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Author: Alexander Leggatt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134657897
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
First published in 2004. English stage comedy has weathered centuries of social and theatrical change. How did it survive? English Stage Comedy 1490–1990 is a unique and beautifully written study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late twentieth century. Organized thematically, it shows how this remarkably enduring genre has dealt with the tensions of social life, using its conventions as tools for social inquiry. Through an examination of comedy Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an approach through genre, neglected in recent criticism, can have much to say about our current concerns with the relations between literature and society. English Stage Comedy 1490–1990 surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as: Shakespeare, Jonson, Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Coward, Orton, Ayckbourn and many lesser-known figures.
Author: Alexander Leggatt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134657897
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Get Book Here
Book Description
First published in 2004. English stage comedy has weathered centuries of social and theatrical change. How did it survive? English Stage Comedy 1490–1990 is a unique and beautifully written study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late twentieth century. Organized thematically, it shows how this remarkably enduring genre has dealt with the tensions of social life, using its conventions as tools for social inquiry. Through an examination of comedy Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an approach through genre, neglected in recent criticism, can have much to say about our current concerns with the relations between literature and society. English Stage Comedy 1490–1990 surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as: Shakespeare, Jonson, Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Coward, Orton, Ayckbourn and many lesser-known figures.
Author: W. Demastes
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230612423
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Comedy Matters traces the long tradition of the expansive comic embrace of cultural difference and diversity that manages to survive even in some of mankind s darkest moments. Demastes argues that comedy has a hard-nosed, pragmatic dimension that can be mobilized against belligerent cultural forces. Drawing from the works of Shakespeare, Stoppard, and a number of other comic masters, Comedy Matters demonstrates how comedy continues to work against cultural regimentation by striving to re-calibrate our decision-making processes and challenging the stultifying rigidity of human economy in the broadest sense of the term.
Author: Simon Barker
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415187343
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
"Each play is prefaced by an introductory headnote discussing the thematic focus of the play and its textual history, and is cross-referenced to other plays of the period that relate thematically and generically."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: John Pendergast
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440857490
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
With summaries, discussions, and excerpts from primary source documents, this book examines Shakespeare's world through careful consideration of the historical background of four of his comedies. Comedy was popular during the Renaissance, and it was also one of Shakespeare's specialties. The four plays discussed in this book, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, span Shakespeare's career and remind us that Shakespeare, more than any of his contemporaries, explored the possibilities of comedy, consistently developing new approaches to the genre. Shakespeare was a fairly traditional playwright, well aware of the long tradition of comedy, which dates back to the Greeks and Romans. This book places Shakespeare's comedies in their historical context. It includes dedicated chapters on each of the four comedies, with each chapter providing a plot summary, a discussion of the play's historical background and significance, and excerpts from primary source documents related to the play. An introduction surveys the historical background of the plays, while a timeline chronicles key events that influenced them. Suggestions for further reading direct readers to additional sources of information.
Author: Eric Weitz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316154289
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
'Laughter', says Eric Weitz, 'may be considered one of the most extravagant physical effects one person can have on another without touching them'. But how do we identify something which is meant to be comic, what defines something as 'comedy', and what does this mean for the way we enter the world of a comic text? Addressing these issues, and many more, this is a 'how to' guide to reading comedy from the pages of a dramatic text, with relevance to anything from novels and newspaper columns to billboards and emails. The book enables you to enhance your grasp of the comic through familiarity with characteristic structures and patterns, referring to comedy in literature, film and television throughout. Perfect for drama and literature students, this Introduction explores a genre which affects the everyday lives of us all, and will therefore also capture the interest of anyone who loves to laugh.
Author: Barbara Korte
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 383942593X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
One tends to associate history with serious modes of presentation rather than with humorous ones. Yet Clio also smiles and laughs out loud: Comic renderings of historical events and figures have made a significant contribution to »popular« history since around 1800. This volume offers case studies on history and humour in Britain and the US from 1800 to the present, discussing various historical topics, actors and events from the Middle Ages to the recent past.
Author: David Ian Rabey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317875397
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
English Drama Since 1940 considers the bids of successive post-war dramatists to find language and images of remorseless disclosure, appropriate to the public manifestation of sensed crisis and the interrogation of the ideal of renewal. This book introduces the period and its discourse whilst redefining them, to give proper consideration to developments of themes, styles, concerns and contexts from the 80s to the present. The book offers succinct and analytical introductions to the work of 60 dramatists, whilst arguing for (re)appraisal of many dates critical perspectives, in order to stimulate further argument in the field.
Author: Anthony W. Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131716329X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volume to explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent did playwrights represent dramatis personae in their entertainments as forming, or failing to form, communal groupings? How far were theatrical productions likely to weld, or separate, different communal groupings within their target audiences? And how might such bondings or oppositions among spectators have tallied with the community-making or -breaking on stage? Chapters in Part One respond to one or more of these questions by reassessing general period trends in censorship, theatre attendance, forms of patronage, playwrights’ professional and linguistic networks, their use of music, and their handling of ethical controversies. In Part Two, responses arise from detailed re-examinations of particular plays by Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Cary, Webster, Middleton, Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. Both Parts cover a full range of early-Stuart theatre settings, from the public and popular to the more private circumstances of hall playhouses, court masques, women’s drama, country-house theatricals, and school plays. And one overall finding is that, although playwrights frequently staged or alluded to communal conflict, they seldom exacerbated such divisiveness within their audience. Rather, they tended toward more tactful modes of address (sometimes even acknowledging their own ideological uncertainties) so that, at least for the duration of a play, their audiences could be a community within which internal rifts were openly brought into dialogue.
Author: Richard F. Hardin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1683931297
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
The fifteenth-century discovery of Plautus’s lost comedies brought him, for the first time since antiquity, the status of a major author both on stage and page. It also led to a reinvention of comedy and to new thinking about its art and potential. This book aims to define the unique contribution of Plautus, detached from his fellow Roman dramatist Terence, and seen in the context of that European revival, first as it took shape on the Continent. The heart of the book, with special focus on English comedy ca. 1560 to 1640, analyzes elements of Plautine technique during the period, as differentiated from native and Terentian, considering such points of comparison as dialogue, asides, metadrama, observation scenes, characterization, and atmosphere. This is the first book to cover this ground, raising such questions as: How did comedy rather suddenly progress from the interludes and brief plays of the early sixteenth century to longer, more complex plays? What did “Plautus” mean to playwrights and readers of the time? Plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton are foregrounded, but many other comedies provide illustration and support.
Author: Kent Cartwright
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198868898
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
"Shakespeare and the Comedy of Enchantment argues that enchantment constitutes a key emotional and intellectual dimension of Shakespeare's comedies. It thus makes a new claim about the rejuvenating value of comedy for individuals and society. Shakespeare's comedies orchestrate ongoing encounters between the rational and the mysterious, between doubt and fascination, with feelings moved by elements of enchantment that also seem a little ridiculous. In such a drama, lines of causality become complex, and even satisfying endings leave certain matters incomplete and contingent--openings for scrutiny and thought. In addressing enchantment, the book takes exception to the modernist vision of a deterministic 'disenchanted' world. As Shakespeare's action advances, comic mysteries accrue--uncanny coincidences; magical sympathies; inexplicable repetitions; psychic influences; and puzzlements about the meaning of events--all of whose numinous effects linger ambiguously after reason has apparently answered the play's questions. Separate chapters explore the devices, tropes, and motifs of enchantment: magical clowns who alter the action through stop-time interludes; structural repetitions that suggest mysteriously converging, even opaquely providential destinies; locales that oppose magical and protean forces to regulatory and quotidian values; desires, thoughts, and utterances that 'manifest' comically monstrous events; characters who return from the dead, facilitated by the desires of the living; play-endings crossed by harmony and dissonance, with moments of wonder that make possible the mysterious action of forgiveness. Wonder and wondering in Shakespeare's and other comedies, it emerges, become the conditions for new possibilities. Chapters refer extensively to early modern history, Renaissance and modern theories of comedy, treatises on magical science, and contemporaneous Italian and Tudor comedy."--
