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Author: Kenneth Muir
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521239592
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
These articles, reprinted from various volumes of Shakespeare Survey, concern three plays which have gradually become appreciated by critics and in the theatre. Since the early years of this century they have been seen as an interrelated group, with a peculiarly twentieth-century appeal. Measure for Measure, concerned as it is with adolescents' first encounters with sex, love and death, has a special appeal for young people; Troilus and Cressida, set in the Trojan War, has been found deeply relevant to our own war-troubled times; and All's Well That Ends Well, sharing these preoccupations, is a necessary companion piece. John Barton, who has directed all three plays, is interviewed in one of the articles, which together illustrate the often heated controversy about the plays. Reviews and photographs of post-war productions at Stratford are also included. The book as a whole is designed as a stimulating introduction to these plays and to conflicting interpretations of them.
Author: Kenneth Muir
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521239592
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
These articles, reprinted from various volumes of Shakespeare Survey, concern three plays which have gradually become appreciated by critics and in the theatre. Since the early years of this century they have been seen as an interrelated group, with a peculiarly twentieth-century appeal. Measure for Measure, concerned as it is with adolescents' first encounters with sex, love and death, has a special appeal for young people; Troilus and Cressida, set in the Trojan War, has been found deeply relevant to our own war-troubled times; and All's Well That Ends Well, sharing these preoccupations, is a necessary companion piece. John Barton, who has directed all three plays, is interviewed in one of the articles, which together illustrate the often heated controversy about the plays. Reviews and photographs of post-war productions at Stratford are also included. The book as a whole is designed as a stimulating introduction to these plays and to conflicting interpretations of them.
Author: Vivian Thomas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100035010X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
What is it that makes Shakespeare’s problem plays problematic? Many critics have sought for the underlying vision or message of these puzzling and disturbing dramas. Originally published in 1987, the key to Viv Thomas’s new synthesis of the plays is the idea of fracture and dissolution in the universe. From the collapse of ‘degree’ in Troilus and Cressida to the corruption at the heart of innocence in Measure for Measure, to the puzzling status of virtue and valour in All’s Well, the most obvious feature of these plays in their capacity to prompt new questions. In a detailed discussion of each play in turn, the author traces the dominant themes that both distinguish and unite them, and provides numerous insights into the sources, background, texture and morality of the plays.
Author: David F. McCandless
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253113344
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
"This is exactly the kind of work, with its synthesis of theory, close reading, and deconstructive performance criticism that many of us in the profession have been looking for." -- Joel B. Altman, University of California, Berkeley "McCandless's book represents an inventive and illuminating account that not only produces a theoretically activated text but also explores a range of options for staging it, turning theoretical into theatrical meanings." -- Barbara Hodgdon, Drake University "The writing is clear, snappy, wonderfully informed with a vivid and experienced theatrical imagination... a book that taught me a good deal about the problem comedies, especially from the vantage point of performance, though the insights into performance are fully and incisively integrated with, and they richly illuminate, formal, thematic, and psychological vantage points on the play." -- Richard P. Wheeler, University of Illinois Composed at a critical moment in English history, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida -- Shakespeare's problem plays -- dramatize a crisis in the sex-gender system. They register a male dread of emasculation and engulfment, a fear of female authority and sexuality. In these plays males identify desire for a female as dangerous and unmanly, females contend and confound traditional femininity. David McCandless's book is a unique and invigorating example of performance criticism that illuminates these difficult, sometimes-overlooked tragicomedies. It is an original and timely contribution to Shakespearean theater scholarship.
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Sta
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Comedy and Tragedy--Collected here in one binding are All's Well That Ends Well Measure for Measure and The History of Troilus and Cressida. Collectively they are known as Shakespeare's Problem Plays. While the first two are usually placed with the comedies and the later with the tragedies none of them fit neatly into either classification. Their structure subject matter and resolutions create problems for those who want simple classifications. The term was coined by critic F. S. Boas who believed that these plays each explored a moral dilemma and social problem through their main characters giving the term a layered meaning. O it is excellentTo have a giant's strength;But it is tyrannousTo use it like a giant.
Author: Ernest Schanzer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136564896
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
The opening chapter traces the history of the term 'problem plays' as applied to Shakespeare and defines it more clearly and precisely than has been done in the past. Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra are then discussed in separate chapters, not only as problem plays but from various points of view: such matters as themes, structural pattern, character-problems, the play's relation to its sources as well as to other plays in the canon, are all touched upon.
Author: Eustace M. W. Tillyard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140175776
Category : Tragicomedy
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure - these are all described by the author as Shakespeare's problem plays. In each of them, the author argues, Shakespeare is deeply interested in speculative thought and in the observance of human nature for their own sake; and each is concerned with men on the edge of manhood and of the harsh experiences which forced them to grow up.
Author: E.L. Risden
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078647243X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Shakespeare's plays provide a rich source of genre variation as well as moral or ethical issues that invite deep study. The genre issue often proves the very moral crux where Shakespeare raises the most complex questions. He aimed to build good plays, not simple fulfillments of genre demands. To him "good plays" meant leaving his audience with problems to consider. This book begins with those works most commonly appearing in studies of problem plays, The Merchant of Venice, Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure; moves to some comedic problem plays, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Twelfth Night; and then to tragic problem plays, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. It concludes with some problems in the history and romance genres for the issues they raise in love, adventure, and governance: Henry IV, Part 1, Henry V, Cymbeline, The Tempest, and Love's Labor's Lost.
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521854482
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 84
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Book Description
Since the rediscovery of Elizabethan stage conditions early this century, admiration for Measure for Measure has steadily risen. It is now a favorite with the critics and has attracted widely different styles of performance. At one extreme the play is seen as a religious allegory, at the other it has been interpreted as a comedy protesting against power and privilege. Brian Gibbons focuses on the unique tragi-comic experience of watching the play, the intensity and excitement offered by its dramatic rhythm, the reversals and surprises that shock the audience even to the end. The introduction describes the play's critical reception and stage history and how these have varied according to prevailing social, moral and religious issues, which were highly sensitive when Measure for Measure was written, and have remained so to the present day.
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
Given the wealth of formal debate contained in this tragedy, Troilus and Cressida was probably written in 1602 for a performance at one of the Inns of the Court. Shakespeare's treatment of the age-old tale of love and betrayal is based on many sources, from Homer and Ovid to Chaucer andShakespeare's near contemporary Robert Greene. In the introduction the various problems connected with the play, its performance, and publication, are considered succinctly; its multiple sources are discussed in detail, together with its peculiar stage history and its renewed popularity in recentyears.
Author: John Barton
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307773914
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Playing Shakespeare is the premier guide to understanding and appreciating the mastery of the world’s greatest playwright. Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors–among them Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet–John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. The director begins by explicating Shakespeare’s verse and prose, speeches and soliloquies, and naturalistic and heightened language to discover the essence of his characters. In the second section, Barton and the actors explore nuance in Shakespearean theater, from evoking irony and ambiguity and striking the delicate balance of passion and profound intellectual thought, to finding new approaches to playing Shakespeare’s most controversial creation, Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice. A practical and essential guide, Playing Shakespeare will stand for years as the authoritative favorite among actors, scholars, teachers, and students.
