You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
"This collection covers a wide range of Shakespeare productions, from Granville Barker and Poel's experiments with cross-gender casting to recent performances by Cheek by Jowl, the National Theatre, and the new Globe; from early twentieth-century performances by women's companies in England and Japan to contemporary stagings by the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company; from Mabou Mines' controversial Lear in New York to a more subtly transgressive Tempest by the Georgia Shakespeare Festival." "These essays are comprehensive in their consideration of cross-gender-cast Shakespeare as it evolved over the past century. Theoretically informed yet grounded in the particularity of individual performances, they forge new connections between performance studies and gender theory and broach issues vital to anyone interested in Shakespeare."--BOOK JACKET.
Edenton and Chowan County, North Carolina is a pictorial history that celebrates early 20th-century lifestyles enjoyed by citizensof the first unofficial colonial capital. Conveniently located between three important waterways in Eastern North Carolina, Chowan County, along with its county seat of Edenton, is a remarkable community whose roots dig deeply into the 1600s when settlers arrived from Jamestown. The steadfast Perquimans River to the east, the rapidly flowing Chowan River to the west, and the serene Edenton Bay to the south have for centuries provided means of transportation, economic endeavors, and scenic views for citizens and visitors alike. By 1750, Edenton had blossomed into a...
Examining how technological developments in performance practices affect spectator experience of Shakespeare and early modern drama.
Shakespeare's history plays make up nearly a third of his corpus and feature iconic characters like Falstaff, the young Prince Hal, and Richard III--as well as unforgettable scenes like the storming of Harfleur. But these plays also present challenges for teachers, who need to help students understand shifting dynastic feuds, manifold concepts of political power, and early modern ideas of the body politic, kingship, and nationhood. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the many editions of the plays, the wealth of contextual and critical writings available, and other resources. Part 2, "Approaches," contains essays on topics as various as masculinity and gender, using the plays in the composition classroom, and teaching the plays through Shakespeare's own sources, film, television, and the Web. The essays help instructors teach works that are poetically and emotionally rich as well as fascinating in how they depict Shakespeare's vision of his nation's past and present.
The deaths of husbands radically changed women’s lives in the early modern period. While losing male protection, widows acquired rare opportunities for social and economic independence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theatre, arousing both male desire and anxiety. Now how did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh and incisive examination of the theatrical representation of widows by discussing the material conditions of the early modern stage. It is also the only comprehensive study of this topic covering all three phases of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline drama.
"The next good mood I find my father in, I'll get him quite discarded" With these chillingly offhand words, Beatrice-Joanna, the spoilt daughter of a powerful nobleman, plots to get rid of the family servant who has crossed her once too often. The Changeling remains one of the most compelling tragedies from the 17th century. Exposing the vexed relationship between servants and masters, setting notions of `change' against the revelation of psychological 'secrets' as ways of explaining human behaviour, and exploring the idea of love as a `tame madness', the play reveals the terrifying consequences of ungoverned sexual appetite and betrayal. Despite its seemingly domestic focus, The Changeling ...
Did Shakespeare's original audiences weep? Equally, while it seems obvious that they must have laughed at plays performed in early modern theatres, can we say anything about what their laughter sounded like, about when it occurred, and about how, culturally, it was interpreted? Related to both of these problems of audience behaviour is that of the stage representation of laughing, and weeping, both actions performed with astonishing frequency in early modern drama. Each action is associated with a complex set of non-verbal noises, gestures, and cultural overtones, and each is linked to audience behaviour through one of the axioms of Renaissance dramatic theory: that weeping and laughter on stage cause, respectively, weeping and laughter in the audience. This book is a study of laughter and weeping in English theatres, broadly defined, from around 1550 until their closure in 1642. It is concerned both with the representation of these actions on the stage, and with what can be reconstructed about the laughter and weeping of theatrical audiences themselves, arguing that both actions have a peculiar importance in defining the early modern theatrical experience.
Recent performances of early modern plays are analysed in essays by practitioners and academics, featuring critical, pedagogical and practical approaches.
In a nineteenth-century Britain where magecraft has directed the course of history, a ruthless conspiracy plots intrigue, treason, and murder. Only a pair of brilliant misfits suspect anything is wrong. And to avert disaster, they’ll have to solve a royal mystery more than a decade cold. As the term at Oxford’s Merlin College ends, shy, bookish Gray Marshall accompanies his tutor to the country with nowhere else to go. A misadventure has left him in disgrace with his friends and—temporarily?—without magick. He overheard what sounded like a plan to murder the Master of Merlin. But he has no way to investigate his suspicions, and no one to trust. Until his professor’s odd, neglected ...
Introduction -- The politics of women's "domestic" alliances. Distaff power: plebeian female alliances in early modern England / Bernard Capp -- Between women: slanderous speech and neighborly bonds in Henry Porter's The two angry women of Abington / Ronda Arab -- The political role of the gossip in Swetnam the woman-hater, arraigned by women / Megan Inbody -- Virtual and actual female alliance in The maid's tragedy and The tamer tamed / Niamh J. O'Leary -- Failed alliances and miserable marriages in Katherine Philips's letters / Elizabeth Hodgson -- Women's alliances and the politics of the court. Performing patronage, crafting alliances: ladies' lotteries in English pageantry / Elizabeth Z...