Shakespeare Saved My Life

Shakespeare Saved My Life

Author: Laura Bates

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1402273150

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A female professor, a super maximum security prisoner, and how Shakespeare saved them both Shakespeare professor and prison volunteer Laura Bates thought she had seen it all. That is, until she decided to teach Shakespeare in a place the bard had never been before—supermax solitary confinement. In this unwelcoming place, surrounded by inmates known as the worst of the worst, is Larry Newton. A convicted murderer with several escape attempts under his belt and a brilliantly agile mind on his shoulders, Larry was trying to break out of prison at the same time Laura was fighting to get her program started behind bars. A testament to the power of literature, Shakespeare Saved My Life is a remarkable memoir. Fans of Orange is the New Black (Piper Kerman), A Place to Stand (Jimmy Baca) and I Couldn't Help Myself (Wally Lamb) will be be inspired by the story of the most unlikely friendship, one bonded by Shakespeare and lasting years—a friendship that would, in the end, save more than one life. What readers are saying about Shakespeare Saved My Life: "I was tremendously moved by both the potential impact of Shakespeare and learning on human beings and the story of this one man." "This is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read." "I have never read a book that touched me as much as this memoir." "It is a challenging and remarkable story." "I loved this book so much. It changed my life." What reviewers are saying about Shakespeare Saved My Life: "You don't have to be a William Shakespeare fan, a prisoner, or a prison reformer to appreciate this uplifting book. "Shakespeare Saved My Life" also reveals many important truths ... about the meaning of empathy in our dealings with others"—Finger Lake Times "Shakespeare Saved My Life touches on the search for meaning in life, the struggles that complicate the path to triumph and the salvation that can be found in literature's great works ... An inspiring account."—Shelf Awareness "Opening the mind's prison proves enormously gratifying, not to mention effective ... brave, groundbreaking work"—Publishers Weekly "An eye-opening study reiterating the perennial power of books, self-discipline, and the Bard of Avon."—Kirkus "A powerful testament to how Shakespeare continues to speak to contemporary readers in all sorts of circumstances."—Booklist


Deconstructing Macbeth

Deconstructing Macbeth

Author: Harald William Fawkner

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780838633939

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Macbeth is discussed in relation to Derrida's notion of the metaphysics of presence. Fawkner argues that the quest for metaphysical certitude in Macbeth is related to the hero's transformation from a heroic to a post-heroic status.


King Richard II

King Richard II

Author: William Shakespeare

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-04-28

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 113983522X

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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. For this second edition of King Richard II Andrew Gurr has added a new section to the introduction, in which he discusses a number of important theatrical productions as well as the scholarly criticism of recent years. Gurr foregrounds the growing interest in re-historicising and re-politicising the play, emphasising that, to Shakespeare's contemporaries, King Richard II was a balanced dramatisation of the central political and constitutional issue of the day: how to reign-in an unjust ruler. The Introduction provides a full context for both contemporaneous and modern views of King Richard's fall. An updated reading list completes the edition.


King Richard ll

King Richard ll

Author: William Shakespeare

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-12-06

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1108534430

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In this updated edition of King Richard II, Claire McEachern provides a fresh introductory section in which she discusses the most important productions and scholarly criticism of recent years. Paying particular attention to the focus on religion in contemporary interpretations of the play, McEachern also analyses the increasing number of performances on stage and screen. Andrew Gurr's acclaimed introduction guides the reader through the play's action and politics, providing a thorough and engaging grounding in its structure, language and staging. An updated reading list completes the edition.


Deep Wisdom from Shakespeare's Dramas

Deep Wisdom from Shakespeare's Dramas

Author: Arjan Plaisier

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2012-06-25

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1620320606

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Arjan Plaisier believes audiences who view Shakespeare performances and readers who study the plays deserve better than some of the recent interpretations of the Bard's work. In their attempt to be "modern," these interpreters commit historical amnesia by slighting the Christian ethos of the early Renaissance period in which Shakespeare wrote and by riding roughshod over the religious underpinnings of his plays. This neglect skews the playwright's intentions, confuses the audience, and diminishes the full effect of the play. Plaisier, too, is modern--and in a more profound sense. He sets forth how Shakespeare shapes his plots to conform at an ultimate level to timeless biblical narrative patterns (like Northrop Frye, he regards the Bible as a "code book"), so that there is a "right" ending to the work. And in an Appendix, Plaisier provides some kindly advice to his fellow pastors. You do well, he says to them, to enrich your noble calling with attention to literature. To do this, he says, you will find Shakespeare most helpful. Yes, and Plaisier's perceptive essays point to the deep wisdom in Shakespeare by which we can all live.


The Masks of Hamlet

The Masks of Hamlet

Author: Marvin Rosenberg

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 1006

ISBN-13: 9780874134803

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Every reader is an actor according to Rosenberg. To prepare the actor-reader for insights, Rosenberg draws on major intepretations of the play worldwide, in theatre and in criticism, wherever possible from the first known performances to the present day. The book is rich and provocative on every question about the play.


Shakespeare's Drama of Exile

Shakespeare's Drama of Exile

Author: J. Kingsley-Smith

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2003-11-05

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1403938431

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Exile defines the Shakespearean canon, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen . This book traces the influences on the drama of exile, examining the legal context of banishment (pursued against Catholics, gypsies and vagabonds) in early modern England; the self-consciousness of exile as an amatory trope; and the discourses by which exile could be reshaped into comedy or tragedy. Across genres, Shakespeare's plays reveal a fascination with exile as the source of linguistic crisis, shaped by the utterance of that word 'Banished'.


Shakespeare on screen : The Henriad

Shakespeare on screen : The Henriad

Author: Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (éd.)

Publisher: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre

Published:

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9782877758413

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Filming plays from a tetralogy of history plays implies specific problems and strategies. The papers in this volume show that the plays are parts of a series, and can hardly be staged or filmed without referring to one another. What does the big screen bring to the representation of history, battles and national issues? When do ideological interpretations stop being triggered by the text itself? By deciphering the different ways in which meaning is created and ideology is conveyed, whether it be through specific aesthetics, performances, intertextuality or cultural codes, the papers in this volume all take part in the on-going exploration of what Shakespeare's contrasting afterlives keep saying, not only about the dramatic texts but also about ourselves.


Hamlet's Arab Journey

Hamlet's Arab Journey

Author: Margaret Litvin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-10-23

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0691137803

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For the past five decades, Arab intellectuals have seen themselves in Shakespeare's Hamlet: their times "out of joint," their political hopes frustrated by a corrupt older generation. Hamlet's Arab Journey traces the uses of Hamlet in Arabic theatre and political rhetoric, and asks how Shakespeare's play developed into a musical with a happy ending in 1901 and grew to become the most obsessively quoted literary work in Arab politics today. Explaining the Arab Hamlet tradition, Margaret Litvin also illuminates the "to be or not to be" politics that have turned Shakespeare's tragedy into the essential Arab political text, cited by Arab liberals, nationalists, and Islamists alike. On the Arab stage, Hamlet has been an operetta hero, a firebrand revolutionary, and a muzzled dissident. Analyzing productions from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait, Litvin follows the distinct phases of Hamlet's naturalization as an Arab. Her fine-grained theatre history uses personal interviews as well as scripts and videos, reviews, and detailed comparisons with French and Russian Hamlets. The result shows Arab theatre in a new light. Litvin identifies the French source of the earliest Arabic Hamlet, shows the outsize influence of Soviet and East European Shakespeare, and explores the deep cultural link between Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and the ghost of Hamlet's father. Documenting how global sources and models helped nurture a distinct Arab Hamlet tradition, Hamlet's Arab Journey represents a new approach to the study of international Shakespeare appropriation.