Shakespearean Character

Shakespearean Character

Author: Jelena Marelj

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1350061409

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Why do we continue to experience many of Shakespeare's dramatic characters as real people with personal histories, individual personalities, and psychological depth? What is it that makes Falstaff seem to jump off the page, and what gives Hamlet his complexity? Shakespearean Character: Language in Performance examines how the extraordinary lifelikeness of some of Shakespeare's most enigmatic and self-conscious characters is produced through language. Using theories drawn from linguistic pragmatics, this book claims that our impression of characters as real people is an effect arising from characters' pragmatic use of language in combination with the historical and textual meanings that Shakespeare conveys to his audience by dramatic and meta-dramatic means. Challenging the notion of interiority attributed to Shakespeare's characters by many contemporary critics, theatre professionals, and audiences, the book demonstrates that dramatic characters possess anteriority which gives us the impression that they exist outside of- and prior to- the play-texts as real people. Jelena Marelj's study examines five linguistically self-conscious characters drawn from the genres of history, tragedy and comedy, which continue to be subjects of extensive critical debate: Falstaff, Cleopatra, Henry V, Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew, and Hamlet. She shows that by inferring Shakespeare's intentions through his characters' verbal exchanges and the discourses of the play, the audience becomes emotionally involved with or repulsed by characters and it is this emotional response that makes these characters strikingly memorable and intimately human. Shakespearean Character will equip readers for further work on the genealogy of Shakespearean character, including minor characters, stock characters, and allegorical characters.


How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage

How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage

Author: Peter Lake

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 683

ISBN-13: 0300225660

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A masterful, highly engaging analysis of how Shakespeare’s plays intersected with the politics and culture of Elizabethan England With an ageing, childless monarch, lingering divisions due to the Reformation, and the threat of foreign enemies, Shakespeare’s England was fraught with unparalleled anxiety and complicated problems. In this monumental work, Peter Lake reveals, more than any previous critic, the extent to which Shakespeare’s plays speak to the depth and sophistication of Elizabethan political culture and the Elizabethan imagination. Lake reveals the complex ways in which Shakespeare’s major plays engaged with the events of his day, particularly regarding the uncertain royal succession, theological and doctrinal debates, and virtue and virtù in politics. Through his plays, Lake demonstrates, Shakespeare was boldly in conversation with his audience about a range of contemporary issues. This remarkable literary and historical analysis pulls the curtain back on what Shakespeare was really telling his audience and what his plays tell us today about the times in which they were written.


A Midsummer-night's Dream

A Midsummer-night's Dream

Author: William Shakespeare

Publisher:

Published: 1734

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13:

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National Sylvan Theatre, Washington Monument grounds, The Community Center and Playgrounds Department and the Office of National Capital Parks present the ninth summer festival program of the 1941 season, the Washington Players in William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," produced by Bess Davis Schreiner, directed by Denis E. Connell, the music by Mendelssohn is played by the Washington Civic Orchestra conducted by Jean Manganaro, the setting and lights Harold Snyder, costumes Mary Davis.


King Lear

King Lear

Author: Jeffrey Kahan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-04-18

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1135973652

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Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink


The Shakespearean International Yearbook

The Shakespearean International Yearbook

Author: Sukanta Chaudhuri

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1351963589

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This eighth volume of The Shakespearean International Yearbook presents a special section on 'European Shakespeares', proceeding from the claim that Shakespeare's literary craft was not just native English or British, but was filtered and fashioned through a Renaissance awareness that needs to be recognized as European, and that has had effects and afterlives across the Continent. Guest editors Ton Hoenselaars and Clara Calvo have constructed this section to highlight both how the spread of 'Shakespeare' throughout Europe has brought together the energies of a wide variety of European cultures across several centuries, and how the inclusion of Shakespeare in European culture has been not only a European but also a world affair. The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Spain, Switzerland and South Africa, Canada, The Netherlands, India, Portugal, Greece, France, and Hungary. In addition to the section on European Shakespeares, this volume includes essays on the genre of romance, issues of character, and other topics.


Performing Shakespearean Appropriations

Performing Shakespearean Appropriations

Author: Darlena Ciraulo

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-06-29

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1683933613

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This collection of essays brings together innovative scholarship on Shakespeare’s afterlives in tribute to Christy Desmet. Contributors explore the production and consumption of Shakespeare in acts of adaptation and appropriation across a range of performance topics, from book history to the novel to television, cinema, and digital media.


Shakespearean Arrivals

Shakespearean Arrivals

Author: Nicholas Luke

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1108386636

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In this distinctive study, Nicholas Luke explores the abiding power of Shakespeare's tragedies by suggesting an innovative new model of his character creation. Rather than treating characters as presupposed beings, Luke shows how they arrive as something more than functional dramatis personae - how they come to life as 'subjects' - through Shakespeare's orchestration of transformational dramatic events. Moving beyond dominant critical modes, Luke combines compelling close readings of Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear with an accessible analysis of thinkers such as Badiou, Žižek, Bergson, Whitehead and Latour, and the 'adventist' Christian tradition flowing from Saint Paul through Luther to Kierkegard. Representing a significant intervention into the way we encounter Shakespeare's tragic figures, the book argues for a subjectivity which is not singular or abiding, but perilous and leaping.


Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender

Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender

Author: Shirley Nelson Garner

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1996-02-22

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9780253210272

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While considering Shakespeare's earliest attempts at tragedy in Richard III and Titus Andronicus, this volume covers the major tragic period, giving special attention to Othello.