Shakespeare And The Triple Play

Developing the interrelationship of Shakespeare scholarship, performance, and teaching, the contributors to this collection, including scholars of the People's Republic of China, share the perspective that Shakespeare's plays be viewed as texts to be enacted, whether on the theater stage or the stage of the mind's eye.

This book interprets Renaissance plays, chiefly Shakespearean, through the medium of the theater. From the staging of Macbeth at the Globe in 1606, through productions of The Duchess of Malfi in the twentieth century, to principles of theatrical criticism, it examines the play from the viewpoints of playwright, actor, director, audience, and critic. It represents the recent shift in dramatic criticism from the literary analysis of the text to the assessment of the play in performance. Although the study of dramatic productions here has historical and comparative aspects, the emphasis is on enduring problems and solutions. The contributors are distinguished scholars, critics, and theater people from both sides of the Atlantic. Their essays are a tribute to the pioneering work of Arthur Colby Sprague, the leading authority on Shakespeare in the theater. Their theme has been summed up by a prepublication reviewer as "what A.C. Sprague stands for, bringing the testimony of actual production to bear on the understanding of a playwright's vision." Following an introduction by the editor, the book's sixteen essays are presented in four parts: The Playwright and Audience, The Playwright and Performance, and the Playwright and Theatre. Students of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as the reader interested in drama and theater, will find here an interesting range and depth of interpretation.

Shakespeare's plays have never had a larger audience than they do in our time. This wide viewing is complemented by modern scholarship, which has verified and elucidated the plays' texts. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's plays continue to be revised. In order to find out how and why he has been rewritten, Ruby Cohn examines modern dramatic offshoots in English, French, and German. Surveying drama intended for the serious theater, the author discusses modern versions of Shakespeare's plays, especially Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. Although the focus is always on drama, contrast is supplied by fiction stemming from Hamlet and essays inspired by King Lear. The book concludes with an assessment of the influence of Shakespeare on the creative work of Shaw, Brecht, and Beckett. Originally published in 1976. 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.

The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.

This collection models an approach to Shakespeare and cinema that is concerned with the other side of Shakespeare's Hollywood celebrity, taking the reader on a practical and theoretical tour through important, non-mainstream films and the oppositional messages they convey. The collection includes essays on early silent adaptations of 'Hamlet', Greenway's 'Prospero's Books', Godard's 'King Lear', Hall's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Taymor's 'Titus', Polanski's 'Macbeth', Welles 'Chimes at Midnight', and Van Sant's 'My Own Private Idaho'.

Shakespeare's archetypal slapstick comedy, now with updated jokes and wordplay. One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors is a farcical tale of separated twins and mistaken identities. This slapstick play is a staple of the genre, including madcap bawdiness, love at first sight, reunions, and happily-ever-afters. Christina Anderson's translation dives deep into the joy of the original text, reinterpreting the metaphor, antiquated slang, and double and triple entendre for a contemporary audience. This translation of The Comedy of Errors was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare's verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print--a new First Folio for a new era.

"A perfect volume to initiate majors into the discipline and delight of carefully examining presumptions, priorities, language, and structures of both primary and secondary texts." --Stephen R. Honeygosky, University of Pittsburgh

Original Scholarly Monograph