Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Drama

How does the rash yet serene Hamlet of act 5 arise from the passive and grief-stricken Hamlet of act 1? What path leads him from sickened thoughts of birth and incest to the certainty that thoughtfulness itself must be escaped through bold action? The roles of Senecan avenger and patient Christian may seem worlds apart, observes William Kerrigan, but Shakespeare fused them in a character that has fascinated the world for centuries.

In this lively study, Kerrigan celebrates both Hamlet's perfectionthe character's creation of new ideals out of an inheritance of disillusionment--and...

-It is impossible to imagine any kind of moral life without obligations, and impossible to imagine obligations without types of promises. We are always up against them. Before we ever reflect on what a promise is, we have made them and are expected to make more of them. We are born into nations that enter into treaties and agreements. Promises are with us like gravity. Man is a promising animal.---from Shakespeare's Promises

Oaths, vows, contracts, and promises are among the most momentous actions human beings can perform, in art as well as life. Although virtually ignored by...

After movie-makers in England bungled film versions of Bernard Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband and Arms and the Man, producers and directors in Germany and Holland botched those based on Pygmalion, and a Hollywood screenplay desecrated The Devil's Disciple, Shaw took a chance on Gabriel Pascal and gave him permission to produce a movie version of Pygmalion in England. The contract was signed on 13 December 1935 and Pascal, a charming, flamboyant Hungarian emigre with relatively little experience in cinema, did the playwright proud. Shaw's gamble paid off in this Pygmalion, which, to this...

In 2002, the Records of Early English Drama (REED) project marked its twenty-fifth anniversary with a special series of sessions at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds University. The REED sessions were designed to allow critical reflection on the past, present, and future of the project as it entered the twenty-first century. Thirteen essays amplifying the content of selected conference papers, and a fourteenth submitted at the editors' invitation, make up REED in Review

Contributors to the collection describe the conception and early years of REED,...

"Sussex" is a complete edition of primary sources concerning dramatic and musical performance in the county of Sussex from the Middle Ages until the time of Oliver Cromwell. As with all Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes, Sussex contains introductory material situating the primary sources in context, as well as the primary sources themselves. Documenting the performance of drama and music in the county of Sussex up to 1642, this volume includes an extensive introduction, explanatory notes, glossaries, translations, and indexes.

Although many of the civic records of Sussex...

In the Alexander Lectures for 1965-66 at the University of Toronto, Dr. Frye describes the basis of the tragic vision as "being in time," in which death as "the essential event that gives shape and form to life ... defines the individual, and marks him off from the continuity of life that flows indefinitely between the past and the future."

In Dr. Frye's view, three general types can be distinguished in Shakespearean tragedy, the tragedy of order, the tragedy of passion, and the tragedy of isolation, in all of which a pattern of "being in time" shapes the action. In the first type,...

Theatre, like other subjects in the humanities, has recently undergone quintessential changes in theory, approach, and research. Modern Drama - a collection of twelve essays from leading theatre and drama scholars - investigates the contemporary meanings and the cultural and political resonances of the terms inherent in the concepts of 'modern' and 'drama, ' delving into a range of theoretical questions on the history of modernism, modernity, postmodernism, and postmodernity as they have intersected with the shifting histories of drama, theatre, and performance. Using incisive...

It is no accident that some variation of the question 'What should I do?' appears in over three-quarters of the comedic plays of the Spanish Golden Age. Casuistical dialogue was a concern, even an obsession, of Spanish playwrights during the seventeenth century, many of whom were educated by Jesuit casuists. Conscience on Stage is a study of casuistry or case morality as the foundation for a poetics of seventeenth-century Spanish comedias.

Hilaire Kallendorf examines the Jesuit upbringing and casuistical education of major playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age, many of whom were also...

William Shakespeare is perhaps the most frequently quoted author of the English-speaking world. His plays, in turn, "quote" a wide variety of sources, from books and ballads to persons and events. In this dynamic study of Shakespeare's plays, Douglas Bruster demonstrates that such borrowing can illuminate the world in which Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights lived and worked, while also shedding light on later cultures that quote his plays.

In contrast to the New Historicism's sometimes arbitrary linkage of literary works with elements drawn from the surrounding...

A Pulitzer Prize--winning playwright, an Emmy-winning television writer, and an Oscar-winning screenwriter of such notable films as To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, and A Trip to Bountiful, the amazingly versatile Horton Foote has been a force on the American cultural scene for more than fifty years. By critical consensus, Foote's foremost achievement is The Orphans' Home Cycle -- a course of nine independent yet interlocking plays that traces the transformation over twenty-six years of a small-town southern orphan, Horace Robedaux, into a husband, father, and patriarch. Drawing on a...

This volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, and Galileo. Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama.

Translated and edited by John Willett, Brecht on...

Among the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is perhaps best remembered for the innovative use of jazz rhythms in his writing. While his poetry and essays received much public acclaim and scholarly attention, Hughes dramas are relatively unknown. Only five of the sixty-three plays Hughes scripted alone or collaboratively have been published (in 1963).

Published here, for the first time, are four of Hughes most poignant, poetic, and political dramas, "Scottsboro Limited," "Harvest "(also known as "Blood on the Fields"), "Angelo Herndon Jones," and "De...