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Author: Gail Marshall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009-03-19
Total Pages: 213
ISBN-13: 0521515238
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe first full-length study of Shakespeare's influence on Victorian women writers, actresses and readers.
Author: Richard W. Schoch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1998-08-20
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780521622813
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores the revivals of Shakespeare's history plays during the Victorian period, as staged by the famous actor-manager Charles Kean. Between 1852 and 1859, Kean produced celebrated productions of Henry V, Henry VIII, King John, Macbeth and Richard II, renowned for their unprecendented attention to antiquarian detail in sets, costumes, and properties (many of which are shown in the book's illustrations). These productions provided audiences with an unparalleled opportunity to participate in the Victorian obsession with history, especially of the medieval period. Using valuable primary sources, including promptbooks, scenic designs, costume sketches and contemporary reviews, Richard Schoch places mid-Victorian attitudes towards the theatre in the context of major intellectual and political movements of the age. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of theatre history, Shakespeare studies and Victorian culture.
Author: Charles LaPorte
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020-11-05
Total Pages: 227
ISBN-13: 1108853463
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the Victorian era, William Shakespeare's work was often celebrated as a sacred text: a sort of secular English Bible. Even today, Shakespeare remains a uniquely important literary figure. Yet Victorian criticism took on religious dimensions that now seem outlandish in retrospect. Ministers wrote sermons based upon Shakespearean texts and delivered them from pulpits in Christian churches. Some scholars crafted devotional volumes to compare his texts directly with the Bible's. Still others created Shakespearean societies in the faith that his inspiration was not like that of other playwrights. Charles LaPorte uses such examples from the Victorian cult of Shakespeare to illustrate the complex relationship between religion, literature and secularization. His work helps to illuminate a curious but crucial chapter in the history of modern literary studies in the West, as well as its connections with Biblical scholarship and textual criticism.
Author: Richard Foulkes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008-11-06
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780521089531
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe contributions to this book constitute a concerted account of the place of Shakespeare in the Victorian theatre and the cultural life of the country in the nineteenth century. They explore the changing styles of acting and staging used for Shakespeare's plays by Macready, Charles Kean, the Irvings, Ellen Terry and Beerbohm Tree, and examine Shakespeare's influence on Victorian dramatists (Sheridan Knowles, Albery and W.S. Gilbert) and the relationship between the stage and the allied arts of painting (David Scott, the Pre-Raphaelites and Alma-Tadema) and music (Sullivan). During Queen Victoria's reign Shakespeare's plays attracted new audiences from the court at Windsor to such rapidly expanding conurbations as Leicester and Sheffield. In France, Germany, Italy and the New World, Shakespeare effectively became an ambassador of Britain's growing power and influence. The book develops a fascinating and well-illustrated account of these changes.
Author: Stuart Sillars
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-11
Total Pages: 227
ISBN-13: 0199668078
DOWNLOAD EBOOKShakespeare and the Victorians explores the place of Shakespeare in Victorian culture, and shows how the plays and the man became central to all levels of Victorian life and thought.
Author: Kathryn Prince
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-02-11
Total Pages: 191
ISBN-13: 1135896585
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBased on extensive archival research, Shakespeare in the Victorian Periodicals offers an entirely new perspective on popular Shakespeare reception by focusing on articles published in Victorian periodicals. Shakespeare had already reached the apex of British culture in the previous century, becoming the national poet of the middle and upper classes, but during the Victorian era he was embraced by more marginal groups. If Shakespeare was sometimes employed as an instrument of enculturation, imposed on these groups, he was also used by them to resist this cultural hegemony.
Author: Adrian Poole
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2014-03-20
Total Pages: 311
ISBN-13: 1408143720
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAdrian Poole examines the Victorian's obsession with Shakespeare, his impact upon the era's consciousness, and the expression of this in their drama, novels and poetry. The book features detailed discussion of the interpretations and applications of Shakespeare by major figures such as Dickens and Hardy, Tennyson and Browning, as well as those less well-known.
Author: Gail Marshall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1998-05-07
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780521620161
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGail Marshall argues that the professional and personal history of the Victorian actress was largely defined by her negotiation with the sculptural metaphor, and that this was authorized and determined by the Ovidian myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Drawing on evidence of theatrical fictions, visual representations and popular culture's assimilation of the sculptural image, as well as theatrical productions, she examines some of the manifestations of the sculptural metaphor on the legitimate English stage, and its implications for the actress in the later nineteenth century. Within the legitimate theatre, the 'Galatea-aesthetic' positioned actresses as predominantly visual and sexual commodities whose opportunities for interpretative engagement with their plays were minimal. This dominant aesthetic was effectively challenged only at the end of the century, with the advent of the 'New' drama, and the emergence of a body of autobiographical writings by actresses.
Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002-05-30
Total Pages: 342
ISBN-13: 9780521797115
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 2002 Companion is designed for readers interested in past and present productions of Shakespeare's plays, both in and beyond Britain. The first six chapters describe aspects of the British performing tradition in chronological sequence, from the early staging of Shakespeare's own time, through to the present day. Each relates Shakespearean developments to broader cultural concerns and adopts an individual approach and focus, on textual adaptation, acting, stages, scenery or theatre management. These are followed by three explorations of acting: tragic and comic actors and women performers of Shakespeare roles. A section on international performance includes chapters on interculturalism, on touring companies and on political theatre, with separate accounts of the performing traditions of North America, Asia and Africa. Over forty pictures illustrate peformers and productions of Shakespeare from around the world. An amalgamated list of items for further reading completes the book.
Author: Michael R. Booth
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-24
Total Pages: 245
ISBN-13: 131738945X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOriginally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century – the spectacular, which came to dominate certain kinds of production during that period. A remarkably consistent style, it was used for a variety of dramatic forms, although surrounded by critical controversy. The book considers the theories and practice of spectacle production as well as the cultural and artistic movements that created the favourable conditions in which spectacle could dominate such large areas of theatre for so many years. It also discusses the growth of spectacle and the taste of the public for it, examining the influence of painting, archaeology, history, and the trend towards realism in stage production. An explanation of the working of spectacle in Shakespeare, pantomime and melodrama is followed by detailed reconstructions of the spectacle productions of Irving’s Faust and Beerbohm Tree’s King Henry VIII.
