English Drama Before Shakespeare

English Drama Before Shakespeare PDF Author: Peter Happe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131787112X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
English Drama before Shakespeare surveys the range of dramatic activity in English up to 1590. The book challenges the traditional divisions between Medieval and Renaissance literature by showing that there was much continuity throughout this period, in spite of many innovations. The range of dramatic activity includes well-known features such as mystery cycles and the interludes, as well as comedy and tragedy. Para-dramatic activity such as the liturgical drama, royal entries and localised or parish drama is also covered. Many of the plays considered are anonymous, but a coherent, biographical view can be taken of the work of known dramatists such as John Heywood, John Bale, and Christopher Marlowe. Peter Happé's study is based upon close reading of selected plays, especially from the mystery cycles and such Elizabethan works as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. It takes account of contemporary research into dramatic form, performance (including some important recent revivals), dramatic sites and early theatre buildings, and the nature of early dramatic texts. Recent changes in outlook generated by the publication of the written records of early drama form part of the book's focus. There is an extensive bibliography covering social and political background, the lives and works of individual authors, and the development of theatrical ideas through the period. The book is aimed at undergraduates, as well as offering an overview for more advanced students and researchers in drama and in related fields of literature and cultural studies.

English Drama Before Shakespeare

English Drama Before Shakespeare PDF Author: Peter Happe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131787112X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
English Drama before Shakespeare surveys the range of dramatic activity in English up to 1590. The book challenges the traditional divisions between Medieval and Renaissance literature by showing that there was much continuity throughout this period, in spite of many innovations. The range of dramatic activity includes well-known features such as mystery cycles and the interludes, as well as comedy and tragedy. Para-dramatic activity such as the liturgical drama, royal entries and localised or parish drama is also covered. Many of the plays considered are anonymous, but a coherent, biographical view can be taken of the work of known dramatists such as John Heywood, John Bale, and Christopher Marlowe. Peter Happé's study is based upon close reading of selected plays, especially from the mystery cycles and such Elizabethan works as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. It takes account of contemporary research into dramatic form, performance (including some important recent revivals), dramatic sites and early theatre buildings, and the nature of early dramatic texts. Recent changes in outlook generated by the publication of the written records of early drama form part of the book's focus. There is an extensive bibliography covering social and political background, the lives and works of individual authors, and the development of theatrical ideas through the period. The book is aimed at undergraduates, as well as offering an overview for more advanced students and researchers in drama and in related fields of literature and cultural studies.

English Tragedy before Shakespeare (Routledge Revivals)

English Tragedy before Shakespeare (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: Wolfgang Clemen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136811095
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
First published in English in 1961, this reissue relates the problems of form and style to the development of dramatic speech in pre-Shakespearean tragedy. The work offers positive standards by which to assess the development of pre-Shakespearean drama and, by tracing certain characteristics in Elizabethan tragedy which were to have a bearing on Shakespeare’s dramatic technique, helps to illuminate the foundations on which Shakespeare built his dramatic oeuvre.

English Drama

English Drama PDF Author: Alexander Leggatt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317871464
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
The most important period in the history of English drama is revealed in Alexander Leggatt's challenging account. The author considers English drama from the beginning of Shakespeare's career to the restoration of Charles II. Focusing on Shakespeare and the development of his art, he examines all his major contemporaries: Jonson, Middleton, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher and Ford. He combines close analysis of specific plays with a broader look at trends within drama.

Tudor Drama Before Shakespeare, 1485-1590

Tudor Drama Before Shakespeare, 1485-1590 PDF Author: Lloyd Edward Kermode
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781403965264
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
For too long, a large part of the corpus of Tudor drama has languished in the shadow of Shakespeare and his late-Elizabethan contemporaries. The essays in this collection offer a timely re-assessment of pre-Shakespearean theater in all its aspects, from the practicalities of staging and touring to issues of representation and ideology. The volume delivers a significant challenge to developmental models of theatrical and literary history and substantially revises our understanding of key texts, practices, and cultures of early modern drama.

English Renaissance Drama

English Renaissance Drama PDF Author: David M Bevington
Publisher: Humanities-Ebooks
ISBN: 1847603041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description


A New History of Early English Drama

A New History of Early English Drama PDF Author: John D. Cox
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231102438
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
Twenty-six original essays by leading theorists and historians of the pre-seventeenth-century English stage chart a paradigmatic shift within the field. In contrast to the traditional emphasis on individual authors, the contributors to this storehouse of new historical information and critical insight explore the place of the stage within the larger society, as well as issues of performance and physical space, providing an innovative approach to both literary studies and cultural history.

Shakespeare and the Book

Shakespeare and the Book PDF Author: David Scott Kastan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521786515
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
An account of Shakespeare's plays as they were transformed from scripts into books.

Twins in Early Modern English Drama and Shakespeare

Twins in Early Modern English Drama and Shakespeare PDF Author: Daisy Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317195701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This volume investigates the early modern understanding of twinship through new readings of plays, informed by discussions of twins appearing in such literature as anatomy tracts, midwifery manuals, monstrous birth broadsides, and chapbooks. The book contextualizes such dramatic representations of twinship, investigating contemporary discussions about twins in medical and popular literature and how such dialogues resonate with the twin characters appearing on the early modern stage. Garofalo demonstrates that, in this period, twin births were viewed as biologically aberrant and, because of this classification, authors frequently attempt to explain the phenomenon in ways which call into question the moral and constitutional standing of both the parents and the twins themselves. In line with current critical studies on pregnancy and the female body, discussions of twin births reveal a distrust of the mother and the processes surrounding twin conception; however, a corresponding suspicion of twins also emerges, which monstrous birth pamphlets exemplify. This book analyzes the representation of twins in early modern drama in light of this information, moving from tragedies through to comedies. This progression demonstrates how the dramatic potential inherent in the early modern understanding of twinship is capitalized on by playwrights, as negative ideas about twins can be seen transitioning into tragic and tragicomic depictions of twinship. However, by building toward a positive, comic representation of twins, the work additionally suggests an alternate interpretation of twinship in this period, which appreciates and celebrates twins because of their difference. The volume will be of interest to those studying Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in relation to the History of Emotions, the Body, and the Medical Humanities.

Monty Python, Shakespeare and English Renaissance Drama

Monty Python, Shakespeare and English Renaissance Drama PDF Author: Darl Larsen
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786481099
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
At first consideration, it would seem that Shakespeare and Monty Python have very little in common other than that they're both English. Shakespeare wrote during the reign of a politically puissant Elizabeth, while Python flourished under an Elizabeth figurehead. Shakespeare wrote for rowdy theatre whereas Python toiled at a remove, for television. Shakespeare is The Bard; Python is-well-not. Despite all of these differences, Shakespeare and Monty are in fact related; this work considers both the differences and similarities between the two. It discusses Shakespeare's status as England's National Poet and Python's similar elevation. It explores various aspects of theatricality (troupe configurations, casting and writing choices, allusions to classical literature) used by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Monty Python. It also covers the uses and abuses of history in Shakespeare and Python; humor, especially satire, in Shakespeare, Jonson, Dekker and Python; and the concept of the "Other" in Shakespearean and Pythonesque creations.

Shakespeare and Lost Plays

Shakespeare and Lost Plays PDF Author: David McInnis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843263
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Explores Shakespeare's plays in their most immediate context: the hundreds of plays known to original audiences, but lost to us.