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The Court Comedies of John Lyly: A Study in Allegorical Dramaturgy
by Peter SaccioThe nature of Renaissance allegory has been the subject of much investigation, notably by Spenserian scholars. The subject is now enlarged through a study of the plays of the Elizabethan Court dramatists of the 1580's and early 1590’s, particularly the comedies of John Lyly. Mr. Saccio rejects the older "topical readings" of Lyly; by extensive interpretation of particular plays he describes three distinct kinds of allegorical operation apparent in successive phases of Lyly’s career and suggests that they form an important paradigm of the development of English drama itself.Originally published in 1969.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.
Courtesans and Cuckolds: A Glossary of Renaissance Dramatic Bawdy (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by James T. HenkeThis title, first published in 1979, is a glossary of the bawdy vocabulary that was used in Renaissance Drama. One of the primary functions of this gloss of literary bawdy is to interpret imaginative uses of the language rather than simply record the generally accepted uses and meanings, with its principal task to make the dialogue of the plays more intelligible to the reader. With examples of bawdy language used in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Webster amongst many others, this title will be of great interest to students of literature and performance studies.
Courtesans and Cuckolds: A Glossary of Renaissance Dramatic Bawdy (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by James T. HenkeThis title, first published in 1979, is a glossary of the bawdy vocabulary that was used in Renaissance Drama. One of the primary functions of this gloss of literary bawdy is to interpret imaginative uses of the language rather than simply record the generally accepted uses and meanings, with its principal task to make the dialogue of the plays more intelligible to the reader. With examples of bawdy language used in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Webster amongst many others, this title will be of great interest to students of literature and performance studies.
Cousin Betty
by Honoré De BalzacLa Cousine Bette (French pronunciation: [la kuzin bɛt], Cousin Bette) is an 1846 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a tradesman named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy").
Cousin Pons
by Honoré De BalzacMild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. When these relatives become aware of the true value of his art collection, however, their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls away as they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man's inheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion to Cousin Bette, the darkly humorous Cousin Pons is among of the last and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.
Covering McKellen: An Understudy's Tale (Oberon Books)
by David WestonWINNER OF THE 2011 THEATRE BOOK PRIZEThe new edition of the acclaimed memoir by David Weston, chronicling the year he spent as Ian McKellen's understudy in the Royal Shakespeare Company's tour of King Lear.Shakespeare's greatest play, directed by the most experienced and acclaimed director in the land, starring one of our very finest actors at the very peak of his powers... What could possibly go wrong?The stage is set for what promises to be one of the greatest tours in the history of theatre. Take a front row seat as a whole host of stars led by Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Trevor Nunn set off to take the world by storm with their new production of King Lear only to endure injuries, critical backlash and almost constant controversy.As understudy to the King himself, Weston’s frank and funny account takes us right through from the London rehearsals to the historical Stratford Season, back to the glittering West End, and then out across the globe. Punctuated with hilarious celebrity anecdotes, insightful travelling tales, and lessons for any aspiring thespian, Weston deftly lifts the curtain the on Royal Shakespeare Company's much heralded tour and reveals the chaos underneath.
Covering Shakespeare: An Actor's Saga of Near Misses and Dogged Endurance
by David WestonDavid Weston has spent a lifetime acting in Shakespeare’s plays, and has been directed by Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn and Simon Croft. Chosen as Ian McKellen’s understudy in the RSC’s King Lear, he toured the world and recorded his experiences in his diary, which became the award-winning Covering Shakespeare: An Understudy’s Tale, called ‘Salty, evocative and informative’ by the Daily Mail. It went on to win the prestigious I.T.R. Theatre Book of the the Year Prize for 2012. With Covering Shakespeare he goes even further, tracing his sixty-two year association with the Bard. He has appeared in twenty-nine of the thirty-seven plays, many several times, and has worked with all the major companies to the outmost limits of the Fringe, from Hollywood to Hong Kong, with the great, the mediocre and the forgotten. He has stories and reminiscences about them all, written in his inimitable style.
The Cow Play (Modern Plays)
by Ed HarrisIt's unusual, isn't it, for a girl to grow a tail at my age?Owen can't seem to write, Thom's exhaust pipe is ruined, and Holly is turning into a cow. As the situation worsens Owen is forced to choose between his blunt and exciting friend Thom, or his love for the increasingly bovine Holly. Owen knows the effects Holly's transformation are having on him, but he is scared that if he gives up on the one he loves, he'll be no better than Thom – a man who is the epitome of opportunism and shallow self-interest. The Cow Play is a hilarious, touching and bizarre story, an absurd black comedy about the ethics of trying to save those we love.
The Cow Play (Modern Plays)
by Ed HarrisIt's unusual, isn't it, for a girl to grow a tail at my age?Owen can't seem to write, Thom's exhaust pipe is ruined, and Holly is turning into a cow. As the situation worsens Owen is forced to choose between his blunt and exciting friend Thom, or his love for the increasingly bovine Holly. Owen knows the effects Holly's transformation are having on him, but he is scared that if he gives up on the one he loves, he'll be no better than Thom – a man who is the epitome of opportunism and shallow self-interest. The Cow Play is a hilarious, touching and bizarre story, an absurd black comedy about the ethics of trying to save those we love.
Coward Plays: Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered; Long Island Sound; Volcano; Age Cannot Wither; Design For Rehearsing (World Classics)
by Noël CowardCoward Plays: 9 offers up a fascinating selection of Noël Coward's lesser-known works. Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered (1940) follows Leila Heseldyne after she has fled to America, leaving a war-torn Britain and her husband behind; Long Island Sound(1947) sees a writer coerced into a riotous flock of high flying society people with turbulent results; and Volcano (1957) depicts a volcanic eruption as it punctuates the dubious conduct of six individuals on a fictional South Sea island. This volume also includes Design for Rehearsing (1933) was Coward's private satire on the way he , Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne worked on Design for Living. Age Cannot Wither (1967), Coward's last and unfinished play completes the collection as it portrays the boozy reunion of three women in their sixties, who meet without fail every year to reminisce. Together, these works offer a new and intriguing insight into Coward the playwright and his oeuvre that extends well beyond his most well-known works such as Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and Hay Fever. The volume is introduced by Coward expert and scholar Barry Day.
Coward Plays: Hay Fever; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; Easy Virtue (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThis first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Cowardand the century were still in their 20s. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley,Coward's first biographer. Hay Fever, a comedy of badmanners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who haveall been invited independently for a weekend at their country housenear Maidenhead. The Vortexwas a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction ontothe stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. Fallen Angels, which is written for two star actresseswas described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - thesecond half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologuebetween the two women. Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic tribute to alost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directlyto the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentallyhypocritical 20s society. "He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur everagain in theatre history" Terence Rattigan
Coward Plays: Private Lives; Bitter-Sweet; The Marquise; Post-Mortem (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThe plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill andversatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s.The volume containshis best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit whenit was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and reparteehave ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gaveme more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Notespecially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or itsproduction but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth centurycomedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is avilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerfulwriting.
Coward Plays: Blithe Spirit; Present Laughter; This Happy Breed; Tonight at 8.30 (ii) (World Classics)
by Noël CowardVolume Four of Noël Coward's plays contains a selection of Coward'splays from the thirties and forties which includes Blithe Spirit, acomedy that centres around the spirit medium Madame Arcati. The playthat mocks sudden death was produced at precisely the moment when bombswere bringing it to Britain "I shall ever be grateful, for the almostpsychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days duringone of the darkest years of the war." The play was for years thelongest-running comedy in the history of British theatre. PresentLaughter follows the life of Garry Essendine, a world-weary,middle-aged projection of the dilettante, debonair persona -self-obsessed and dressing-gowned who struts through the play like aneducated peacock. It is a comedy about the 'theatricals' that Noël bestknew and loved, and was originally a star vehicle for himself. It isthe closest to an autobiographical play that Coward ever wrote.ThisHappy Breed is a saga of a lower middle-class family; and three shorterpieces fromTonight at 8.30 - is a farce set in the South of France,and serves as an oblique tribute to Frederick Lonsdale; The AstonishedHeart is about the decay of a psychiatrist's mind through personalsexual obsession. Red Peppers, which closes the volume, was a cynicaltribute to the lost music halls of the First World War.
Coward Plays: Relative Values; Look After Lulu; Waiting in the Wings; Suite in Three Keys (World Classics)
by Noël CowardContaining Coward's best work from the last two decades of his life,this volume includes Relative Values, which ran for over a year in1951-2, Look After Lulu (1959), his perennially popular Feydeauadaptation, Waiting in the Wings (1960), a bravura piece set in a homefor retired actresses, and Suite in Three Keys (1965), a trilogy ofplays which gave Coward his last roles on stage. The volume isintroduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer, and includesan extensive chronology of Coward's work.
Coward Plays: Design for Living; Cavalcade; Conversation Piece; Tonight at 8.30 (i); Still Life (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThe third volume of Coward's plays contains some of his best work from the thirties. Design for Living is about a triangular alliance between two men and a woman, based on friends of Coward's, which he waited to write "until she and he and I had arrived by different roads in our careers at a time and a place when we felt we could all three play together with a more or less equal degree of success." Cavalcade was Coward's most ambitious stage project, set during the Boer War, which cost £30,000 in its day and which includes scenes of the relief of the sinking of the Titanic and the coming of the Jazz Age. Conversation Piece is a musical comedy that Noël wrote for the Parisian star Yvonne Printemps and includes the song "I'll Follow My Secret Heart". Also in the volume are three short plays from Tonight at 8.30 including Hands Across the Sea, a gentle satire of colonials and London Society; Still Life which became the film Brief Encounter and Fumed Oak a suburban comedy about a 'worm who turns'.
Coward Plays: Semi-Monde; Point Valaine; South Sea Bubble; Nude With Violin (World Classics)
by Noël CowardPhilip Hoare, in his biography of Coward described Semi-Monde as his "most daring play to date. In a chic Parisian hotel, a series of sexualpairings take place through rendezvous, arguments, infidelities andreconciliations: sexual deviance is undisguised...set in the bisexual1920s, the play could easily be populated by characters of Coward'ssociety". Point Valaine is "thedrama of a lurid episode of lust in the semi-tropics.. unmistakably thework of a master of the stage" (New York Times); South Sea Bubble whichconcerns "the Governor's lady in the Isle of Samolo who plays withnative fire, nearly gets her wings singed, bashes her native admirerwith a bottle and at one of those Coward next-morning-at breakfastscenes slips her way out of the scrape with feline grace." (ManchesterGuardian) whilst Nude With Violin is a witty comedy about art fraud.
Coward Plays: Quadrille; 'Peace in Our Time'; Tonight at 8.30 (iii) (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThe Seventh volume in the Coward Collection. On Quadrille: "Miss Fontanne plays the madcap Marchioness with thecrackle and sheen of a five-pound note. Her eyes mock marvelously, hervoice cuts like a knife into a wedding cake, and the scene in ActThree, on the eve of her elopement with Mr. Lung, is as delicious ascrushed ice." Evening Standard, 1952. "The idea of Peace in Our Time",Coward wrote "was conceived in Paris shortly after the Liberation. . .I began to suspect that the physical effect of four years intermittentbombing is far less damaging to the intrinsic character of a nationthan the spiritual effect of four years enemy occupation."Thevolume also contains four pieces from the Tonight at 8.30 sequence: WeWere Dancing "provides a marvelously compact illustration of the waythe English public school spirit prevails even in moments of strenuouspassion." "Shadow Play is a musical fantasy. . . which gave Gertie andme a chance to sing as romantically as we could, dance in the moonlightand, we hoped, convince the audience that we were very fascinatingindeed"; and "Family Album - a sly satire on Victorian hypocrisy,adorned with an unobtrusive but agreeable musical score. It wasstylised both in its decor and its performance, was a joy to play andprovided the whole talented company with good parts." Star Chamber,closely based on Coward's experiences trying to co-ordinate his Actors'Orphanage charity committee, is published here for the first time.
Coward Plays: I'll Leave it to You; The Young Idea; This Was a Man (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThe eighth volume in the Coward Collection includes I'llLeave It To You and The Young Idea, the first of Coward's plays ever tobe produced. These were, as he said, "enthusiastically acclaimed by thecritics and ran five weeks and eight weeks respectively. In both ofthem I appeared with the utmost determination." This Was a Man, aslightly later play, was written in 1926, after the successes whichmade his name. It was originally banned by the Lord Chamberlain "forfacetious adultery".
Coward Plays: Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered; Long Island Sound; Volcano; Age Cannot Wither; Design For Rehearsing (World Classics)
by Noël CowardCoward Plays: 9 offers up a fascinating selection of Noël Coward's lesser-known works. Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered (1940) follows Leila Heseldyne after she has fled to America, leaving a war-torn Britain and her husband behind; Long Island Sound(1947) sees a writer coerced into a riotous flock of high flying society people with turbulent results; and Volcano (1957) depicts a volcanic eruption as it punctuates the dubious conduct of six individuals on a fictional South Sea island. This volume also includes Design for Rehearsing (1933) was Coward's private satire on the way he , Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne worked on Design for Living. Age Cannot Wither (1967), Coward's last and unfinished play completes the collection as it portrays the boozy reunion of three women in their sixties, who meet without fail every year to reminisce. Together, these works offer a new and intriguing insight into Coward the playwright and his oeuvre that extends well beyond his most well-known works such as Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and Hay Fever. The volume is introduced by Coward expert and scholar Barry Day.
Coward Plays: Relative Values; Look After Lulu; Waiting in the Wings; Suite in Three Keys (World Classics)
by Noël CowardContaining Coward's best work from the last two decades of his life,this volume includes Relative Values, which ran for over a year in1951-2, Look After Lulu (1959), his perennially popular Feydeauadaptation, Waiting in the Wings (1960), a bravura piece set in a homefor retired actresses, and Suite in Three Keys (1965), a trilogy ofplays which gave Coward his last roles on stage. The volume isintroduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer, and includesan extensive chronology of Coward's work.
Coward Plays: Blithe Spirit; Present Laughter; This Happy Breed; Tonight at 8.30 (ii) (World Classics)
by Noël CowardVolume Four of Noël Coward's plays contains a selection of Coward'splays from the thirties and forties which includes Blithe Spirit, acomedy that centres around the spirit medium Madame Arcati. The playthat mocks sudden death was produced at precisely the moment when bombswere bringing it to Britain "I shall ever be grateful, for the almostpsychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days duringone of the darkest years of the war." The play was for years thelongest-running comedy in the history of British theatre. PresentLaughter follows the life of Garry Essendine, a world-weary,middle-aged projection of the dilettante, debonair persona -self-obsessed and dressing-gowned who struts through the play like aneducated peacock. It is a comedy about the 'theatricals' that Noël bestknew and loved, and was originally a star vehicle for himself. It isthe closest to an autobiographical play that Coward ever wrote.ThisHappy Breed is a saga of a lower middle-class family; and three shorterpieces fromTonight at 8.30 - is a farce set in the South of France,and serves as an oblique tribute to Frederick Lonsdale; The AstonishedHeart is about the decay of a psychiatrist's mind through personalsexual obsession. Red Peppers, which closes the volume, was a cynicaltribute to the lost music halls of the First World War.
Coward Plays: Private Lives; Bitter-Sweet; The Marquise; Post-Mortem (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThe plays in this volume demonstrate the extraordinary skill andversatility Coward's writing achieved in the late 1920s.The volume containshis best-loved classic, Private Lives, which was an immeditate hit whenit was first staged in 1930. Coward's sparkling dialogue and reparteehave ensured the play's popularity ever since. Of Bitter-Sweet in 1929 Noël Coward wrote that it was "a musical that gaveme more complete satisfaction than anything else I had yet written. Notespecially on acount of its dialogue or its lyrics or its music or itsproduction but as a whole." The Marquise is an "eighteenth centurycomedy" filled with maids and duels, whilst Post-Mortem is avilification of war that contains some of Coward's most powerfulwriting.
Coward Plays: Hay Fever; The Vortex; Fallen Angels; Easy Virtue (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThis first volume in the Coward Collection contains four plays written within a two year period when Cowardand the century were still in their 20s. The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley,Coward's first biographer. Hay Fever, a comedy of badmanners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who haveall been invited independently for a weekend at their country housenear Maidenhead. The Vortexwas a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction ontothe stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. Fallen Angels, which is written for two star actresseswas described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - thesecond half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologuebetween the two women. Easy Virtue is an elegant, laconic tribute to alost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directlyto the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentallyhypocritical 20s society. "He is simply a phenomenon, and one that is unlikely to occur everagain in theatre history" Terence Rattigan
Coward Plays: Design for Living; Cavalcade; Conversation Piece; Tonight at 8.30 (i); Still Life (World Classics)
by Noël CowardThe third volume of Coward's plays contains some of his best work fromthe thirties. Design for Living - is about a triangular alliancebetween two men and a woman, based on friends of Coward's, which hewaited to write "until she and he and I had arrived by different roadsin our careers at a time and a place when we felt we could all threeplay together with a more or less equal degree of success." Cavalcadewas Coward's most ambitious stage project, set during the Boer War,which cost £30,000 in its day and which includes scenes of the reliefof the sinking of the Titanic and the coming of the Jazz Age. Conversation Piece is a musical comedy that Noël wrote for the Parisianstar Yvonne Printemps and includes the song "I'll Follow My SecretHeart". Also in the volume are three short plays including Tonight at 8.30 -Hands Across the Sea, a gentle satire of colonials and London Society;Still Life which became the film Brief Encounter and Fumed Oak a suburbancomedy about a 'worm who turns'. The volume is introduced by SheridanMorley.
Coward Plays: Semi-Monde; Point Valaine; South Sea Bubble; Nude With Violin (World Classics)
by Noël CowardPhilip Hoare, in his biography of Coward described Semi-Monde as his "most daring play to date. In a chic Parisian hotel, a series of sexualpairings take place through rendezvous, arguments, infidelities andreconciliations: sexual deviance is undisguised...set in the bisexual1920s, the play could easily be populated by characters of Coward'ssociety". Point Valaine is "thedrama of a lurid episode of lust in the semi-tropics.. unmistakably thework of a master of the stage" (New York Times); South Sea Bubble whichconcerns "the Governor's lady in the Isle of Samolo who plays withnative fire, nearly gets her wings singed, bashes her native admirerwith a bottle and at one of those Coward next-morning-at breakfastscenes slips her way out of the scrape with feline grace." (ManchesterGuardian) whilst Nude With Violin is a witty comedy about art fraud.