Literary Criticism : Drama

In this groundbreaking work, leading scholar of the Renaissance Andrew Hadfield reveals for the first time exactly how Shakespeare was influenced by contemporary strands in political thought that were critical of the English crown and constitution. For anyone interested in Shakespeare and Renaissance culture, this book is required reading. more...

Price: $68.00

In Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity, Charles and Michelle Martindale take issue with the recent academic tendency to exaggerate Shakespeare's expertise in the classics. Instead they show how the playwright used his restricted knowledge of the classics to create a remarkably convincing picture of the classical world. Although almost a third of his plays are set in the ancient world and are rich in allusions to classical mythology, history and ideas, Shakespeare received only grammar school training in this discipline--a far cry from the scholarly knowledge he would otherwise seem to possess. The Martindales discuss the critical implications of this fact and analyze--through careful readings of specific passages--the styles Shakespeare employed under the influence of classical writers--especially Ovid, Seneca and in translation Homer and Plutarch. This critical and comparative account of Shakespeare's classical sources ultimately provides readers with a fresh perspective on his work. more...

Price: $41.95

Shakespeare's Theatre consolidates the author's forty years of experience in studying and staging Shakespeare's plays. Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts, the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins. Coverage includes the practices of Elizabethan actors and script writers: methods of characterization; gesture, blocking and choreography, including music, dance and fighting; actors' rhetorical interaction with audiences; and use of costumes, stage props, and make-up. The author makes use of scripts and scholarship about original stagings of Shakespeare and suggests how those productions related to modern staging. Much of this material has developed as a result of the recent increased interest in the significance of performance for interpreting Shakespeare, including the recovery of the archaeological evidence about the original Rose and Globe Theaters. The book contains current bibliographies for each topic and consolidates these in an overall bibliography for Shakespeare and his theaters. more...

Price: $200.00

This interdisciplinary study combines legal, historical and literary approaches to the practice and theory of marriage in Shakespeare's time, and discovers a wide range of examples in a selection of Shakespeare's plays. more...

Price: $36.00

This timely collection addresses the neglected state of scholarship on southern women dramatists by bringing together the latest criticism on some of the most important playwrights of the 20th century.Coeditors Robert McDonald and Linda Rohrer Paige attribute the neglect of southern women playwrights in scholarly criticism to "deep historical prejudices" against drama itself and against women artists in general, especially in the South. Their call for critical awareness is answered by the 15 essays they include in Southern Women Playwrights, considerations of the creative work of universally acclaimed playwrights such as Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, and Lillian Hellman (the so-called "Trinity") in addition to that of less-studied playwrights, including Zora Neale Hurston, Carson McCullers, Alice Childress, Naomi Wallace, Amparo Garcia, Paula Vogel, and Regina Porter. This collection springs from a series of associated questions regarding the literary and theatrical heritage of the southern woman playwright, the unique ways in which southern women have approached the conventional modes of comedy and tragedy, and the ways in which the South, its types and stereotypes, its peculiarities, its traditions-both literary and cultural-figure in these women's plays. Especially relevant to these questions are essays on Lillian Hellman, who resisted the label "southern writer," and Carson McCullers, who never attempted to ignore her southernness. This book begins by recovering little-known or unknown episodes in the history of southern drama and by examining the ways plays assumed importance in the lives of southern women in the early 20th century. It concludes with a look at one of the most vibrant, diverse theatre scenes outside New York today-Atlanta. Robert L. McDonald is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Military Institute and editor of The Critical Response to Erskine Caldwell. Linda Rohrer Paige is Associate Professor of English more...

Price: $19.96