Drama

"Anything for a Quiet Life" by Thomas Middleton is a classic work of literature that can be enjoyed by all. Download "Anything for a Quiet Life" and enjoy another quality Digireads.com publication. more...

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Approximate Bodies' examines, in fascinating detail, the changing representation of the body in early modern drama and in the period's anatomical and gynaecological treatises. more...

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Early modern English literature abounds with archaeological images, from open graves to ruined monasteries. Schwyzer demonstrates that archaeology can shed light on literary texts including works by Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne. The book also explores the kinship between two disciplines distinguished by their intimacy with the traces of past life. - ;This study draws on the theory and practice of archaeology to develop a new perspective on the literature of the Renaissance. Philip Schwyzer explores the fascination with images of excavation, exhumation, and ruin that runs through literary texts including Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, Donne's sermons and lyrics, and Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall. Miraculously preserved corpses, ruined. monasteries, Egyptian mummies, and Yorick's skull all figure in this study of the early modern archaeological imagination. The pessimism of the period is summed up in the haunting motif of the beautiful corpse that, once touched, crumbles to dust. Archaeology and literary studies are themselves products of the Renaissance. Although the two disciplines have sometimes viewed one another as rivals, they share a unique and unsettling intimacy with the traces of past life - with the words the dead wrote, sang, or heard, with the objects they made, held, or lived within. Schwyzer argues that at the root of both forms of scholarship lies the forbidden desire to awaken (and speak with) the dead. However impossible or absurd this desire may be,. it remains a fundamental source of both ethical responsibility and aesthetic pleasure. - ;accessible but provocative and never less than compelling. - Lynsey McCulloch, Review of English Studies, Volume 58, Number 237 more...

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With a signature style that is at once bawdy and delicate, as well as a fearless penchant for lampooning the rich and powerful, Aristophanes remains arguably the finest satirist of all time. Collected here are all 11 of his surviving plays-newly translated by the distinguished poet and translator Paul Roche. more...

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Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae is the story of a quarrel between the tragic playwright Euripides and Athens' women, who accuse him of slandering them in his plays. Austin and Olson offer a fresh text of the play; an extensive introduction; and a detailed commentary; most Greek cited in the introduction and commentary is translated, and much of the edition is accessible to non-specialists. - ;Thesmophoriazusae was performed in Athens in 411 BCE, most likely at the City Dionysia, and is among the most brilliant of Aristophanes' eleven surviving comedies. It is the story of the crucial moment in a quarrel. between the tragic playwright Euripides and Athens' women, who accuse him of slandering them in his plays and are holding a meeting at one of their secret festivals to set a penalty for his crimes. Thesmophoriazusae is a brilliantly inventive comedy, full of wild slapstick humour and devastating literary parody, and is a basic source for questions of gender and sexuality in late 5th-century Athens and for the popular reception of Euripidean tragedy. Austin and Olson offer a text based on a fresh examination of the papyri and manuscripts, and a detailed commentary covering a wide range of literary, historical, and philological issues. The introduction includes sections on the date and historical setting of the play; the Thesmophoria festival; Aristophanes' handling of Euripidean tragedy; staging; Thesmophoriazusae II; and the history of modern critical work on the text. All Greek in the introduction and commentary not cited for technical. reasons is translated. - ;a fine edition it is: the play's transmission (direct and testimonial) and text-critical history are more fully and accurately reported, and the issues more penetratingly discussed, than in any previous edition; the bibliography is full and up to date; the commentary is thorough and magisterial; and the production is excellent - Jeffrey Henderson, The Classical Review more...

Price: $75.00