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The Golden Labyrinth: A Study of British Drama (Routledge Revivals)
by G. Wilson KnightFirst published in 1965, The Golden Labyrinth provides a coherent and readable history of the essential nature of British drama in a single volume. The treatment is philosophical and imaginative, and full of enthusiasm and clarity which have made Professor Wilson Knight’s works, of Shakespearian and other interpretations, so famous. The chapters in this book have been organized according to literary periods and will appeal to both students of literature and casual readers.
The Golden Labyrinth: A Study of British Drama (Routledge Revivals)
by G. Wilson KnightFirst published in 1965, The Golden Labyrinth provides a coherent and readable history of the essential nature of British drama in a single volume. The treatment is philosophical and imaginative, and full of enthusiasm and clarity which have made Professor Wilson Knight’s works, of Shakespearian and other interpretations, so famous. The chapters in this book have been organized according to literary periods and will appeal to both students of literature and casual readers.
The Homecoming: The Homecoming; Old Times; No Man's Land (Modern Plays Ser.)
by Harold Pinter'An exultant night - a man in total command of his talent.' Observer'The most intense expression of compressed violence to be found anywhere in Pinter's plays.' The TimesWhen Teddy, a professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his old home in London, he finds his family still living in the house. In the conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of the family's struggle for supremacy.
Incident at Vichy: The Misfits; After The Fall; Incident At Vichy; The Price; Creation Of The World; Playing For Time (Student Editions)
by Arthur MillerJew is only the name we give to that stranger. Each man has his Jew; it is the other. And the Jews have their Jews.Arthur Miller's largely forgotten masterpiece, Incident at Vichy is a prescient examination of the evil that exists in us all, inspired by a real-life incident in France in which a Gentile gave a Jew his identity pass during a check, which would have resulted in the Jew otherwise being sent to a concentration camp.This Methuen Drama Student Edition of the play includes commentary and notes by Joshua Polster, Emerson College, US, which investigate the politics of the play in the context of the African-American civil rights movement happening at the time; the Vietnam War; The House Committee on Un-American Activities; and the murder of Kitty Genovese, as well as exploring Miller's own relationships that were central to the play including with psychoanalyst Dr Rudolf Loewenstein, his wife Inge Morath and his friend Elia Kazan.
Mr. Universe: And Other Plays
by Jim GrimsleyGeorge Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright; Bryan Prize for Drama by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In this collection, critically acclaimed novelist Jim Grimsley reveals his great gifts as a playwright in four powerful, award-winning plays presenting different worlds in collision and convergence. In "Mr. Universe," the rescue of a mute bodybuilder from the gritty streets of New Orleans by a couple of drag queens brings out the best and worst in them. In "The Lizard of Tarsus," an imprisoned Jesus (called J.) is interrogated by an ambitious follower, Paul of Tarsus. In "The Borderland," neighboring families representing two very different social classes are brought together during a storm. And in "Math and Aftermath," the two worlds of pornography and nuclear testing collide during a film shoot in the Marshall Islands. These plays (introduced by Romulus Linney, Reynolds Price, Kaye Gibbons, and Craig Lucas) demonstrate the differences that are matters of perception; together they establish Grimsley as a dramatist with imagination and nerve. A STAGE AND SCREEN BOOK CLUB selection.
Philadelphia, Here I Come: Philadelphia, Here I Come!; The Freedom Of The City; Living Quarters; Aristocrats; Faith Healer; Translations
by Brian FrielFed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and the humiliating job in his father's grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O'Donnell has accepted his aunt's invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg.With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.
The Recruiting Officer: A Comedy... (New Mermaids)
by George Farquhar Tiffany SternThis completely new edition of The Recruiting Officer contains a freshly-edited play text, with new annotations, in modern spelling. Tiffany Stern's comprehensive and engaging introduction discusses the author's career and gives a history of the play including its staging, critical interpretation, date and sources, putting it its context of the late Restoration and illuminating its theatrical vivacity.Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer is set in Shrewsbury in 1704 and describes what happens in a country town when the army come to stay. With cross-dressing and confusion in plenty, this is a comedy exploring the timeless themes of love and war. One of Farquhar's last two plays, The Recruiting Officer is both entertaining and touching. It has a light, humane touch and its original depiction of a real-life provincial town comically explores the impact that ongoing warfare had on its civilian society.
The Sound of Music Companion: The Official Companion To The World's Most Beloved Musical
by Laurence MaslonThe definitive book on the world's most beloved musical, TheSound of Music Companion charts the incredible and enduring story of Maria von Trapp and her story over the last hundred years – from Maria's birth in Vienna in 1905 to the 50th anniversary of the film's release in 2015.
Three Revenge Tragedies
by Cyril Tourneur John Webster Thomas MiddletonFollowing the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early seventeenth century, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, whose plays explore the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment and lead inexorably to violence and bloody retribution. In Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana - a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. Webster's The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Middleton's supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment and death.
After the Fall: The Misfits; After The Fall; Incident At Vichy; The Price; Creation Of The World; Playing For Time (Student Editions)
by Arthur Miller'Much like Mr. Miller, Quentin is a witness to alarming public and personal catastrophes: the stock market crash, the Holocaust, the McCarthy witchhunts and the self-destruction of a show business idol to whom he is married.' NEW YORK TIMESHaunted by past romantic failures, Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual, retreats into his mind as he debates marrying for a third time: as he revisits past loves and losses, his mind and memory fragments under philosophical questions; are our failures really just our own? Or is possible to hide away from the mistakes of the past?One of Miller's most personal plays, After the Fall takes place almost entirely inside the mind of the play's protagonist, who is often read as a stand-in for the playwright himself. Touching on themes of the Holocaust, McCarthyism and inherited sin, the play is one of the most discussed within Miller's canon.This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ramón Espejo-Romero, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with Michael Blakemore, former Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre,) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.
Arden Plays: Waters of Babylon; When is a Door...; Live Like Pigs; Serjeant Musgrave's Dance; The Happy Haven (World Classics)
by John Arden'The modern English theatre has had its poets and it has had its dramatists but in John Arden it has acquired its first dramatic poet since - well, let's be rash - the days of Shakespeare.' - Sunday Times.The Waters of Babylon: 'This wild, acidly funny and oddly tragic story of London low-life... reveals Arden's tough linguistic freedom and the free-wheeling ease with which he switches from prose to verse and back again' Sunday TimesLive Like Pigs: 'Thrilling theatre... a rumbustious delight, outrageously funny, powerfully dramatic and, when you least expect it, genuinely moving... a modern classic' Daily TelegraphThe Happy Haven (written with Margaretta D'Arcy): 'This rare and excellent revival perfectly reflects the play's bizarre atmosphere, its potent mixture of farcical prose, rhymed poetry, its marked avoidance of schematic moral codes' Time OutSerjeant Musgrave's Dance: 'A modern classic... a white-hot piece of work... Since its first appearance in 1959, the play has advanced towards us as if in a slow prophetic march' The TimesAlso included in the volume is When is a Door not a Door?, a one-act 'industrial episode'.
The Cocktail Party
by T. S. Eliot'Obviously something more than a successful play, it is the practical demonstration of a patently conceived theory of dramatic form, and as such of high historical interest.' Times Literary Supplement'Eliot has attempted here something very daring and well worth doing. He has taken the ordinary West End drawing room comedy convention - understatement, upper-class accents and all - and used it as a vehicle for utterly serious ideas.' Observer
The Comedies: Translated Into English, Together With The Original Latin, From The Best Editions, ... Also, Critical And Explanatory Notes. To W
by Terence Betty RadiceThe Roman dramatist Terence (c. 186-159 BC) adapted many of his comedies from Greek sources, rendering them suitable for audiences of his own time by introducing subtler characterization and more complex plots. In his romantic play, The Girl from Andros, Terence portrays a love affair saved by a startling discovery. The Self-Tormentor focusses on a man's remorse after sending his son to war, and The Eunuch depicts a case of mistaken identity. Phormio is as rich in intrigue as a French farce, while The Mother-in-Law shows two families striving to save a marriage and The Brothers contrasts strict and lenient upbringings. With their tight plots and spare dialogue, Terence gave his plays a sense of humanity that became a model in the Renaissance and greatly influenced Molière.
Endgame: A Play In One Act: A Mime For One Player: Act Without Words (Theatrical Notebooks Of Samuel Beckett Ser. #Vol. 2)
by Samuel BeckettOriginally written in French and translated into English by Beckett, Endgame was given its first London performance at the Royal Court Theatre in 1957.HAMM: Clov!CLOV: Yes.HAMM: Nature has forgotten us.CLOV: There's no more nature.HAMM: No more nature! You exaggerate.CLOV: In the vicinity.HAMM: But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!CLOV: Then she hasn't forgotten us.
Entertaining Mr Sloane (Modern Classics) (PDF)
by Joe OrtonEntertaining Mr Sloane was first staged in 1964. Despite its success in performance, and being hailed by Sir Terence Rattigan as 'the best first play' he'd seen in 'thirty odd years', it was not until the London production of Loot in 1966 - less than a year before Joe Orton's untimely death - that theatre audiences and critics began to more fully appreciate the originality of Orton's elegant, alarming and hilarious writing. Introduced by John Lahr, the author of Orton's biography Prick up Your Ears, Entertaining Mr Sloane is now established as an essential part of the repertoire of the modern theatre.
The Family Reunion: With an introduction and notes by Nevill Coghill (Faber Paper-covered Editions Ser.)
by T. S. EliotEliot's haunting verse play, set in a country house in the north of England, was performed at the Westminster Theatre in London in March 1939, six months before the outbreak of war.'What is wonderful is the marvellous opening out of consciousness, the flowering of meaning, which makes the play an account of a spiritual experience. There are passages of great poetic beauty, and statements which are the fruits of a lifetime devoted to poetry.' Listener
Murder in the Cathedral
by T. S. EliotMurder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival on 1935, was the first high point on T. S. Eliot's dramatic achievement. It remains one of the great plays of the century. Like Greek drama, its theme and form are rooted in religion and ritual purgation and renewal, and it was this return to the earliest sources of drama that brought poetry triumphantly back to the English stage.
The Rope and Other Plays
by PlautusBrilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254 -184 bc ) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic themes and developing standard characters that were to influence the comedies of Shakespeare, Molière and many others. In The Ghost, a dissolute son who has squandered his father's money is thrown into disarray when he returns from abroad, a theme that is explored further in the comedy of errors A Three-Dollar Day. In The Rope - regarded by many as the best of Plautus' plays - the shipwreck of a pimp and his slaves leads to the touching reunion of a father and his daughter, while Amphitryo, Plautus's only excursion into divine mythology, offers a cheerful account of how Jupiter became father to Hercules.
Alan Bennett Plays 1: Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus and Enjoy
by Alan BennettThis collection of Alan Bennett's work includes his first play and West End hit, Forty Years On, as well as Getting On, Habeus Corpus, and Enjoy.Forty Years On'Alan Bennett's most gloriously funny play ... a brilliant, youthful perception of a nation in decline, as seen through the eyes of a home-grown school play ... a classic.' Daily MailGetting OnWinner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award in 1971, Getting on is an account of a middle-aged Labour MP, so self-absorbed that he remains blind to the fact that his wife is having an affair with the handyman, his mother-in-law in dying, his son is getting ready to leave home, his best friend thinks him a fool and that to everyone who comes into contact with him he is a self-esteeming joke.Habeus Corpus'After two elegiac comedies about the decline of old England, Mr Bennett has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted facre that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body ... a combination of hurtling action with verbal brilliance.' GuardianEnjoyEnjoy uncannily foresaw the attitudes to English working-class life now enshrined in themeparks. 'The classic tug in Bennett between childhod Yorkshire and intellectual sophistication has never been better, or more daringly expressed.' Observer
Caligula and Three Other Plays (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Albert CamusIn brand new translations by Ryan Bloom, four theatrical masterpieces from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Outsider and The Plague are brought together for the first time in English, alongside deleted scenes and alternate lines of dialogueCaligula/The Misunderstanding /State of Emergency/The JustAlthough renowned for his novels, Albert Camus described the theatre as 'one of the only places in the world I'm happy', and staged the four plays gathered in this collection in Paris between 1944-49. Caligula, his first full-length dramatic work, portrays the monstrous emperor who destroys men, gods and ultimately himself. Here too are The Misunderstanding, a murderous tangle of longing; State of Emergency, where 'The Plague' appears as a central character; and The Just, which explores the limits of political conviction. This new translation brings together Camus's final versions of the plays, along with deleted scenes and alternate lines of dialogue.
Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama: In Honour of Hardin Craig (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by Richard HosleyThe twenty-eight essays of this collection, first published in 1962, are the work of distinguished British, Canadian, and American scholars. The essays range widely over the field of Elizabethan drama, concentrating attention on Shakespeare and Marlowe but not neglecting earlier dramatists such as Kyd and Greene or later ones such as Heywood and Massinger. Among the general topics treated are the staging of the interludes, intrigue in Elizabethan tragedy, and Jacobean stage pastoralism. This title will be of interest to students of English literature.
Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama: In Honour of Hardin Craig (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by Richard HosleyThe twenty-eight essays of this collection, first published in 1962, are the work of distinguished British, Canadian, and American scholars. The essays range widely over the field of Elizabethan drama, concentrating attention on Shakespeare and Marlowe but not neglecting earlier dramatists such as Kyd and Greene or later ones such as Heywood and Massinger. Among the general topics treated are the staging of the interludes, intrigue in Elizabethan tragedy, and Jacobean stage pastoralism. This title will be of interest to students of English literature.
Arthur Miller Plays 2: The Misfits; After the Fall; Incident at Vichy; The Price; Creation of the World; Playing for Time
by Arthur Miller"The greatest American dramatist of our age" - Evening Standard In this second volume of collected works, four of Arthur Miller's stage plays from the sixties and seventies are brought together in a new edition. Taking up the theme of individual responsibility from his earlier work, this volume also contains an introduction from Miller himself, along with two of his screenplays. One of Miller's most personal plays, After the Fall (1964) takes place almost entirely inside the mind of the play's protagonist, who is often read as a stand-in for the playwright himself, and touches on themes of the Holocaust, McCarthyism and inherited sin. This was followed by Miller's largely forgotten masterpiece, Incident at Vichy (1964): a prescient examination of the evil that exists in us all, inspired by a real-life incident in France in which a Gentile gave a Jew his identity pass during a check. The Price followed in 1968, a touching and farcical presentation of American life beyond the Vietnam War and Great Depression, which earned Miller a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. In The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), Miller offers a comedic retelling of the Book of Genesis, constructing a parable around the theme of good-versus-evil. Also included are two of the playwright's most beloved screenplays: The Misfits, written for and filmed with Marilyn Monroe, and Playing for Time, televised with Vanessa Redgrave. Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 2 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.
A Subject of Scandal and Concern: (and Almost a Vision) (Oberon Modern Plays)
by John Osborne‘I have injured no man’s reputation, taken no man’s property, attacked no man’s person, violated no oath, taught no immorality.I was asked a question and answered it openly.’ Cheltenham, 1842. George Jacob Holyoake is a poor young teacher, making his way from Birmingham to Bristol to visit a friend who has been imprisoned for publishing a journal that criticises the establishment. When he makes a stop in Cheltenham to address a lecture, his words and his overwhelming commitment to speaking the truth will change his life forever. Arrested and tried for blasphemy, and separated from his starving wife and child, Holyoake is faced with the choice of conforming or staying true to his beliefs in a time of injustice and intolerance. Based on the true story of the last man to stand trial for blasphemy in England, A Subject of Scandal and Concern was originally written for television in 1960 starring Richard Burton and Rachel Roberts, and directed by Tony Richardson, and was first seen onstage in Nottingham in the early 1960s. A Subject of Scandal and Concern received its London premiere at the Finborough Theatre in May 2016, marking the first theatrical staging of the play in over 40 years.
Three Plays of Racine: Phaedra, Andromache, and Britannicus
by Jean Baptiste Racine"George Dillon has elected for speed and clarity; his speed, of which short quotations can impart no notion, is his equivalent for Racine's impetuous dexterity with the French Alexandrine. . . . Momentum, in such a version, is everything. It stands as a homage to Racine's strength of construction . . . and to the expressive power of his themes, on which Mr. Dillon's prefaces have eloquent and sensible things to say."—Hugh Kenner, National Review "His literal and flexible blank verse actually forms the nearest thing in English to the longer-measured rhymed couplets of Racine; even an ordinary reading aloud of so faithful a rendering provides something of the experience that Proust described."—Elliott Coleman, Poetry "A superb introduction . . . flawless translations, infused with poetic fire and charm."—Margaret Carpenter, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot