This comprehensive, detailed study of Wilder's entire dramatic oeuvre is the only one to place the works in their broad aesthetic and philosophical context and to integrate literary analysis of the plays with interpretation of their theatrical techniques. Its sources include Gilbert Harrison's authorized 1983 biography of the dramatist and the published selections from Wilder's journals for the years 1939-1961, as well as unpublished material--letters, diaries, and notes--in the Yale Collection of American Literature Wilder papers. Lifton discusses the symbolist, naturalist, expressionist,...

Though J. M. Synge is considered a major figure of Irish drama and an important canonical playwright, he is the subject of fewer and fewer books and conference sessions. In this volume, chapters by expert contributors confront the possibility that Synge's reputation may not be standing the test of time. The chapters reaffirm the relevance of Synge's plays to contemporary audiences and readers and invite a reassessment of his apparently declining popularity. Comparisions of Synge's work to that of other authors reinforce the argument in favor of his continuing relevance.

J. M. Synge is...

Tony Pastor, a vaudeville performer and manager, was known as the Dean of Vaudeville. He is credited with cleaning up the bawdy variety shows of the mid 1800s, resulting in their appeal to women and the middle classes. He opened his first vaudeville house in 1865 and continued to present shows at a series of New York houses until shortly before his death in 1908. He achieved his greatest hits with parodies of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, but he also presented parodies, or burlesques, of Shakespearean productions and those of contemporary authors, as well as melodramatic works in the...

While the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki secured an American victory in the Pacific and hastened the end of World War II, it also ushered in an era of fear. When the Soviets developed an atomic bomb, the United States ceased to be the world's only nuclear power. Americans feared a nuclear attack by the Soviets, while the British worried about being drawn into a nuclear conflict for which they were utterly unprepared and particularly vulnerable. The threat of nuclear war left a lasting mark on the British and American imagination. Like other creative artists, playwrights began to...

In reshaping Lodge's "Rosalynde" into "As You Like It, " Shakespeare not only undermines the Petrarchan and pastoral traditions of the romance, but also refutes the implicit gender structures upon which such Petrarchanisms are based. In refashioning "The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir" into the tragedy of "King Lear, " Shakespeare does not simply reject the explicit Christian setting and happy ending of "Leir, " but engages and responds to the highly Reformational and Calvinistic assumptions that shape and inform the source play. In rewriting Greene's "Pandosto" into "The Winter's...