Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance studies interrelationships between English and Italian Theatre of the Renaissance period, including texts, performance and performance spaces, and cultural parallels and contrasts. Connections are traced between Italian writers including Aretino, Castiglione and Zorenzo Valla and such English playwrights as Shakespeare, Lyly and Ben Jonson. The impact of Italian popular tradition on Shakespeare's comedies is analysed, together with Jonson's theatrical recreation of Venice, and Italian sources for the court masques of Jonson, Daniel and Campion.

Transforming Capitalism addresses the challenges to shareholder capitalism. It explores: fair play in the market place;challenges on systemic, organizational and individual levels; the need to refocus our economic system around community and cooperation; the current challenges and transform capitalism.

This fourth volume in the European Festival Studies, 1450-1700 series breaks with precedent in stemming from a joint conference (Venice, 2013) between the Society for European Festivals Research and the PALATIUM project supported by the European Science Foundation. The volume draws on up-to-date research by a Europe-wide group of academic scholars and museum and gallery curators to provide a unique, intellectually-stimulating and beautifully-illustrated account of temporary architecture created for festivals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, together with permanent architecture pressed into service for festival occasions across major European locations including Italian, French, Austrian, Scottish and German. Appealing and vigorous in style, the essays look towards classical sources while evoking political and practical circumstances and intellectual concerns - from re-shaping and re-conceptualizing early sixteenth-century Rome, through providing for the well-being and political allegiance of Medici-era Florentines and exploring the teasing aesthetics of performance at Versailles to accommodating players and spectators in seventeenth-century Paris and at royal and ducal events for the Habsburg, French and English crowns. The volume is unique in its field in the diversity of its topics and the range of its scholarship and fascinating in its account of the intellectual and political life of Early Modern Europe.

This sixth volume in the European Festival Studies series stems from a joint conference (Venice, 2013) between the Society for European Festivals Research and the European Science Foundation's PALATIUM project. Drawing on up-to-date scholarship, a Europe-wide group of early-career and experienced academics provides a unique account of spectacular occasions of state which influenced the political, social and cultural lives of contemporary societies. International pan-European turbulence associated with post-Reformation religious conflict supplies the context within which the book explores how the period's rulers and elite families competed for power - in a forecast of today's divided world.

The fourteen essays that comprise this volume concentrate on festival iconography, the visual and written languages, including ephemeral and permanent structures, costume, dramatic performance, inscriptions and published festival books that 'voiced' the social, political and cultural messages incorporated in processional entries in the countries of early modern Europe. The volume also includes a transcript of the newly-discovered Register of Lionardo di Zanobi Bartholini, a Florentine merchant, which sets out in detail the expenses for each worker for the possesso (or Entry) of Pope Leo X to Rome in April 1513.

A remarkable resurgence of interest has taken place over recent years in a biographical approach to the work of early modern poets and dramatists, in particular to the plays and poems of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson. The contributors to this volume approach the topic in a manner that is at once critically and historically alert. They acknowledge that the biographical evidence for all three authors is limited, thus throwing the emphasis acutely on interpretation. In addition to new scholarship, the essays are valuable for their awareness of the challenges posed by recent redirections of critical methodology. Scepticism and self-criticism are marked features of the writing gathered here.

This collection of commissioned essays by established scholars, responds to critical debate on political theatre of the turbulent early years of the seventeenth century. Theatre is widely interpreted. The authors discuss censorship, the social implications of pageantry, Reformation ideals, popular theatre and the politics of the masque throughout the period. An early chapter discusses political theatre in the light of work by revisionist and post-revisionist historians. The drama of Jonson, Dekker, Middleton, Massinger, Chapman, Heywood and Rowley is given detailed attention, while Shakespeare's plays are considered in the introductory chapter.

This sixth volume in the European Festival Studies series stems from a joint conference (Venice, 2013) between the Society for European Festivals Research and the European Science Foundation's PALATIUM project. Drawing on up-to-date scholarship, a Europe-wide group of early-career and experienced academics provides a unique account of spectacular occasions of state which influenced the political, social and cultural lives of contemporary societies. International pan-European turbulence associated with post-Reformation religious conflict supplies the context within which the book explores how the period's rulers and elite families competed for power - in a forecast of today's divided world.

In this book, originally published in 1999, leading Shakespeare scholars from Japan and the West broke new ground by studying the interaction of Japanese and Western conceptions of Shakespeare, and the assimilation of Shakespeare into richly traditional theatre practice. The first part deals with key twentieth-century moments in the production of Shakespeare, including the work of world-famous Japanese directors such as Ninagawa, Suzuki and Noda, while the second part considers parallels and differences between Japanese and western theatre over a longer timespan, focusing on the relationship of Shakespeare to traditional Japanese Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku and Kyogen. Additional features include full-colour illustrations, a comprehensive chronology of Shakespeare performances in Japan and the English text of a celebrated Kyogen adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The guild buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford represent a rare instance of a largely unchanged set of buildings which draw together the threads of the town's civic life. With its multi-disciplinary perspectives on this remarkable group of buildings, this volume provides a comprehensive account of the religious, educational, legal, social and theatrical history of Stratford, focusing on the sixteenth century and Tudor Reformation. The essays interweave with one another to provide a map of the complex relationships between the buildings and their history. Opening with an investigation of the Guildhall, which served as the headquarters of the Guild of the Holy Cross until the Tudor Reformation, the book explores the building's function as a centre of local government and community law and as a place of entertainment and education. It is beyond serious doubt that Shakespeare was a school boy here, and the many visits to the Guildhall by professional touring players during the latter half of the sixteenth-century may have prompted his acting and playwriting career. The Guildhall continues to this day to house a school for the education of secondary-level boys. The book considers educational provision during the mid sixteenth century as well as examining the interaction between touring players and the everyday politics and social life of Stratford. At the heart of the volume is archaeological and documentary research which uses up-to-date analysis and new dendrochronological investigations to interpret the buildings and their medieval wall paintings as well as proposing a possible location of the school before it transferred to the Guildhall. Together with extensive archival research into the town's Court of Record which throws light on the commercial and social activities of the period, this rich body of research brings us closer to life as it was lived in Shakespeare's Stratford.

Festival culture is an area which has attracted increasing interest in the field of Renaissance studies in recent years. In part the outcome of scholars' focus on the place of the city in the establishment and dissemination of common culture, the attention paid to festivals also arises from the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, which reaches across the usual demarcation lines between disciplines such as cultural, political and economic history, literature, and the visual and performing arts. The scholars contributing to this volume include representatives from all these disciplines. Their essays explore common themes in festival culture across Renaissance Europe, including the use of festival in political self-fashioning and the construction of a national self-image. Moreover, in their detailed examination of particular types of festival, they challenge generalizations and demonstrate the degree to which these events were influenced the personality of the prince, the sources of funding for the ceremony, and the role of festival managers. Usually perceived as binding forces promoting social cohesion, festivals held the potential for discord, as some of the essays here reveal. Examining a wide range of festivals including coronations, triumphal entries, funerals and courtly spectacles, this volume provides a more inclusive understanding than hitherto of festivals and their role in European Renaissance culture.

Transforming Capitalism addresses the challenges to shareholder capitalism. It explores: fair play in the market place;challenges on systemic, organizational and individual levels; the need to refocus our economic system around community and cooperation; the current challenges and transform capitalism.

In this book, originally published in 1999, leading Shakespeare scholars from Japan and the West broke new ground by studying the interaction of Japanese and Western conceptions of Shakespeare, and the assimilation of Shakespeare into richly traditional theatre practice. The first part deals with key twentieth-century moments in the production of Shakespeare, including the work of world-famous Japanese directors such as Ninagawa, Suzuki and Noda, while the second part considers parallels and differences between Japanese and western theatre over a longer timespan, focusing on the relationship of Shakespeare to traditional Japanese Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku and Kyogen. Additional features include full-colour illustrations, a comprehensive chronology of Shakespeare performances in Japan and the English text of a celebrated Kyogen adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

This collection of commissioned essays by established scholars, responds to critical debate on political theatre of the turbulent early years of the seventeenth century. Theatre is widely interpreted. The authors discuss censorship, the social implications of pageantry, Reformation ideals, popular theatre and the politics of the masque throughout the period. An early chapter discusses political theatre in the light of work by revisionist and post-revisionist historians. The drama of Jonson, Dekker, Middleton, Massinger, Chapman, Heywood and Rowley is given detailed attention, while Shakespeare's plays are considered in the introductory chapter.

The rebuilding of the Globe theater (1599-1613) on London's Bankside, a few yards from the site of the playhouse in which many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed, must rank as one of the most imaginative enterprises of recent decades. The realization of the vision of Sam Wanamaker and his architect Theo Crosby, it has aroused intense interest among scholars and the general public worldwide. In anticipation of the official opening and the first performance season, visitors have been drawn in large numbers to the auditorium and exhibition. Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt offers a fully-illustrated account of the research that has gone into the Globe reconstruction, drawing on the work of leading scholars, theater people and craftsmen to provide an authoritative view of the twenty years of research and the hundreds of practical decisions entailed. Documents of the period, both visual and written, have been explored anew; the techniques of timber-framed building have been relearned; the archaeology of the Globe and the neighboring Rose playhouse has been further evaluated; the decorative practices of Elizabethan craftsmen have been researched; and all this reconciled with the requirements of the actors and the practical and legal restrictions of modern architectural design. The result is a book that will fascinate scholarly readers and laymen alike.

Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance studies interrelationships between English and Italian Theatre of the Renaissance period, including texts, performance and performance spaces, and cultural parallels and contrasts. Connections are traced between Italian writers including Aretino, Castiglione and Zorenzo Valla and such English playwrights as Shakespeare, Lyly and Ben Jonson. The impact of Italian popular tradition on Shakespeare's comedies is analysed, together with Jonson's theatrical recreation of Venice, and Italian sources for the court masques of Jonson, Daniel and Campion.

This fourth volume in the European Festival Studies, 1450-1700 series breaks with precedent in stemming from a joint conference (Venice, 2013) between the Society for European Festivals Research and the PALATIUM project supported by the European Science Foundation. The volume draws on up-to-date research by a Europe-wide group of academic scholars and museum and gallery curators to provide a unique, intellectually-stimulating and beautifully-illustrated account of temporary architecture created for festivals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, together with permanent architecture pressed into service for festival occasions across major European locations including Italian, French, Austrian, Scottish and German. Appealing and vigorous in style, the essays look towards classical sources while evoking political and practical circumstances and intellectual concerns - from re-shaping and re-conceptualizing early sixteenth-century Rome, through providing for the well-being and political allegiance of Medici-era Florentines and exploring the teasing aesthetics of performance at Versailles to accommodating players and spectators in seventeenth-century Paris and at royal and ducal events for the Habsburg, French and English crowns. The volume is unique in its field in the diversity of its topics and the range of its scholarship and fascinating in its account of the intellectual and political life of Early Modern Europe.

The first fully-fledged example of a revenge tragedy, the genre that became so influential in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, "The Spanish Tragedy" (1589) occupies a very special place in the history of English Renaissance drama. Hieronimo, Knight-Marshal of Spain during its war with Portugal, fails to obtain justice when his son is murdered for courting Bel-Imperia, the Duke of Castile's daughter, and decides to take justice into his own hands

This new student edition has been freshly revised by Professor Andrew Gurr to incorporate the latest stage history and critical interpretations of the play. It also appends the scenes that were added in 1602, discusses Elizabethan attitudes to revenge, the Senecan features of the play and the significance of the Anglo-Spanish conflict in the 1580s.

Women Beware Women is among the most powerful and adroitly plotted of Jacobean tragedies. Written by Thomas Middleton, a later contemporary of Shakespeare, the play deals with topics of enduring fascination such as sexual and financial greed, the sexual exploitation of women by a manipulative older woman, murderous revenge and the sexual predatoriness of a man in a position of power. The storyline is based on the most public of Medici scandals in late sixteenth-century Florence, with the Grand Duke Francesco seducing and then marrying a beautiful Venetian runaway, after arranging the murder of her Florentine lower-class husband. The tragedy ends with a spectacular masque involving misdirected poison, flaming gold, poisoned arrows, poisoned smoke, physical mishaps and numerous deaths. This edition is designed for the classroom and for the reader interested in the best in Renaissance drama. -- .