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The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of Shakespeare's life and works focusing on oftern neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read, who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various collaborations may have affected his writing. Written by an eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer Pays particular attention to Shakespeare's theatrical contemporaries and the ways in which they influenced his writing Offers an intriguing account of the life and work of the great poet-dramatist structured around the idea of memory Explores often neglected literary and historical contexts that illuminate Shakespeare's life and works
Early Modern Drama in Performance is a collection of essays in honor of Lois Potter, the distinguished author of five monographs, including most recently The Life of William Shakespeare (2012), and numerous articles, edited collections, and editions. This collection’s emphasis on Shakespearean and early modern drama reflects the area for which Potter is most widely known, as a performance critic, editor, and literary scholar. The essays by a diverse group of scholars who have been influenced by Potter address recurring themes in her work: Shakespeare and non-Shakespearean early modern drama, performance history and theatre practice, theatrical performance across cultures, play reviewing, and playreading. What unifies them most, though, is that they carry on the spirit of Potter’s work: her ability to meet a text, a performance, or a historical period on its own terms, to give scrupulous attention to specific details and elegantly show how these details generate larger meaning, and to recover and preserve the fleeting and the ephemeral.
Introduction / Lois Potter and Joshua Calhoun -- Part I: Medieval -- Origins and others -- Robin Hood: the earliest contexts / Stephen Knight -- The outlaw's song of Trailbaston, the Green man, and the facial machine / Stuart Kane -- Reynardine and Robin Hood: echoes of an outlaw legend in folk balladry / Stephen D. Winick -- Picturing Robin Hood in early print and performance: 1500-1590 / John Marshall -- Image and society -- "Merry" and "Greenwood": a history of some meanings / Helen Phillips -- The late medieval Robin Hood: good yeomanry and bad performances / Kimberly A. Thompson -- "From the Castle Hill they came with violence": the Edinburgh Robin Hood riots of 1561 / Michael Wheare --...
Twenty-four of today's most prominent Shakespeare scholars discuss the best-known works in Shakespeare studies, along with some nearly forgotten classics that deserve fresh appraisal. An extensive bibliography provides a reading list of the most important works in the field. A filmography then lists the most important Shakespeare films, along with the films that influenced Shakespeare filmmakers. Interviewees include Sir Stanley Wells, Sir Jonathan Bate, Sir Brian Vickers, Ann Thompson, Virginia Mason Vaughan, George T. Wright, Lukas Erne, MacDonald P. Jackson, Peter Holland, James Shapiro, Katherine Duncan-Jones and Barbara Hodgdon.
A must read before tackling the works of Milton! "A bible of Milton"...Daily Telegraph (UK). Explores important places and people in Milton's life and their effect on he and his writings. Examines three of his major works including Paradise Lost . This invaluable account provides an excellent introduction to the life and works of John Milton , one of the great writers of the English language, ranking second only to Shakespeare. Clearly and concisely it outlines his life and cultural background and their effects on his work, setting him firmly in the context of the tumultuous 17th century times in which he lived and wrote. In this fascinating introduction , A Preface to Milton, Lois potter leases us in no doubt about his importance in the canon of English literature. Dr. Lois Potter is senior lecturer in English as the University of Leicester
In 1642 an ordinance closed the theatres of England. Critics and historians have assumed that the edict was to be firm and inviolate. Susan Wiseman challenges this assumption and argues that the period 1640 to 1660 was not a gap in the production and performance of drama nor a blank space between 'Renaissance drama' and the 'Restoration stage'. Rather, throughout the period, writers focused instead on a range of dramas with political perspectives, from republican to royalist. This group included the short pamphlet dramas of the 1640s and the texts produced by the writers of the 1650s, such as William Davenant, Margaret Cavendish and James Shirley. In analysing the diverse forms of dramatic production of the 1640s and 1650s, Wiseman reveals the political and generic diversity produced by the changes in dramatic production, and offers insights into the theatre of the Civil War.
By examining the often marginal figure of the pirate (and also the hard-to-distinguish privateer), The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630 shows how flexibly these figures served to comment on English nationalism, international relations, and contemporary politics. The first book-length treatment of the cultural impact of Renaissance piracy, this study underlines how despite its transgressive nature, piracy can be seen as a key mechanism which served to connect peoples and regions.
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry provides the widest coverage yet of Shakespeare's poetry and its afterlife in English and other languages.
This book establishes new information about the likely content of ten lost plays from the period 1580-1642. These plays’ authors include Nashe, Heywood, and Dekker; and the plays themselves connect in direct ways to some of the most canonical dramas of English literature, including Hamlet, King Lear, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi. The lost plays in question are: Terminus & Non Terminus (1586-8); Richard the Confessor (1593); Cutlack (1594); Bellendon (1594); Truth's Supplication to Candlelight (1600); Albere Galles (1602); Henry the Una (c. 1619); The Angel King (1624); The Duchess of Fernandina (c. 1630-42); and The Cardinal's Conspiracy (bef. 1639). From this list of bare titl...
This book offers a survey of how female and male characters in English Renaissance theatre participated and interacted in musical activities, both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum. Wong examines the theatrical functions of music in the context of non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama, discussing dramaturgical meanings of music and its association with gender, love, and erotomania in Renaissance plays.