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"Includes the plays Joan of Arc and William Tell Two plays about
historical characters whose fame has also raised them to the level
of myth. In Joan of Arc (1801), Schiller allows his heroine a more
glorious death than her historical execution at the stake, and
imbues her with more passion, and compassion, than is usually
ascribed to the actual Joan. In William Tell (1805), often regarded
as his greatest play, Schiller creates a vivid sense of time and
place - medieval Switzerland - and in his troubled hero, the
accidental revolutionary Tell, create a complex and fascinating
figure. One of the great figures in German literature, Friedrich
Schiller (1759-1805) was in some ways the most significant
playwright of his day, numbering among his devotees Coleridge and
Carlyle. His plays are known for their originality of form, vivid
stage imagery and powerful language, faithfully rendered in Robert
David MacDonald's acclaimed translations. "
The power and magic of the Faust story, the man who, in a pact with
the Devil, trades his soul in return for a period of total
knowledge and absolute power, is one of the most potent of all
European myths. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) worked on
this poetic drama in bursts from his twenties until the end of his
life. He reshaped the perpetually fascinating legend, probing the
nature and process of human striving and questioning the assumed
divisins between the forces of good and evil. His Faust has become
a landmark in world literature. Robert David MacDonald's
translation of Faust, used in acclaimed productions in Scotland
(Glasgow Citizens') and England (Lyric Hammersmith), offers access
to the play in the English language for readers and playgoers alike
and opens up the extraordinary range and pace of Goethe's language,
rhythms, imagery and ideas, without sacrificing any of the play's
humour. The Open University has adopted the translation as a set
book for the course entitled 'From Enlightenment to Romanticism'.
Adapted by Robert David MacDonald from Gitta Sereny's Into That
Darkness "Robert David MacDonald’s In Quest of Conscience, based
on Gitta Sereny’s Into That Darkness, a record of her interviews
with death camp commandant Franz Stangl, takes it for granted that
the Holocaust was a shocking crime against humanity; what it wants
to know, with an urgency amounting to desperation, is how it
happened, and how it can be prevented from happening again." -
Joyce Macmillan, Scotland on Sunday "Stangl... bureaucrat of death
who administered as massive an evil as the Holocaust in the same
routine spirit in which he would have administered butter rationing
... What manner of man can be responsible for the slaughter of
1,200,000 of his fellows in the space of 14 months?" - Joseph
Farrell, The Scotsman "Plays such as In Quest of Conscience are
messengers of the unspeakable, which is why they should be listened
to as this powerful, dignified piece was in complete moral
silence." - John Peter, The Sunday Times "A brilliant and important
play which is based on the actual interviews with the death camp
commandant Franz Stragl by Gitta Sereny searching desperately to
discover how the Holocaust happened, how one worked and lived with
it, and how to prevent it occurring again" Blanche Marvin
This work contains three masterpieces by one of the most important
French dramatists of the 17th century. "Berenice" is a tale of love
and personal happiness in conflict with public duty. "Phedre"
concerns a princess with an overwhelming infatuation with her
stepson. "Britannicus" lays bare the relationships at the heart of
power as a world slips into moral chaos. These new versions by two
of the country's most distinguished director-translators prove that
Racine is far from untranslatable; they offer blisteringly
effective poetry, urgent plotting and powerhouse roles for both
actors and actresses.
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Enrico Four (Paperback)
Luigi Pirandello, Robert David MacDonald
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R384
Discovery Miles 3 840
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Premiered in this translation by the Citizens Theatre Company,
Glasgow. Pirandello's study of perceptions has become a
twentieth-century classic which invites us to consider our personal
madness in offering a different face to everyone we meet.
Carlo Goldoni (1707 - 1793) was one of the most prolific and
versatile playwrights of his century, even though most of his vast
output deals with life confined to a few square miles of Northern
Italy. This new edition contains two comedies about women surviving
precariously in a man's world, but each taking a distinctly
different approach to her problems. Mirandolina believes open
dealing is essential; Valentina wants to have her cake and eat it,
and uses intrigue to further her interests. Both are eager to win
some kind of equality in a world in which they have no equality,
only certain advantages, and almost come to grief. But these are
worldly comedies and Goldoni does not deny us the satisfaction of
seeing the women triumph.
"Includes the plays Don Carlos and Mary Stuart Major historical
upheavals of the Sixteenth Century illuminate Schiller's
increasingly troubled reaction to the present in these two plays.
The huge epic Don Carlos (1787), a 'play expressing a view of
life', marries the ideological battle between Philip II of Spain
and his son Don Carlos to a gripping narrative. In Mary Stuart
(1800), Schiller, sickened by the excesses of a revolution he had
once supported, brings together two monarchs - the English
Elizabeth Tudor and the Scottish Mary Stuart, cousins who in
reality never met - when Mary, falsely accused of conspiracy, finds
herself at Elizabeth's mercy."
Includes the plays The Robbers and Passion and Politics Two plays
concerned with tyranny and freedom. Schiller's first play, The
Robbers (1781), was written in great secrecy under the prison like
conditions of Wurttenberg's Karlsschule: Karl, the son of a count,
is disinherited through the machinations of his brother Franz, and,
turning his back on a social order he finds unjust and corrupt,
becomes the leader of a band of robbers. In Passion and Politics
(1784), a 'bourgeoise tragedy', the love between Louise, a
musician's daughter, and Ferdinand, a politician's son, crosses an
unbridgeable social divide. One of the great figures in German
literature, Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was one of the most
significant playwright of his day, numbering among his devotees
Coleridge and Carlyle. His plays are known for their originality of
form, vivid stage imagery and powerful language, faithfully
rendered in Robert David MacDonald's acclaimed translations.
As witty as they are alarming, these three plays cover a
considerable range of settings and offer unusual and rewarding
opportunities to the actors. De Sade Show presents a gruesome
picture of the notorious philosopher and his intimate friends,
Salto Mortale take the audience by tortuous route to the circus,
while Persons Unknown examines the whys and wherefores of one of
the 19th century's most celebrated and puzzling unsolved crimes.
All in all, a disturbing and funny trio, and another instance of a
remarkable individual voice in the theatre.
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Tasso/Clavigo (Paperback)
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe; Translated by Robert David MacDonald
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R394
Discovery Miles 3 940
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Goethe's classical verse play Tasso (1790) examines, in his own
words, 'the disproportion of talent to life' and the predicament of
the artist at odds with the world around him. In Clavigo (1774), a
play which Goethe claimed only took him a week to write, we find
the first of the double-portraits which culminates in two souls
wrestling for dominion in the breast of Faust. Both these
translations were premiered at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.
"Carlo Goldoni was Italy's greatest playwright of the eighteenth
century and wrote at least one hundred and fifty plays, although
only a handful; of these have been performed since his time.
Working for theatres in both Venice and Paris, he took much of his
inspiration from 'commedia dell'arte'. This collection focuses on
Goldoni's more serious side and includes the plays Don Juan,
Friends and Lovers and The Battlefield. The first published
English-language edition of Goldoni's worldly vision of the Don
Juan legend, in verse, alongside translations of the naturalistic
Friends and Lovers and The Battlefield, all of which were first
seen at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. "
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Brand (Paperback, New Ed)
Henrik Ibsen; Translated by Robert David MacDonald
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R387
Discovery Miles 3 870
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Robert David MacDonald's majestic version of Ibsen's poem-drama
about the triumph of will over compromise. Brand, a fiery
priest-hero, urges his flock to sacrifice their lives to save their
souls.
The Robbers (1781) was written in great secrecy under the
prison-like conditions of Wurttenberg's Karlsschule: Karl, the son
of a count, is disinherited through the machinations of his brother
Franz, and, turning his back on a social order he finds unjust and
corrupt, becomes the leader of a band of robbers.
These two tragedies, written at the peak of Schiller's career as a
dramatist, contain his most telling, and touching, portrayals of
women. His heroines are propelled, by birth or a sense of divine
mission, into exalted political positions, where their qualities as
human beings, and particularly as women, are put to the severest
tests, from which they emerge triumphant, but doomed. Schiller's
breadth of sentiment, combined with his consummate stagecraft, and
Shakespearean mastery of verse and nobility of language, ensure his
position as Germany's greatest dramatist, and these translations,
prepared for, and performed by Glasgow's famous Citizens Company,
should go far to ensure his long overdue acceptance in Britain as a
master of the European Theatre.
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