The public playhouses of Jacobean London, and the popular drama they produced, were a vital part of English theatre history. Yet this work has too often been neglected by conventional literary criticism. This book recovers this vigorous popular drama for the modern reader by presenting the plays not as literary texts, but as scripts and using them to examine contemporary acting, production and performance values.

This book should be of interest to students and teachers of Shakespearean literature.

A study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late 20th-century. It shows how this enduring genre has dealt with the tensions of social life, using its conventions as tools for social inquiry. Through an examination of comedy, Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an approach through genre, neglected in recent criticism, can have much to say about our current concerns with the relations between literature and society. The book surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as: Shakespeare; Jonson; Etherege; Wycherley; Congreve;...

A study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late 20th-century. It shows how this enduring genre has dealt with the tensions of social life, using its conventions as tools for social inquiry. Through an examination of comedy, Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an approach through genre, neglected in recent criticism, can have much to say about our current concerns with the relations between literature and society. The book surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as: Shakespeare; Jonson; Etherege; Wycherley; Congreve;...

William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (c.1606) is a timeless tale of love, greed and power, which has given rise to heated debates around such issues as the representation of gender roles, political violence and the dramatisation of evil.
Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Shakespeare's play offers:
- extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical history and performance of the text, from publication to the present
- annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself
- cross-references between documents and sections of...

This study removes some of the critical puzzles that Shakespeare's comedies of love have posed in the past. The author shows that what distinguishes the comedies is not their similarity but their variety.

Beginning with the rape of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, this book traces the linked themes of violation and identity through seven Shakespearean tragedies. The shock effects of Lavinia's rape reverberate throughout Shakespeare's later tragedies. This detailed study of Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth reveals the way acts of violence evoke questions about the identities of the victims, perpetrators, and the acts themselves. Written in a clear, accessible style, it highlights the humanistic aspects of Shakespearean tragedy.

This introduction examines the continuity and variety of Shakepeare's work and the creative use he made of his inherited conventions. The first section places Shakespeare in the context of classical and Renaissance comedy, his Elizabethan predecessors and the traditions of popular festivity. The second section traces themes through Shakespeare's early and middle comedies, dark comedies and late romances, illuminating particular plays by close analysis,

This updated and expanded analysis of King Lear in performance includes new chapters on the television version of the Royal National Theatre production directed by Richard Eyre and starring Ian Holm; and on Akira Kurosawa's 'Ran'. Earlier chapters provide close, detailed analyses of the stage, film and television interpretations of John Gielgud, Harley Granville Barker, Paul Scofield, Peter Brook, Peter Ustinov, Michael Gambon, Adrian Noble, Grigori Kozintsev, Michael Hordern, Jonathan Miller, Laurence Olivier and Michael Elliott.
By examining such issues as the playing of Lear, the...

The distinctive voices of Renaissance playwrights can make a classroom come alive. This volume explores the compelling dramatic technique and rich language in a wide variety of well-known and less-familiar Renaissance plays. The essays collected here challenge teachers to help students, whose experience is usually limited to reading Shakespeare or seeing movie versions of his plays, see beyond the initial strangeness of Renaissance drama. A series of reading, performance, and research tools are outlined for teachers who wish to encourage students not only to understand the English Renaissance...