural ploy. Four plots simultaneously take place during the wedding preparations for Theseus, the duke of Athens and Hippolyta, the Amazon queen. Four young people, Hermia, Demetrius, Helena and Lysander, are struggling under the weight of unrequited love and politics. A performance troupe, led by the overhearing Nick Bottom, is rehearsing for the reception. Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies and his queen, Titania have a disagreement that leads to a fantastical error. Oberon commands Puck, a sprite, to apply a magical juice to the eyelids of Titania in hopes that she will fall in love with the first thing she sees. He also applies it to Hermia, Demetrius, Helena and Lysander. Unfortunately, it forces both men to fall in love with Helena, leaving Hermia further isolated. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of William Shakespeare's most popular and aesthetically pleasing plays. The woodland backdrop and the unexpected romance makes for a delightfully entertaining read. The emotionally charged characters are the driving force behind this multifaceted story. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is both modern and readable.

Bringing Shakespeare to the Sunshine State, this book gathers together a talented group of teachers, choreographers, directors, set designers, musicians, costumers, actors, and artists to discuss how they have adapted the bard's monologues in Miami, assassinated Julius Caesar on the steps of Tallahassee's Capitol, trained students to duel in Florida's Panhandle, placed Shylock on trial in Orlando, and transformed Gainesville into Puck's magical forest. This guide for teachers and lovers of literature and theater is an original collection of essays exploring the idea that Shakespeare's plays are best approached playfully through performance. Based on their wide-ranging experience as theater professionals and teachers in Florida, New York, London, and Stratford, the authors celebrate Shakespeare's continuing appeal to our complex, diverse culture. The essays include reflections on acting by the Royal Shakespeare Company's longest-serving member. And there's practical advice on acting; directing; staging fights; designing costumes; and integrating music, dance, masks, and puppets into performances from teachers and others who have refined their methods by performing Shakespeare in the classroom.

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright. Ever since he took the theatre of Elizabethan London by storm over 400 years ago, Shakespeare has remained centre stage. His fame stems not only from his plays - performed everywhere from school halls to the world's most illustrious theatres - but also from his enigmatic persona. His face is familiar to all, yet in reality very little is known about the man behind the masterpieces. Shakespeare's life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket of myths and traditions, some preposterous, some conflicting, arranged around the few scant facts known about the Bard - from his birth in Stratford to the bequest of his second best bed to his wife when he died. Taking us on a journey through the streets of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, Bryson examines centuries of stories, half-truths and downright lies surrounding our greatest dramatist. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, he introduces a host of engaging characters, as he celebrates the magic of Shakespeare's language and delights in details of the bard's life, folios, poetry and plays.

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic contests and in its recurrent linkage to national defence; the extent to which magic can trope other concerns, and what these might be; and how magic is staged and what the representational strategies and techniques might mean. The essays range widely over both canonical plays-Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Doctor Faustus, Bartholomew Fair-and notably less canonical ones such as The Birth of Merlin, Fedele and Fortunio, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Devil is an Ass, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch of Edmonton, putting the two groups into dialogue with each other and also exploring ways in which they can be profitably related to contemporary cases or accusations of witchcraft. Attending to the representational strategies and self-conscious intertextuality of the plays as well as to their treatment of their subject matter, the essays reveal the plays they discuss as actively intervening in contemporary debates about witchcraft and magic in ways which themselves effect transformation rather than simply discussing it. At the heart of all the essays lies an interest in the transformative power of magic, but collectively they show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects or even to the subjects of magic, but that the plays themselves can be seen as working to bring about change in the ways that they challenge contemporary assumptions and stereotypes.

Reviews of the First Edition `...valuable and enjoyable reading for all studying Shakespeare's plays.' Following in the patternestablished by John Russell Brown for the excellent series (Theatre and Production Studies), he provides first an account of Shakespeare's company, then a study of three individual plays Twelfth Night, Hamlet and Macbeth as performed by the company. Peter Thomson writes in a crisp, sharp, enlivening style.' TLS '`...the best analysis yet of Elizabethan acting practices, excavated form the texts themselves rather than reconstructed on basis of one monolithic theory, and an essay on Hamlet that is a model of Critical intelligence and theatrical invention.' Yearbook of English Studies `Synthesizes the important facts and summarizes projects with a vigorous prose style, and expertly applies his experience in both practical drama and academic teaching to his discussion.' Review of English Studies

`Professor Mahood's book has established itself as a classic in the field, not so much because of the ingenuity with which she reads Shakespeare's quibbles, but because her elucidation of pun and wordplay is intelligently related both to textual readings and dramatic significance.' - Revue des Langues Vivantes

First published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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 second edition of Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss, provides a thorough reconsideration of what was probably Shakespeare's last tragedy. In the introduction, Bliss situates the play within its contemporary social and political contexts and pays particular attention to Shakespeare's manipulation of his primary source in Plutarch's Lives. The edition is alert to the play's theatrical potential, while the stage history also attends to the politics of performance from the 1680s onwards, including European productions following the Second World War. A new introductory section by Bridget Escolme accounts for recent theatrical productions as well as scholarly criticism of the last decade, with particular emphasis on gender and politics.

Who had the greatest last words, and what were they? Who enjoyed the slowest, most tedious death? Who had it coming more than anyone else? From the celebrated comedy ensemble SpyMonkey and acclaimed illustrator Chris Riddell, this hilariously morbid (and informative!) trump card game has players testing their knowledge while having a lark with everyone's favorite Shakespearean construct: the amazing deaths!

King John had a distinguished life on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stage, and this edition presents the fullest account of its stage history. The play's political importance, its rich and varied language, and its skillful design suggest that King John deserves a high place among Shakespeare's historical tragedies. The textual analysis includes examination of several disputed emendations to the text. In the appendix, Beaurline surveys the arguments about the dating of Shakespeare's King John and the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John, presenting new evidence for the possibility that Shakespeare's play was written first.

Renaissance ideas of honour had a profound influence on the English people who formed Shakespeare's audiences. In When Honour's at the Stake, first published in 1973, Norman Council describes the increasing importance of these ideas to the themes and structure of a number of Shakespeare's major plays. The validity of the most widely approved code of honour was being challenged on a variety of fronts, yet both personal standards of behaviour and public affairs were habitually understood in terms of honour. A series of tragedies are given their basic form by dramatizing the pernicious effects of man's disobedience to the various demands of honour; in Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear honour is among the principal motives of tragedy. In this way, the modern reader's comprehension of the plays can be greatly enhanced by reference to Elizabethan honour codes.

Analysing six Greek tragedies - the Orestes triology, Ajax, Antigone and Philoctetes - and Hamlet, this book also contains a chapter on the Greek and the Elizabethan dramatic forms and one on religious drama. This is an important work from an author respected for a constructive and sensitive quality of criticism.

Mystery Comedy

George M. Cohan

Characters: 10 male, 4 female

Interior Set

One of the most famous of Cohan's plays happens in a lonely tavern on a wild stormy night where a mysterious vagabond, a woman and the State Governor and his family who have been held up a short distance away gather. Several persons are suspected of the crime and the mysterious vagabond takes infinite delight in observing developments as they take place about him. When suspense reaches an almost unbearable climax, the vagabond is at last located by the keepers of a nearby Sanitorium and it is learned that he, a madman, has been responsible for the vastly amusing and complicated series of misunderstandings.

Speaking to readers in a voice that is adventurous rather than authoritative, innovative rather than institutional and speculative rather than orthodox, Linda Charnes' provocative study of Shakespeare's legacy in contemporary American and British politics explores the following themes: namesake princes and presidents stolen thrones and elections plutocrats and insurgents campaign trails and war-mongering waning monarchy and imperilled democracy revengers, early modern and postmodern. Linked by focused readings of Hamlet and the Henriad, the essays follow Shakespeare's two most famous royal sons, the Princes Hamlet and Hal, as they haunt contemporary political psychology in the early years of a new millennium, and especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Between devolution in Britain and the new 'doctrine' of pre-emptive strike in the United States, our contemporary Hamlets and Hals epitomize a debate - as fraught now as in Shakespeare' day - about the cost of spin-doctoring legacies. In exploring how current political culture inherits Shakespeare, Hamlet's Heirs challenges scholarly assumptions about historical periodicity, modernity and the uses of Shakespeare in present day contexts.

Conceptualizing the curse as the representation of a foundational, mythical violence that is embedded within juridical discourse, Shakespeare's Curse pursues a reading of Richard III, King John, and King Lear in order to analyse the persistence of imprecations in the discourses of modernity. Shakespeare wrote during a period that was transformative in the development of juridical thinking. However, taking up the relationship between theatre, theology and law, Bjoern Quiring argues that the curse was not eliminated from legal discourses during this modernization of jurisprudence; rather, it persisted and to this day continues to haunt numerous speech acts. Drawing on the work of Derrida, Lacan, Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, among others, Quiring analyses the performativity of the curse, and tracks its power through the juristic themes that are pursued within Shakespeare's plays - such as sovereignty, legitimacy, succession, obligation, exception, and natural law. Thus, this book provides an original and important insight into early modern legal developments, as well as a fresh perspective on some of Shakespeare's best-known works. A fascinating interdisciplinary study, this book will interest students and scholars of Law, Literature, and History.

This reissed edition of Longman Annotated Texts King Lear includes comprehensive notes, annotations and an introduction, all designed to be of use to undergraduates and interested readers. King Lear is one of Shakespeare's most widely studied tragedies. However, since the late 1970s textual scholars, critics and editors have argued that there is no single 'King Lear' text. Anyone studying the play needs to be aware of two different texts, one based on the quarto of 1608, The History of King Lear, and a revised version published in the first folio of 1623, The Tragedy of King Lear. This edition offers a fully annotated, modern spelling version of the texts set side by side, identifying and elucidating the major discrepancies between the two. It presents some possible reasons for the differences between the two texts, which themselves shed light on a number of issues relating to literary transmission in the Renaissance and give an insight into the nature of performance and censorship.

(Applause Books). This Applause edtiion allows the reader and student to look beyond the scholarly reading text to the more sensuous, more collaborative, more malleable performance text which emerges in conjunction with the commentary and notes. Readers and students are faced with real theatrical choices in each speech as the editors point out the challenges and opportunities to the actor and director at each juncture. Readers will not only discover an enlivened Shakespeare, they will be empowered to rehearse and direct their own productions of the imagination in the process.

The most deviant forms of human behaviour can be disturbing, incomprehensible, and sometimes very frightening. Herschel Prins believes that even the most deviant-seeming behaviours have their counterparts in 'normality' and can often be seen as an extension of this. In Bizarre Behaviours he sets some extreme forms of behaviour, such as vampirism and amok, in their socio-cultural and psychological contexts. Originally published in 1990, this very accessible and readable book will interest not only all those who have to deal with bizarre behaviour in the course of their work, but also the general reader who is interested in the origins and the infinite variety of human behaviours.

This is the first fully annotated modern-spelling edition of King Henry VIII to appear for over a decade and includes up-to-date scholarship on all aspects of the play including its stage history. The editor accepts the view that the play is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher. Unique to this edition is the frequent reference to Cavendish's biography of Wolsey, neglected in earlier editions.