The Arden Guide to Renaissance Drama

The Arden Guide to Renaissance Drama

Author: Brinda Charry

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1472572262

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The Arden Guide to Renaissance Drama is a single critical and contextual resource for students embarking on an in-depth exploration of early modern drama, providing both critical insight and accessible contextual information. This companion equips students with the information needed to situate the plays in their socio-political, intellectual and literary contexts. Divided into two parts, it introduces students to the major authors and significant dramatic texts of the period and emphasises the importance of both a historicist and close-reading approach to better engage with these works. The Guide offers: · primary texts from key early modern scholars such as Machiavelli, Heywood and Sidney · contextual information vital to a full understanding of the drama of the period · close readings of 14 of the most widely studied play texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries · a single resource to accompany any study of early modern drama This is an ideal companion for students of Renaissance drama, offering students and teachers a range of primary contextual sources to illuminate their understanding alongside close critical readings of the major plays of the period.


Renaissance Drama in Action

Renaissance Drama in Action

Author: Martin White

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1134917813

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Renaissance Drama in Action is a fascinating exploration of Renaissance theatre practice and staging. Covering questions of contemporary playhouse design, verse and language, staging and rehearsal practices, and acting styles, Martin White relates the characteristics of Renaissance theatre to the issues involved in staging the plays today. This refreshingly accessible volume: * examines the history of the plays on the English stage from the seventeenth century to the present day * explores questions arising from reconstructions, with particular reference to the new Globe Theatre * includes interviews with, and draws on the work and experience of modern theatre practitioners including Harriet Walter, Matthew Warchus, Trevor Nunn, Stephen Jeffreys, Adrian Noble and Helen Mirren * includes discussions of familiar plays such as The Duchess of Malfi and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, as well as many lesser known play-texts Renaissance Drama in Action offers undergraduates and A-level students an invaluable guide to the characteristics of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and its relationship to contemporary theatre and staging.


English Renaissance Tragedy

English Renaissance Tragedy

Author: Peter Holbrook

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-09-24

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1472572823

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This book's underlying claim is that English Renaissance tragedy addresses live issues in the experience of readers and spectators today: it is not a genre to be studied only for aesthetic or “heritage” reasons. The book considers the way in which tragedy in general, and English Renaissance tragedy in particular, addresses ideas of freedom, understood both from an individual and a sociopolitical perspective. Tragedy since the Greeks has addressed the constraints and necessities to which human life is subject (Fate, the gods, chance, the conflict between state and individual) as well as the human desire for autonomy and self-direction. In short, English Renaissance Tragedy: Ideas of Freedom shows how the tragic drama of Shakespeare's age addresses problems of freedom, slavery, and tyranny in ways that speak to us now.


The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi

Author: John Webster

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1997-06-15

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780719043574

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More widely studied and more frequently performed than ever before, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi is here presented in an accessible and thoroughly up-to-date edition. Based on the Revels Plays text, the notes have been augmented to cast further light both on Webster's amazing dialogue and on the stage action. An entirely new introduction sets the tragedy in the context of pre-Civil War England and gives a revealing view of its imagery and dramatic action. From its well-documented early performances to the two productions seen in the West End of London in the 1995-96 season, a stage history gives an account of the play in performance. Students, actors, directors and theatre-goers will all find here a reappraisal of Webster's artistry in the greatest age of English theatre, which highlights why it has lived on stage with renewed force in the last decades of the twentieth century.


Reading Shakespeare's Dramatic Language

Reading Shakespeare's Dramatic Language

Author: Sylvia Adamson

Publisher: Arden Shakespeare

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13:

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Collection of short essays in two parts: Pt. 1: The language of Shakespeare's plays: Pt. 2: Reading Shakespeare's English.


Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Dramatist

Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Dramatist

Author: Lisa Hopkins

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2008-04-17

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0748630589

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This book offers a lively introduction to all of the plays of Christopher Marlowe and to the central concerns of his age, many of which are still important to us--religious uncertainty, the clash between Islam and Christianity, ideas of sexuality, and the role of the marginalised inidividual in society.Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of Marlowe's work and its cultural contexts: Marlowe's life and death; the Marlowe canon; the theatrical contexts and stage history of the plays; Marlowe's interest in old and new branches of knowledge; the ways in which he transgresses against established norms and values; and the major issues which have been raised in critical discussions of his plays.


Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader

Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader

Author: Deborah Cartmell

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1474284396

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This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Shakespearean comedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourke's film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSC's recent rebranding of it as a sequel. Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives, including contemporary directors' deployment of older actors within the lead roles, the play's relationship to Love's Labour's Lost, its presence on Youtube and the ways in which tales and ruses in the play belong to a wider concern with varieties of crime. The volume finishes with a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further research.


The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama

The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama

Author: Simon Barker

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780415187343

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"Each play is prefaced by an introductory headnote discussing the thematic focus of the play and its textual history, and is cross-referenced to other plays of the period that relate thematically and generically."--BOOK JACKET.