The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore PDF Author: John Ford
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014139224X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 640

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore PDF Author: John Ford
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014139224X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 640

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi PDF Author: John Webster
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book

Book Description
John Webster was a later contemporary of Shakespeare, and The Duchess of Malfi, Webster’s best known play, is considered among the best of the period. It appears to have been first performed in 1612–13 at the Blackfriars before moving on to the larger and more famous Globe Theatre, and was later published in 1623. The play is loosely based on a real Duchess of Amalfi, a widow who marries beneath her station. On learning of this, her brothers become enraged and vow their revenge. Soon the intrigue, deceit, and murders begin. Marked by the period’s love of spectacular violence, each character exacts his revenge, and in turn suffers vengeance at the hands of others. Coming after Shakespeare’s equally sanguine Hamlet and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi brings to a close the era of the great Senecan tragedies of blood and revenge. As the Jacobean period progressed, the spectacle became more violent and dark, reflecting the public’s growing dissatisfaction with the corruption of King James’ court.

The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore PDF Author: John Webster
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0141392231
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
A new volume of the greatest revenge tragedies of the seventeenth-century stage 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 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 themes of incest and forbidden love in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

'Tis Pity She's A Whore

'Tis Pity She's A Whore PDF Author: John Ford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134944489
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book

Book Description
The last decade has seen a revival of interest in John Ford and especially 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, his tragedy of religious scepticism, incestuous love, and revenge. This text in particular has provided a focus for scholarship as well as being the subject of a number of major theatrical productions. Simon Barker guides the reader through the full range of previous interpretations of the play; moving from an overview of traditional readings he goes on to enlarge upon new questions that have arisen as a consequence of critical and cultural theory.

Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint

Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint PDF Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book

Book Description


Pregnant Bodies from Shakespeare to Ford

Pregnant Bodies from Shakespeare to Ford PDF Author: Katarzyna Burzyńska
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000551911
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores how the pregnant body is portrayed, perceived and enacted in Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ drama by means of a phenomenological analysis and a recourse to early modern popular medical discourse on reproduction. Phenomenology of pregnancy is a fairly new and radical body of philosophy that questions the post-Cartesian chasm of an almost autonomous reason and an enclosed and self-sufficient (male) body as foundations of identity. Early modern drama, as is argued, was written and staged at the backdrop of revolutionary changes in medicine and science where old and new theories on the embodied self-clashed. In this world where more and more men were expected to steadily grow isolated from their bodies, the pregnant body constituted an embattled contradiction. Indebted to the theories of embodiment this book offers a meticulous and detailed investigation of a plethora of pregnant characters and their “pregnant embodiment” in the pre-modern works by Shakespeare, Middleton, Webster and Ford. The analysis in each chapter argues for an indivisible link between an intensely embodied experience of pregnancy as enacted in space and identity-shaping processes resulting in a more acute sense of selfhood and agency. Despite seemingly disparate experiences of the selected heroines and the repeated attempts at containment of their “unruly” bodies, the ever transforming and “spatial” pregnant identities remain loci of embodied selfhood and agency. This book provocatively argues that fictional characters’ experience reflects tangible realities of early modern women, while often deflecting the scientific consensus on reproduction in the period.

The Lover's Melancholy

The Lover's Melancholy PDF Author: John Ford
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719015335
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Get Book

Book Description


The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi PDF Author: John Webster
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Get Book

Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Duchess of Malfi" by John Webster. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Three Revenge Tragedies

Three Revenge Tragedies PDF Author: Cyril Tourneur
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141958898
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Get Book

Book Description
Following the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign in the early seventeenth century, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, whose plays explore the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment and lead inexorably to violence and bloody retribution. In Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana - a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. Webster's The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Middleton's supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment and death.

The Broken Heart

The Broken Heart PDF Author: John Ford
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86

Get Book

Book Description