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Showing 101 - 120 of 347 items
By Jean Racine. 2013
The 'greatest hits' of French classical theatre, in vivid and acclaimed new Penguin translations by John Edmunds and with editorial…
apparatus by Joseph Harris.The plays in this volume - Cinna, The Misanthrope, Andromache and Phaedra - span only thirty-seven years, but make up the defining period of French theatre. In Corneille's Cinna (1640), absolute power is explored in ancient Rome, while Molière's The Misanthrope (1666), the only comedy in this collection, sees its anti-hero outcast for his refusal to conform to social conventions. Here also are two key plays by Racine: Andromache (1667), recounting the tragedy of Hector's widow after the Trojan War, and Phaedre (1677), showing a mother crossing the bounds of love with her son.This translation of Phaedra was originally broadcast on Radio Three with a cast including Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and was praised by playwright Harold Pinter. This is the first time it has been published. The edition also includes an introduction by Joseph Harris, genealogical tables, pronunciation guides, critiques and prefaces, as well as a chronology and suggested further reading.After a varied career as an actor, teacher, and BBC TV national newsreader, John Edmunds became the founder-director of Aberystwyth University's department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. Joseph Harris is Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in Seventeenth-Century France (2005).By Seneca. 1966
Based on the legends used in Greek drama, Seneca's plays are notable for the exuberant ruthlessness with which disastrous events…
are foretold and then pursued to their tragic and often bloodthirsty ends. Thyestes depicts the menace of an ancestral curse hanging over two feuding brothers, while Phaedra portrays a woman tormented by fatal passion for her stepson. In The Trojan Women, the widowed Hecuba and Andromache await their fates at the hands of the conquering Greeks, and Oedipus follows the downfall of the royal House of Thebes. Octavia is a grim commentary on Nero's tyrannical rule and the execution of his wife, with Seneca himself appearing as an ineffective counsellor attempting to curb the atrocities of the emperor.By Sophocles. 2014
Sophocles’ innovative plays transformed Greek myths into dramas featuring complex human characters, through which he explored profound moral issues. Electra…
portrays the grief of a young woman for her father Agamemnon, who has been killed by her mother’s lover. Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized this story, but the objectivity and humanity of Sophocles’ version provides a new perspective. Depicting the fall of a great hero, Ajax examines the enigma of power and weakness combined in one being, while the Women of Trachis portrays the tragic love and error of Heracles’ deserted wife Deianeira, and Philoctetes deals with the conflict between physical force and moral strength.By Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare, John Marston, Henry Chettle. 2012
As the Elizabethan era gave way to the reign of James I, England grappled with corruption within the royal court…
and widespread religious anxiety. Dramatists responded with morally complex plays of dark wit and violent spectacle, exploring the nature of death, the abuse of power and vigilante justice. In Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy a father failed by the Spanish court seeks his own bloody retribution for his son's murder. Shakespeare's 1603 version of Hamlet creates an avenging Prince of unique psychological depth, while Chettle's The Tragedy of Hoffman is a fascinating reworking of Hamlet's themes, probably for a rival theatre company. In Marston's Antonio's Revenge, thwarted love leads inexorably to gory reprisals and in Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, malcontent Vindice unleashes an escalating orgy of mayhem on a debauched Duke for his bride's murder, in a ferocious satire reflecting the mounting disillusionment of the age. Emma Smith's introduction considers the political and religious climate behind the plays and the dramatic conventions within them. This edition includes a chronology, playwrights' biographies and suggestions for further reading.By Peter Happé. 1975
Humour, pathos and suffering, and the culminating drama of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, give these plays a wonderful immediacy. Their…
action was conceived on a cosmic scale and all the enthusiasm and vitality of their writing is retained to this day. The energies of whole communities, notably at Chester, York and Wakefield, were devoted to their production and they were to influence later dramatists significantly. The grand design of the mystery plays was to celebrate the Christian story from 'The Fall of Lucifer' to the 'Judgement Day', and this volume contains thirty-eight plays, forming in itself a composite cycle and including almost all the incidents common to the extant cycles.By Goethe. 2005
Goethe's Faust reworks the late-medieval myth of Dr Faust, a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract…
or wager with the devil, Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seek to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last for ever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephisto and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe's great work the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a life beyond his study and - in rejuvenated form - winning the love of the charming and beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire and self-delusion, Faust, served by the devil, heads inexorably towards destruction.By Johann Wolfgang Goethe. 2018
The second part of Goethe's masterpiece opens with Faust struggling to recover from the death of his beloved Gretchen. The…
quick-witted demon Mephistopheles soon persuades him to look beyond his sorrow and enter the world of politics and power, but the great scholar is still eager for new sensations, and asks Mephistopheles to reveal Helen of Troy to him in a vision. Overwhelmed by her beauty, Faust demands she be brought back from the underworld - but even this fails to bring him contentment, and his appetite for knowledge remains unsated. Completed a few months before Goethe's death, this rich and allusive work weaves together a wealth of diverse philosophical ideas and influences, reworking the medieval myth of Dr Faustus and speculating upon the search for truth in the Age of Enlightenment.By Henrik Ibsen. 2016
A Doll's House/Ghosts/Pillars of the Community/An Enemy of the People'Our home has never been anything other than a play-house. I've…
been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Daddy's doll-child'These four plays established Ibsen as the leading figure in the theatre of his day, sending shockwaves throughout Europe and beyond. A Doll's House scandalized audiences with its free-thinking heroine Nora. Ibsen's even more radical follow-up, Ghosts, exposes family secrets and sexual double-dealing, while Pillars of the Community and An Enemy of the People both explore the hypocrisy and the dark tensions at the heart of society. This new translation, the first to be based on the latest critical edition of Ibsen's works, offers the best version available in English.A new translation by DEBORAH DAWKIN and ERIK SKUGGEVIK With an Introduction by TORE REM General Editor TORE REMBy John Ford, John Webster. 2014
These four plays, written during the reigns of James I and Charles I, took revenge tragedy in dark and ambiguous…
new directions. In The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster explores the role of women and the problems of power, sex and corruption in the Italian court, creating two unforgettable anti-heroines. In The Broken Heart, John Ford questions the value of emotional repression as his characters attempt to subdue their desires and hatreds in ancient Greece. Finally, Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore explores the taboo theme of incest and forbidden lust in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet.Jane Kingsley-Smith has edited the plays from the earliest quartos and added invaluable editorial material, including explanatory glosses and a new introduction that discusses how the playwrights explored issues around women, sex, power and violence.JOHN WEBSTER was born in about 1578 in London. He studied law at the Middle Temple before embarking on a career in the theatre, collaborating on many plays with contemporary dramatists. But it was his two solo-authored tragedies, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1614), which sealed his reputation. He died in the 1630s.JOHN FORD was born in 1586 in Devon. His early career was wholly concerned with poetry and philosophical works, and it was not until the 1620s that he began collaborating on stage plays. In the late 1620s, he began writing alone, producing the eight plays on which his reputation would be based, including The Broken Heart (1620) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (c.1630). Nothing more is known of Ford after the performance of his last play in 1638. JANE KINGSLEY-SMITH completed her PhD at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and is the author of two monographs: Shakespeare's Drama of Exile (2003) and Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (2010). She is a Reader at Roehampton University, London, and a regular guest speaker at Shakespeare's Globe.By Dan Laurence, George Bernard Shaw. 1941
By Nikolay Gogol. 2005
Author, dramatist and satirist, Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated…
by petty beaurocracy and base corruption. This volume includes both his most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A biting and frequently hilarious political satire, The Government Inspector has been popular since its first performance and was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play every written. The stories gathered here, meanwhile, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers. They include Diary of a Madman, an amusing but disturbing exploration of insanity; Nevsky Prospect, a depiction of an artist besotted with a prostitute; and The Overcoat, a moving consideration of poverty that powerfully influenced Dostoevsky and later Russian literature.By Edmond Rostand. 2005
Poet and soldier, brawler and charmer, Cyrano de Bergerac is desperately in love with Roxane, the most beautiful woman in…
Paris. But there is one very large problem - he has a nose of stupendous size and believes she will never see past it to return his feelings. So when he discovers that the handsome but tongue-tied Christian is also pining for Roxane, generous Cyrano offers to help by writing exquisite declarations of love for the young man to woo her with. Will she ever recognize who she is really falling in love with? Set during the reign of Louis XIII, Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) was one of the great theatrical successes of its time and remains as popular today for its dramatic power and, above all, for its good-natured, passionate and swashbuckling hero.By William Shakespeare. 2005
The King of Britain, enraged by his daughter's disobedience in marrying against his wishes, banishes his new son-in-law. Having fled…
to Rome, the exiled husband makes a foolish wager with a villain he encounters there - gambling on the fidelity of his abandoned wife. Combining courtly menace and horror, comedy and melodrama, Cymbeline is a moving depiction of two young lovers driven apart by deceit and self-doubt.By William Shakespeare. 1967
'Unable to rely on heaven, we look to Shakespeare as a contemporary conscience' Peter ConradCoriolanus, a famed warrior turned politician,…
is driven from Rome as a traitor when he arrogantly speaks out against popular rule and loses the good will of the starving people. Banished and embittered, he allies himself with his former enemies and begins to plot a merciless revenge on Rome. Shakespeare's politically ambiguous late tragedy of a great soldier who fails to be a great leader questions the notion of heroism and what power really means. Used and Recommended by the National TheatreGeneral Editor Stanley WellsEdited by G. R. Hibbard Introduction by Paul PrescottBy Georg Buchner. 1993
Collected in this volume are powerful dramas and psychological fiction by the nineteenth-century iconoclast now recognized as a major figure…
of world literature. Also included are selections from Büchner's letters and philosophical writings.By Christopher Marlowe. 2003
Marlowe's seven plays dramatise the fatal lure of potent forces, whether religious, occult or erotic. In the victories of Tamburlaine,…
Faustus's encounters with the demonic, the irreverence of Barabas in THE JEW OF MALTA, and the humiliation of Edward II in his fall from power and influence, Marlowe explores the shifting balance between power and helplessness, the sacred and its desecration.By William Shakespeare. 1972
'After God, Shakespeare has created most' Alexandre DumasTwo sets of identical twins, separated at sea as babies, find themselves in…
the same city for the first time as adults. Soon, their friends mistake the twins for one another and bewilderment abounds. Joyful, mystical and brilliantly farcical, Shakespeare's shortest play is an early romantic comedy of confusion and ultimate reunion.Used and Recommended by the National TheatreGeneral Editor Stanley WellsEdited by Stanley WellsIntroduction by Randall MartinBy Terence. 1976
The 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.By Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Terence. 2003
From the fifth to the second century BC, innovative comedy drama flourished in Greece and Rome. This collection brings together…
the greatest works of Classical comedy, with two early Greek plays: Aristophanes' bold, imaginative Birds, and Menander's The Girl from Samos, which explores popular contemporary themes of mistaken identity and sexual misbehaviour; and two later Roman comic plays: Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus - the original comedy of errors - and Terence's bawdy yet sophisticated double love-plot, The Eunuch. Together, these four plays demonstrate the development of Classical comedy, celebrating its richness, variety and extraordinary legacy to modern drama.By null Sarah Jane Mullan, Null Sarah Bartley. 2024
Crisis Theatre and The Living Newspapers traces a history of the living newspaper as a theatre of crisis from Soviet…
Russia (1910s), through the Federal Theatre Project of the Great Depression in America (1930s), to Augusto Boal's teatro jornal in Brazil (1970s), and its resonance with documentary forms deployed in the final years of apartheid in South Africa (1990s), up until the present day in the UK (2020s). Across this Element, the author is interested in what a transnational and transhistorical examination of the living newspaper through the lens of crisis reveals about the ways in which theatre can intervene in our collective social, economic and political life. By holding these diverse examples together, the author asserts the Living Newspaper as a form of Crisis Theatre.