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The Winter's Tale: A Commentary on the Structure
by Fitzroy PyleFirst published in 1969. Critics have in the past described The Winter's Tale as a work of "haphazard structure". More recent criticism has defended the structure of the play and this work shows that the evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare took infinite pains with the choice and disposition of the materials of The Winter's Tale. The scene-by-scene commentary considers The Winter's Tale in isolation, but prologue, epilogue and appendix place it in the context of related plays, and discuss, among others, the problem of genre as it affects the play.
The Winter's Tale
by William ShakespeareRunning an emotional gamut from betrayal and broken hearts to romance and reconciliation, this 1611 tragicomedy begins with the tyrannical actions of a jealous king, whose baseless suspicions destroy his own family. The play's second half takes place 16 years later, when the lively plot takes a lighthearted turn, abounding in song and dance.
The Winter's Tale
by William ShakespeareKing Leontes is cursed to have no heir until his long-abandonded child is returned to his kingdom.
The Winter's Tale (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)
by William ShakespeareRunning an emotional gamut from betrayal and broken hearts to romance and reconciliation, this 1611 tragicomedy begins with the tyrannical actions of a jealous king, whose baseless suspicions destroy his own family. The play's second half takes place 16 years later, when the lively plot takes a lighthearted turn, abounding in song and dance.
The Winter's Tale (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by William ShakespeareThe authoritative edition of The Winter&’s Tale from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.The Winter&’s Tale, one of Shakespeare&’s very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, &“Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale.&”It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth, is grounded in the everyday.A &“winter&’s tale&” is one told or read on a long winter&’s night. Paradoxically, this winter&’s tale is ideally seen rather than read—though the imagination can transform words into vivid action. Its shift from tragedy to comedy, disguises, and startling exits and transformations seem addressed to theater audiences.This edition includes:-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play&’s famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare&’s language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library&’s vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further readingEssay by Stephen OrgelThe Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world&’s largest collection of Shakespeare&’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
The Winter's Tale
by William Shakespeare'The work of Shakespeare is virtually infinite' Jorge Luis BorgesA jealous king, convinced that his wife has been unfaithful and is having another man's baby, imprisons her and puts her on trial. The child is abandoned to die, but when she is found and raised by a shepherd, it seems redemption may be possible. A bravura blend of tragedy, comedy and romance, Shakespeare's emotionally potent late play explores artifice and nature, mortality and renewal, and the destructive and consoling effects of time.Used and Recommended by the National TheatreGeneral Editor Stanley Wells Edited by Ernest Schanzer Introduction by Russ McDonald
The Winter's Tale (Modern Library Classics)
by William Shakespeare Jonathan Bate Eric RasmussenOne of the last plays Shakespeare penned on his own, The Winter's Tale is a transcendent work of death and rebirth, exploring irrational sexual jealousy, the redemptive world of nature, and the magical power of art.Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today's most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Each play includes an Introduction as well as an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical career; commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; a chronology of Shakespeare's life and times; and black-and-white illustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Winter's Tale
by William Shakespeare Stephen Orgel A. R. Braunmuller Frances E. Dolan"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is an elegant and clear text for either the study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller who understand that these are plays for performance as well as great texts for contemplation." (Patrick Stewart) The distinguished Pelican Shakespeare series, which has sold more than four million copies, is now completely revised and repackaged. Each volume features: * Authoritative, reliable texts * High quality introductions and notes * New, more readable trade trim size * An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts
The Winter's Tale (The New Cambridge Shakespeare)
by William Shakespeare edited by Susan Snyder Deborah T. Curren-AquinoThe Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. This 2007 edition provides a newly-edited text, a comprehensive introduction that takes into account current critical thinking, and a detailed commentary on the play's language designed to make it easily accessible to contemporary readers. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Textual analysis, four appendices - including the theatrical practice of doubling, and a select chronology of performance history - and a reading list complete the edition.
Wise Men and the Elephant
by Cleve HauboldFive foolish members of the Elephant Scholars of the World heatedly argue the nature of the elephant, which they have never seen. In a hilarious scramble, they head for India to prove their arguments. At an ancient temple where, helped by a mischievous parrot, a kindly native peddler and his son, they go from bewilderment and befuddlement to a chaotic comic climax which puts a delightful new ending to a favorite old legend. A musical score by James Hitt includes an opportunity for dances by the jungle animals.
Wise Women
by Ron OsborneComedy / 2m, 4f / Unit set / It's almost Christmas, 1944. In Knoxville, Tennessee, a frustrated mother with a secret and a teenage daughter with a dream take in two young roomers who work at a nearby bomb-making plant. Both girls are asserting their independence, one in the company of servicemen, the other as a contestant in a Miss Bombshell U.S.A. competition, an action that puts her at odds with her father, a preacher in a small Virginia town. Along the way, the teenage daughter, who worries more about rumors of an asteroid said to be streaking toward nearby Chattanooga than a vicious war raging around the world, bamboozles her mother into allowing her to attend a Frank Sinatra concert at the local USO. When she brings home a young war-bound Marine as naive as herself, this colorful collection of characters is pulled apart, then mended with humor, romance, twists, turns and revelations. As these women struggle, grow and ultimately succeed, at least for one fragile moment in time-they remind us that we're all "family" and, in each other's company, we may find ourselves.
The Wishin' Tree
by Cleve HauboldComedy / 8f / Interior / Ol' Granny Creep gives Mattie Sparks a tree that can make wishes come true. Mattie and Gramma Twiggins share the surprises as its magic stirs up hilarity. The action is fast and furious, building to a climax that reveals ture worth of the wishin' tree. Featured are clear cut comedy roles, an imaginative plot and sure fire farce situations.
Wishing Aces
by Rosary Hartel O'Neill>Short Play, Comedy . Characters: 2 male, 2 female . Bare stage w/props.. A Southern comedy about mature love found later in life, and the trouble and insight that such discoveries can bring. Though well-warned, Kitten, a runaway housewife, decides to travel with her Tulane professor, Beau, on a train trip through the Louisiana swamp. Their plans are upset when her son, Bunky, in an effort to punish her, shows up as a stowaway on the train. Kitten and Beau struggle through their disappointments, mourning the futility of their lives, while the hurricane brewing outside the train builds toward its inevitable whirlwind of destruction. . Also available in A Louisiana Gentleman and other New Orleans Comedies.
Wit: A Play
by Margaret EdsonWinner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer Award Margaret Edson's powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prizewinning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence's unifying experiencesmortalitywhile she also probes the vital importance of human relationships. What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw awaya lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, "The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It's about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It's about compassion, but it shows insensitivity." In Wit,Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end? The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson's writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader. As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen
by Max Morris'Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.' Letter to Fanny KnightThis entertaining collection gathers together Jane Austen’s wisest and wittiest quotations. The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen is a book full of sense and sensibility that’s sure to delight all lovers of this great British writer’s uniquely humorous and perceptive style.
The Wit and Wisdom of William Shakespeare
by Max Morris'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' HamletThis entertaining collection gathers together William Shakespeare’s wisest and wittiest quotations. The Wit and Wisdom of William Shakespeare proves that brevity is the soul of wit and is sure to delight all lovers of the Bard’s uniquely perceptive and influential works.
Witch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen
by Jane BarnetteWitch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen addresses the Witch as a theatrical type on twenty-first-century-North American stages and screens, seen through the lenses of casting, design, and adaptation, with attention paid to why these patterns persist, and what wishes they fulfil. Witch Fulfillment examines the Witch in performance, considering how actors embody iconic roles designated as witches (casting), and how dramaturgical choices (adaptation) heighten their witchy power. Through analysis of Witch characters ranging from Elphaba to Medea, classic plays such as The Crucible and Macbeth, feminist adaptations - including Sycorax, Obeah Opera, and Jen Silverman’s Witch - and popular culture offerings, like the Scarlet Witch and Jinkx Monsoon, this book examines the dramaturgical meanings of adapting and embodying witchy roles in the twenty-first century. This book contends that the Witch represents a crucial category of analysis for inclusive theatre and performance and will be of interest to theatre practitioners and designers, along with theatre, witchcraft, and occult studies scholars.
Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth
by Garry WillsIn Witches and Jesuits, Wills focuses on a single document to open up a window on an entire society. He begins with a simple question: If Macbeth is such a great tragedy, why do performances of it so often fail? After all, the stage history of Macbeth is so riddled with disasters that it has created a legendary curse on the drama. Superstitious actors try to evade the curse by referring to Macbeth only as "the Scottish play," but production after production continues to soar in its opening scenes, only to sputter towards anticlimax in the later acts. By critical consensus there seems to have been only one entirely successful modern performance of the play, Laurence Olivier's in 1955, and even Olivier twisted his ankle on opening night. But Olivier's ankle notwithstanding, Wills maintains that the fault lies not in Shakespeare's play, but in our selves. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of the vivid intrigue and drama of Jacobean England, Wills restores Macbeth's suspenseful tension by returning it to the context of its own time, recreating the burning theological and political crises of Shakespeare's era. He reveals how deeply Macbeth's original 1606 audiences would have been affected by the notorious Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when a small cell of Jesuits came within a hairbreadth of successfully blowing up not only the King, but the Prince his heir, and all members of the court and Parliament. Wills likens their shock to that endured by Americans following Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination. Furthermore, Wills documents, the Jesuits were widely believed to be acting in the service of the Devil, and so pervasive was the fear of witches that just two years before Macbeth's first performance, King James I added to the witchcraft laws a decree of death for those who procured "the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person--to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment." We see that the treason and necromancy in Macbeth were more than the imaginings of a gifted playwright--they were dramatizations of very real and potent threats to the realm. In this new light, Macbeth is transformed. Wills presents a drama that is more than a well-scripted story of a murderer getting his just penalty, it is the struggle for the soul of a nation. The death of a King becomes a truly apocalyptic event, and Malcolm, the slain King's son, attains the status of a man defying cosmic evil. The guilt of Lady Macbeth takes on the Faustian aspect of one who has singed her hands in hell. The witches on the heath, shrugged off as mere symbols of Macbeth's inner guilt and ambition by twentieth century interpreters, emerge as independent agents of the occult with their own (or their Master's) terrifying agendas. Restoring the theological politics and supernatural elements that modern directors have shied away from, Wills points the way towards a Macbeth that will finally escape the theatrical curse on "the Scottish play." Rich in insight and a joy to read, Witches and Jesuits is a tour de force of scholarship and imagination by one of our foremost writers, essential reading for anyone who loves the language.
With Bated Breath
by Bryden MacdonaldWilly, a troubled but charismatic gay kid, flees Cape Breton Island for Montreal with hopes of forgetting a newly broken heart by starting a new life in the big city. There, he retreats into a world of fantasy and anonymity, and soon goes missing without a trace. As rumours fly, he is remembered and reinvented by the play's characters.
with their eyes: September 11th
by Annie ThomsA deeply moving play remembering September 11, 2001, written by high school students who witnessed the tragedy unfold.A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age“Profound.” —Booklist“Moving.” —Publishers Weekly“Rings with authenticity and resonates with power.” —School Library JournalTuesday, September 11, started off like any other day at Stuyvesant High School, located only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.The semester was just beginning, and the students, faculty, and staff were ready to start a new year. But within a few hours on that Tuesday morning, they would share an experience that would transform their lives—and the lives of all Americans.This powerful play by the students of Stuyvesant High School remember those who were lost and those who were forced to witness this tragedy. Here, in their own words, are the firsthand stories of a day we will never forget. This collection helped shape the HBO documentary In the Shadow of the Towers: Stuyvesant High on 9/11.For dramatic rights, please visit http://permissions.harpercollins.com/.
Without a Dowry and Other Plays
by Alexander OstrovskyOne of the most important Russian playwrights of the nineteenth century, Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) is credited with bringing realism to the Russian stage. Contemporary of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy and precursor to Chekhov, he was a keen sociological observer, often exposing abuses of power, landing him in trouble with the censors again and again. He wrote 47 original plays and began the tradition of acting today associated with Stanislavsky. Ostrovsky’s plays were written with performance in mind and with a masterful use of colloquial language. To this day they are a much-performed part of the Russian repertory. This volume collects four of Ostrovsky’s key plays, each from a different decade-A Profitable Position, An Ardent Heart, Without a Dowry, and Talents and Admirers, and is rounded out by the translator’s introduction, an afterword for each play, an extensive bibliography, and complete list of Ostrovsky’s works. .
Without Apologies
by Thom ThomasComedy / 3m, 3f / Interior / Without apologies to Oscar Wilde, this delightful comedy dares to fill us in on what happened to Gwendolyn, Cecily, Jack and Algernon after the final curtain of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'. It is 1933 and Algy and Gwen have been married and living a cozy middle class life in London for 34 years. In all this time, they have not seen and have had no desire to see Cecily and Jack who is now known as Ernie. Now, Cecily has written to tell Gwen that they are coming to visit. Why after all these years? This question is at the core of the mysterious hilarity that abounds in this boisterous, witty, literate and highly entertaining sequel. / "Razor sharp wit. . . . Sublime entertainment." -The Portland Downtowner
The Witlings and the Woman Hater (Pickering Women's Classics)
by Geoffrey M SillThis edition contains two of Frances Burney's comedies: "The Witlings", (1778-80) which satirizes the bluestockings; and "The Woman Hater" (1800-02), which explores social pretension and gender conflict.
Witness For The Prosecution
by Agatha ChristieFull Length Play / Mystery Thriller / 8m, 5f / Interior Set. Leonard Vole stands in the dock, accused of murder. His wife can prove his innocence but when she takes the stand she denies his alibi. Can he escape the hangman's noose? Winner! New York Critics Circle Award.