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Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion
by David Loewenstein Michael WitmoreWritten by an international team of literary scholars and historians, this collaborative volume illuminates the diversity of early modern religious beliefs and practices in Shakespeare's England, and considers how religious culture is imaginatively reanimated in Shakespeare's plays. Fourteen new essays explore the creative ways Shakespeare engaged with the multifaceted dimensions of Protestantism, Catholicism, non-Christian religions including Judaism and Islam, and secular perspectives, considering plays such as Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. The collection is of great interest to readers of Shakespeare studies, early modern literature, religious studies, and early modern history.
Pollution and Crisis in Greek Tragedy
by Fabian MeinelPollution is ubiquitous in Greek tragedy: matricidal Orestes seeks purification at Apollo's shrine in Delphi; carrion from Polyneices' unburied corpse fills the altars of Thebes; delirious Phaedra suffers from a 'pollution of the mind'. This book undertakes the first detailed analysis of the important role which pollution and its counterparts - purity and purification - play in tragedy. It argues that pollution is central in the negotiation of tragic crises, fulfilling a diverse array of functions by virtue of its qualities and associations, from making sense of adversity to configuring civic identity in the encounter of self and other. While primarily a literary study providing close readings of several key plays, the book also provides important new perspectives on pollution. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars and students not only in classics and literary studies, but also in the study of religions and anthropology.
Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre: A History of the Berliner Ensemble
by David BarnettThe Berliner Ensemble was founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949. The company soon gained international prominence, and its productions and philosophy influenced the work of theatre-makers around the world. David Barnett's book is the first study of the company in any language. Based on extensive archival research, it uncovers Brecht's working methods and those of the company's most important directors after his death. The book considers the boon and burden of Brecht's legacy and provides new insights into battles waged behind the scenes for the preservation of the Brechtian tradition. The Berliner Ensemble was also the German Democratic Republic's most prestigious cultural export, attracting attention from the highest circles of government, and from the Stasi, before it privatised itself after German reunification in 1990. Barnett pieces together a complex history that sheds light on both the company's groundbreaking productions and their turbulent times.
Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess
by Annette J. SaddikThe plays of Tennessee Williams' post-1961 period have often been misunderstood and dismissed. In light of Williams' centennial in 2011, which was marked internationally by productions and world premieres of his late plays, Annette J. Saddik's new reading of these works illuminates them in the context of what she terms a 'theatre of excess', which seeks liberation through exaggeration, chaos, ambiguity, and laughter. Saddik explains why they are now gaining increasing acclaim, and analyzes recent productions that successfully captured elements central to Williams' late aesthetic, particularly a delicate balance of laughter and horror with a self-consciously ironic acting style. Grounding the plays through the work of Bakhtin, Artaud, and Kristeva, as well as through the carnivalesque, the grotesque, and psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theory, Saddik demonstrates how Williams engaged the freedom of exaggeration and excess in celebration of what he called 'the strange, the crazed, the queer'.
The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies
by Christopher B. BalmeProviding thorough coverage of the methods and tools required in studying historical and contemporary theatre, this Introduction examines the complexities of a rapidly changing and dynamic discipline. Following a cross-cultural perspective, the book surveys the ways theatre and performance are studied by looking initially at key elements such as performers, spectators and space. The central focus is on methodology, which is divided into sections covering theatre theory, historiography and textual and performance analysis. The book covers all the main theatrical genres - drama, opera and dance - providing students with a comparative, integrated perspective. Designed to guide students through the academic dimension of the discipline, the volume emphasizes questions of methodology, research techniques and approaches, and will therefore be relevant for a wide variety of theatre studies courses. Informative textboxes provide background on key topics, and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter.
The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642 (3rd edition)
by Andrew GurrThe Shakespearean Stage is the only authoritative book that describes all the main features of the original staging of Shakespearean drama in one volume: the acting companies and their acting styles, the playhouses, the staging and the audiences. For twenty years it has been hailed as not only the most reliable but the liveliest and most entertaining overview of Shakespearean theater available to students. For this third edition Professor Gurr has substantially revised the book, bringing it right up to date and incorporating many new discoveries, including those of the archaeologists at the sites of the Rose and Globe theaters. The invaluable appendix, which lists all the plays performed at a particular playhouse, the playing company and date of performance, has also been revised and rearranged.
Greek Theatre Performance
by David WilesIn this book, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theater to students and enthusiasts interested in knowing how the plays were performed. Theater was a ceremony bound up with fundamental activities in ancient Athenian life and Wiles explores those elements that created the theater of the time. Actors rather than writers are the book's main concern and Wiles examines how the actor used the resources of story-telling, dance, mask, song and visual action to create a large-scale event that would shape the life of the citizen community.
Ibsen’s Houses
by Mark B. SandbergHenrik Ibsen's plays came at a pivotal moment in late nineteenth-century European modernity. They engaged his public through a strategic use of metaphors of house and home, which resonated with experiences of displacement, philosophical homelessness, and exile. The most famous of these metaphors - embodied by the titles of his plays A Doll's House, Pillars of Society, and The Master Builder - have entered into mainstream Western thought in ways that mask the full force of the reversals Ibsen performed on notions of architectural space. Analyzing literary and performance-related reception materials from Ibsen's lifetime, Mark B. Sandberg concentrates on the interior dramas of the playwright's prose-play cycle, drawing also on his selected poems. Sandberg's close readings of texts and cultural commentary present the immediate context of the plays, provide new perspectives on them for international readers, and reveal how Ibsen became a master of the modern uncanny.
Cambridge Studies in the History of the People's Republic of China: Mao's Cultural Army
by Brian James DemareCharting their training, travels, and performances, this innovative study explores the role of the artists that roamed the Chinese countryside in support of Mao's communist revolution. DeMare traces the development of Mao's 'cultural army' from its genesis in Red Army propaganda teams to its full development as a largely civilian force composed of amateur and professional drama troupes in the early years of the PRC. Drawing from memoirs, artistic handbooks, and rare archival sources, Mao's Cultural Army uncovers the arduous and complex process of creating revolutionary dramas that would appeal to China's all-important rural audiences. The Communists strived for a disciplined cultural army to promote party policies, but audiences often shunned modern and didactic shows, and instead clamoured for traditional works. DeMare illustrates how drama troupes, caught between the party and their audiences, did their best to resist the ever growing reach of the PRC state.
Shakespeare and the Idea of Apocrypha
by Peter KirwanIn addition to the thirty-six plays of the First Folio, some eighty plays have been attributed in whole or part to William Shakespeare, yet most are rarely read, performed or discussed. This book, the first to confront the implications of the 'Shakespeare Apocrypha', asks how and why these plays have historically been excluded from the canon. Innovatively combining approaches from book history, theatre history, attribution studies and canon theory, Peter Kirwan unveils the historical assumptions and principles that shaped the construction of the Shakespeare canon. Case studies treat plays such as Sir Thomas More, Edward III, Arden of Faversham, Mucedorus, Double Falsehood and A Yorkshire Tragedy, showing how the plays' contested 'Shakespearean' status has shaped their fortunes. Kirwan's book rethinks the impact of authorial canons on the treatment of anonymous and disputed plays.
The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage
by Michelle M. DowdEarly modern England's system of patrilineal inheritance, in which the eldest son inherited his father's estate and title, was one of the most significant forces affecting social order in the period. Demonstrating that early modern theatre played a unique and vital role in shaping how inheritance was understood, Michelle M. Dowd explores some of the common contingencies that troubled this system: marriage and remarriage, misbehaving male heirs, and families with only daughters. Shakespearean drama helped question and reimagine inheritance practices, making room for new formulations of gendered authority, family structure, and wealth transfer. Through close readings of canonical and non-canonical plays by Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and others, Dowd pays particular attention to the significance of space in early modern inheritance and the historical relationship between dramatic form and the patrilineal economy. Her book will interest researchers and students of early modern drama, Shakespeare, gender studies, and socio-economic history.
The Cambridge Introduction to Scenography
by Joslin Mckinney Philip ButterworthScenography - the manipulation and orchestration of the performance environment - is an increasingly popular and key area in performance studies. This book introduces the reader to the purpose, identity and scope of scenography and its theories and concepts. Settings and structures, light, projected images, sound, costumes and props are considered in relation to performing bodies, text, space and the role of the audience. Concentrating on scenographic developments in the twentieth century, the Introduction examines how these continue to evolve in the twenty-first century. Scenographic principles are clearly explained through practical examples and their theoretical context. Although acknowledging the many different ways in which design shapes the creation of scenography, the book is not exclusively concerned with the role of the theatre designer. In order to map out the wider territory and potential of scenography, the theories of pioneering scenographers are discussed alongside the work of directors, writers and visual artists.
Shakespeare and Textual Studies
by Kidnie Margaret Jane Sonia MassaiShakespeare and Textual Studies gathers contributions from the leading specialists in the fields of manuscript and textual studies, book history, editing, and digital humanities to provide a comprehensive reassessment of how manuscript, print and digital practices have shaped the body of works that we now call 'Shakespeare'. This cutting-edge collection identifies the legacies of previous theories and places special emphasis on the most recent developments in the editing of Shakespeare since the 'turn to materialism' in the late twentieth century. Providing a wide-ranging overview of current approaches and debates, the book explores Shakespeare's poems and plays in light of new evidence, engaging scholars, editors, and book historians in conversations about the recovery of early composition and publication, and the ongoing appropriation and transmission of Shakespeare's works through new technologies.
Shakespeare on Screen Othello
by Hatchuel, Sarah and Vienne-Guerrin, Nathalie Sarah Hatchuel Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin"The first volume in the re-launched series Shakespeare on Screen is devoted to Othello, offering up-to-date coverage of recent screen versions as well as new critical essays on older, canonical films. An international cast of authors explores not only productions from the USA and UK, but also translations, adaptations and appropriations in Québec, Italy, India, Brazil and Mexico. The volume takes part in the ceaseless cultural investigation of what Othello says about Shakespeare, the past and our present time, supported by an invaluable film-bibliography. Accompanying free online resources include a fuller version of the bibliography and an additional contribution on YouTube versions of Othello. This book will be a valuable resource for students, scholars and teachers of film studies and Shakespeare studies"--
British Drama of the Industrial Revolution
by Frederick BurwickBetween the advent of the French Revolution and the short-lived success of the Chartist Movement, overworked and underpaid labourers struggled to achieve solidarity and collective bargaining. That history has been told in numerous accounts of the age, but never before has it been told in terms of the theatre of the period. To understand the play lists of a theatre, it is crucial to examine the community which that theatre serves. In the labouring-class communities of London and the provinces, the performances were adapted to suit the local audiences, whether weavers, or miners, or field workers. Examining the conditions and characteristics of representative provincial theatres from the 1790s to 1830s, Frederick Burwick argues that the meaning of a play changes with every change in the performance location. As contributing factors in that change, Burwick attends to local political and cultural circumstances as well as to theatrical activities and developments elsewhere.
Shakespeare, Origins and Originality (Shakespeare Survey vol. #68)
by Peter Holland1. Shakespeare's anecdotal character Margreta de Grazia 2. What is a source? Or, how Shakespeare read His Marlowe Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith 3. Imitation or collaboration? Marlowe and the early Shakespeare canon Gary Taylor and John V. Nance 4. 'O Jephthah, judge of Israel': from original to accreted meanings in Hamlet's allusion Péter Dávidházi 5. The elephants' graveyard revisited: Shakespeare at work in Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and All's Well That Ends Well Catherine Belsey 6. 'Every like is not the same': translating Shakespeare in Spanish today Alfredo Michel Modenessi 7. Reading originals by the light of translations Tom Cheesman 8. 'My name is Will': Shakespeare's sonnets and autobiography Stanley Wells 9. Tracings and data in The Tempest: author, world and representation Janet Clare 10. Shakespearean gesture: narrative and iconography Farah Karim-Cooper 11. The origin of the late Renaissance dramatic convention of self-addressed speech James Hirsh 12. Reading in their present: early readers and the origins of Shakespearian appropriation Jean-Christophe Mayer 13. Shakespeare out of time (or, Hugo takes dictation from the beyond) Ruth Morse 14. Betrayal, derail, or a thin veil: the myth of origin Bi-qi Beatrice Lei 15. Global Shakespeares, affective histories, cultural memories Jyotsna G. Singh and Abdulhamit Arvas 16. Spinach and tobacco: making Shakespearian unoriginals Peter Holland 17. Ren Fest Shakespeare: the cosplay Bard Andrew James Hartley 18. 'Dead as earth': contemporary topicality and myths of origin in King Lear and The Shadow King Kate Flaherty 19. Shakespeare and the idea of national theatres Michael Dobson 20. John Rice and the boys of the Jacobean King's Men David Kathman 21. Shakespeare's Irish lives: the politics of biography Andrew Murphy 22. Shakespeare in blockaded Berlin: the 1948 'Elizabethan Festival' Bettina Boecker 23. Connecting the Globe: actors, audience and entrainment Robert Shaughnessy 24. 'Freetown!': Shakespeare and social flourishing Ewan Fernie 25. We'll always have Paris: the third household and the 'bed of death' in Romeo and Juliet Nicholas Crawford 26. The 'serpent of old Nile': Cleopatra and the pragmatics of reported speech Jelena Marelj 27. 'This insubstantial pageant faded': the drama of semiotic anxiety in The Tempest Lynn Forest-Hill 28. Shakespeare performances in England 2014 Carol Chillington Rutter 29. Professional Shakespeare productions in the British Isles, January–December 2013 James Shaw The year's contribution to Shakespeare studies: 1. Critical studies Charlotte Scott 2. Shakespeare in performance Russell Jackson 3. Editions and textual studies Peter Kirwan.
Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination
by Stuart SillarsShakespeare's knowledge of the practices of visual art, its fundamental concepts and the surrounding debates is clear from his earliest works. This book explores this relationship, showing how key works develop visual compositions as elements of dramatic movement, construction of ideas, and reflections on the artifice of theatre and language. The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream are explored in detail, offering new insights into their forms, themes, and place in European traditions. The use of emblems is examined in Titus Andronicus and As You Like It; studies of Venus and Adonis, some sonnets and The Rape of Lucrece reveal different but related visual aspects; a later chapter suggests how the new relation between seeing and soliloquy in The Rape of Lucrece is developed in other plays. Extensively illustrated, the book explores Shakespeare's assimilation and exploration of visual traditions in structure, theme and idea throughout the canon.
Celebrating Shakespeare
by Calvo, Clara and Kahn, Coppélia Clara Calvo Coppélia KahnOn the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this collection opens up the social practices of commemoration to new research and analysis. An international team of leading scholars explores a broad spectrum of celebrations, showing how key events - such as the Easter Rising in Ireland, the Second Vatican Council of 1964 and the Great Exhibition of 1851 - drew on Shakespeare to express political agendas. In the USA, commemoration in 1864 counted on him to symbolise unity transcending the Civil War, while the First World War pulled the 1916 anniversary celebration into the war effort, enlisting Shakespeare as patriotic poet. The essays also consider how the dream of Shakespeare as a rural poet took shape in gardens, how cartoons challenged the poet's élite status and how statues of him mutated into advertisements for gin and Disney cartoons. Richly varied illustrations supplement these case studies of the diverse, complex and contradictory aims of memorialising Shakespeare.
A History of Japanese Theatre
by Jonah SalzJapan boasts one of the world's oldest, most vibrant and most influential performance traditions. This accessible and complete history provides a comprehensive overview of Japanese theatre and its continuing global influence. Written by eminent international scholars, it spans the full range of dance-theatre genres over the past fifteen hundred years, including noh theatre, bunraku puppet theatre, kabuki theatre, shingeki modern theatre, rakugo storytelling, vanguard butoh dance and media experimentation. The first part addresses traditional genres, their historical trajectories and performance conventions. Part II covers the spectrum of new genres since Meiji (1868–), and Parts III to VI provide discussions of playwriting, architecture, Shakespeare, and interculturalism, situating Japanese elements within their global theatrical context. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and prints, this history features interviews with key modern directors, an overview of historical scholarship in English and Japanese, and a timeline. A further reading list covers a range of multimedia resources to encourage further explorations.
Cambridge Introductions to…: The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd
by Michael Y. BennettMichael Y. Bennett's accessible Introduction explains the complex, multidimensional nature of the works and writers associated with the absurd - a label placed upon a number of writers who revolted against traditional theatre and literature in both similar and widely different ways. Setting the movement in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, Bennett provides an in-depth overview of absurdism and its key figures in theatre and literature, from Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to Tom Stoppard. Chapters reveal the movement's origins, development and present-day influence upon popular culture around the world, employing the latest research to this often challenging area of study in a balanced and authoritative approach. Essential reading for students of literature and theatre, this book provides the necessary tools to interpret and develop the study of a movement associated with some of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential cultural figures.
Shakespeare and the Natural World
by Tom MacfaulExploring the rich range of meanings that Shakespeare finds in the natural world, this book fuses ecocritical approaches to Renaissance literature with recent thinking about the significance of religion in Shakespeare's plays. MacFaul offers a clear introduction to some of the key problems in Renaissance natural philosophy and their relationship to Reformation theology, with individual chapters focusing on the role of animals in Shakespeare's universe, the representation of rural life, and the way in which humans' consumption of natural materials transforms their destinies. These discussions enable powerful new readings of Shakespeare's plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and the history plays. Proposing that Shakespeare's representation of the relationship between man and nature anticipated that of the Romantics, this volume will interest scholars of Shakespeare studies, Renaissance drama and literature, and ecocritical studies of Shakespeare.
French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater
by Laura WeigertThis book revives what was unique, strange and exciting about the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes. Laura Weigert brings together a wealth of visual artifacts and practices to explore this tradition of late medieval performance located not in 'theaters' but in churches, courts, and city streets and squares. By stressing the theatricality rather than the realism of fifteenth-century visual culture and the spectacular rather than the devotional nature of its effects, she offers a new way of thinking about late medieval representation and spectatorship. She shows how images that ostensibly document medieval performance instead revise its characteristic features to conform to a playgoing experience that was associated with classical antiquity. This retrospective vision of the late medieval performance tradition contributed to its demise in sixteenth-century France and promoted assumptions about medieval theater that continue to inform the contemporary disciplines of art and theater history.
Monuments and Literary Posterity in Early Modern Drama
by Brian ChalkIn spite of the ephemeral nature of performed drama, playwrights such as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Fletcher, and Shakespeare were deeply interested in the endurance of their theatrical work and in their own literary immortality. This book re-evaluates the relationship between these early modern dramatists and literary posterity by considering their work within the context of post-Reformation memorialization. Providing fresh analyses of plays by major dramatists, Brian Chalk considers how they depicted monuments and other funeral properties on stage in order to exploit and criticize the rich ambiguities of commemorative rituals. The book also discusses the print history of the plays featured. The subject will attract scholars and upper-level students of Renaissance drama, memory studies, early modern theatre, and print history.
Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England
by Jane RickardKing James VI and I's extensive publications and the responses they met played a key role in the literary culture of Jacobean England. This book is the first sustained study of how James's subjects commented upon, appropriated and reworked these royal writings. Jane Rickard highlights the vitality of such responses across genres - including poetry, court masque, sermon, polemic and drama - and in the different media of performance, manuscript and print. The book focuses in particular on Jonson, Donne and Shakespeare, arguing that these major authors responded in illuminatingly contrasting ways to James's claims as an author-king, made especially creative uses of the opportunities that his publications afforded and helped to inspire some of what the King in turn wrote. Their literary responses reveal that royal writing enabled a significant reimagining of the relationship between ruler and ruled. This volume will interest researchers and advanced students of Renaissance literature and history.
The Drama of Memory in Shakespeare’s History Plays
by Isabel KarremannThis book analyses the drama of memory in Shakespeare's history plays. Situating the plays in relation to the extra-dramatic contexts of early modern print culture, the Reformation and an emergent sense of nationhood, it examines the dramatic devices the theatre developed to engage with the memory crisis triggered by these historical developments. Against the established view that the theatre was a cultural site that served primarily to salvage memories, Isabel Karremann also considers the uses and functions of forgetting on the Shakespearean stage and in early modern culture. Drawing on recent developments in memory studies, new formalism and performance studies, the volume develops an innovative vocabulary and methodology for analysing Shakespeare's mnemonic dramaturgy in terms of the performance of memory that results in innovative readings of the English history plays. Karremann's book is of interest to researchers and upper-level students of Shakespeare studies, early modern drama and memory studies.