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An accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, dark comedies and romances, first published in 2001.
There is political interest everywhere in Shakespeare. Macbeth and Hamlet are concerned with kingship, Measure for Measure with law, The Tempest with power. Shakespeare is consistently interested in rulers, law, questions of authority and obedience - as well as the politics of personal relationships. In this book Alexander Leggatt concentrates on the ordering and enforcing, the gaining and losing, of public power in the state, in the English and Roman histories. He sees Shakespeare as concerned both with things as they are, and with things as they ought to be: his depiction of public life includes clear appraisals of the one, and powerful images of the other. It is the interplay of the two that makes the drama.
Jacobean Public Theatre recovers for the modern reader the acting, production and performance values of the public theatre of Jacobean London. It relates this drama to the popular culutre of the day and concludes with a close study of four important plays, including King Lear, which emerge in an unexpected light as the products of popular tradition.
First published in 1987. 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 - the way in which each play is a new combination of essentially similar ingredients, so that, for example, the boy/girl changes in The Merchant of Venice are seen to have a quite different significance from those in As You Like It.
Shakespeare's Tragedies: Violation and Identity traces the linked themes of violation and identity through seven Shakespearean tragedies, beginning with the rape of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus. The implications of this event - its physical and moral shock, the way it puts Lavinia's identity, and the whole notion of identity, into crisis - reverberate through Shakespeare's later tragedies. Through close, theatrically informed readings of Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth the book traces the way acts of violence provoke questions about the identities of the victims, the perpetrators, and the acts themselves. It shows that violation can be involved in the most innocent-looking acts, that words can be weapons, that interpretation itself can be a form of damage. Written in a clear, accessible style, this study provokes questions about the human implications of Shakespearean tragedy.
The most important period in the history of English drama is revealed in Alexander Leggatt's challenging account. The author considers English drama from the beginning of Shakespeare's career to the restoration of Charles II. Focusing on Shakespeare and the development of his art, he examines all his major contemporaries: Jonson, Middleton, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher and Ford. He combines close analysis of specific plays with a broader look at trends within drama.
Containing annotated extracts from key sources, this guide to William Shakespeare's Macbeth explores the heated debates that this play has sparked. Looking at issues, such as the representation of gender roles, political violence and the dramatisation of evil, this volume provides a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Shakespeare's text.
This is the first book to survey comprehensively the field of Elizabethan and Jacobean citizen comedy. Most studies of the period focus on major authors; this one follows recurring themes and motifs, through a variety of plays by many authors from the moralizing comedies of the boys' companies. Professor Leggatt provides not only a fresh perspective on familiar plays by such figures as Jonson, Middleton, and Dekker, but also a new look at a number of neglected comedies, some by unfamiliar authors, some by major authors working together. Standard figures – the usurer, the prodigal, and the prostitute – and standard plots – notably intrigues based on money or sex (or both) – are traced...
Study of various actors and directors presenting performances of Shakespeare's plays.
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline comedy, covering both public and private theatres, emphasizing the eclectic, experimental nature of this comedy--its departures from the mainstream New Comedy tradition and its searching, witty analysis of social and personal relations in court, city and country. In his close analysis of some of the richest comedies of the period, Alexander Leggatt makes some unexpected connections between them. The reader is given a comprehensive picture of English comedy in one of its most creative periods.