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The Captive of the Castle of Sennaar is a utopian novel in two parts. In this scholarly edition, G.E. Bentley, Jr, places George Cumberland's late eighteenth-century work among the earliest historical novels in English and identifies it as a rare example of the "Romantic novel." He shows that while each part of the work adopts a very different form of utopia, the two utopias complement and modify one another. He also shows the work to be unusual for the sexual and political freedom encouraged and the Christian fundamentalism advocated, as well as for its setting, in lands never visited by Europeans at the time of writing.
The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.
Gerald Eades Bentley assembles and analyzes the extant theatrical materials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His discussion of the working conditions of professional dramatists like Thomas Heywood, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger as well as William Shakespeare rounds out the fascinating picture of the professionalism that developed in the great days of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The English court masque was one of the most extravagant and spectacular forms of entertainment ever produced, the most important period being between 1600 and 1640 when the writers included some of the best-known poets and dramatists of the age. This volume, first published in 1967, was the first selection of masques to be published in England in the twentieth century. It consists of fourteen masques, each specially edited with an introduction and commentary by a different scholar, including Ben Jonson, James Shirley, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Campion, Francis Beaumont, William Browne, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Nabbes and William Davenant. Professor Gerald Eades Bentley examines the masque as Jonson conceived it and the clash that took place between Jonson and his collaborator as designer, Inigo Jones. There is also a final essay on the influence of the masque on the drama of the period. A group of 48 plates has been prepared many of them reproducing designs by Inigo Jones.
Scaramuzza, Scaramouche: the commedia dell'arte figure made a triumphal entry into German literature in the plays of Caspar Stieler (1632&–1707). Transformed into a master of language and languages, Scaramutza&—social critic, voluptuary, and mouthpiece for his author&—ushers in a new type of comedy that depends more on the happy ending than on laughter for its effect. This study should both establish the significance of the long-neglected dramatic works of Caspar Stieler, already regarded as an important lyric poet of the German Baroque, and serve to initiate a reevaluation of German comedy and of the standard definition of the comic genre used by Germanists as Aikin explores the heroic or romantic comedy as a subgenre of literary merit. The study includes a discussion of Stieler's important contributions to the development of the German-language Singspiel and opera.
Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London explores the intimate and dynamic relationship between acting companies and playwrights in this seminal era in English theatre history. Siobhan Keenan's analysis includes chapters on the traditions and workings of contemporary acting companies, playwriting practices, stages and staging, audiences and patrons, each illustrated with detailed case studies of individual acting companies and their plays, including troupes such as Lady Elizabeth's players, 'Beeston's Boys' and the King's Men and works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Brome and Heywood. We are accustomed to focusing on individual playwrights: Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare's London makes the case that we also need to think about the companies for which dramatists wrote and with whose members they collaborated, if we wish to better understand the dramas of the English Renaissance stage.
This book is a comprehensive study of the customary practices of English players of the period--how they lived and worked and were paid, organized, and cast for parts in the phenomenally popular theaters of England. Gerald Bentley discusses sharers, hired men, boy apprentices, musicians, touring groups, and managers, showing that players in general led difficult but seriously professional lives. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Shershow thus suggests that so-called high and low practices thoroughly interpenetrate one another, forcing us to question whether rival social groups ever truly have their own separate "cultures."
The history of regional 'Englishes' in the Early Modern period still presents numerous lacunae that need to be filled, in order to provide a complete insight into the English linguistic setting at this time. This book aims to remedy these deficiencies in some measure. In particular, this monograph seeks to shed light upon the history of Early Modern Northern English vocabulary by means of the first corpus of Early Modern texts where Northern linguistic traits are used for literary purposes. It provides a linguistically documented description of Northern words from a synchronic standpoint, dealing with their distribution, etymology, as well as with some of their morphological and semantic characteristics. In addition, this study offers a discussion of the Early Modern literary representations of Northern speech. A thorough revision of the treatment that Northern lexical items are given in contemporary and modern lexicographic sources is also presented, together with a glossary that outlines the diachronic profile of the terms gathered.