Download or read book Henry Irving written by Richard Foulkes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry Irving (1838-1905), the first actor to be knighted, dominated the theatre in Britain and beyond for over a quarter of a century. As an actor, he was strikingly different with his idiosyncratic pronunciation, his somewhat ungainly physique, and his brilliant psychological portrayals of virtue and villainy. As a director of spectacular, and commercially driven, entertainments, Irving anticipated Hollywood directors from D.W. Griffith to Stephen Spielberg. And as manager of the Lyceum Theatre, where audiences included the leading public figures of the day, he controlled every aspect of the performance. This collection of essays by leading theatre scholars explores each element of Irving's art: his acting, his contribution to the plays he commissioned, his flair for the stage picture, and his ear for incidental music. Like Wagner, Irving was a proponent of a holistic approach to the stage, that is, blending together acting, painting, music, and architecture to create harmonious, balanced, and artistic theatre. Irving emerges not only as the peer of such eminent contemporaries as Tennyson, Sullivan, Shaw, and Burne-Jones, but also as a powerful influence on the twentieth-century theatre.

Download or read book Bernard Shaw on Theater written by George Bernard Shaw and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of critical writings on theater from the Nobel Prize–winning playwright behind Man and Superman and Pygmalion. The Critical Shaw: On Theater is a comprehensive selection of essays and addresses about drama and theater by renowned Irish playwright and Nobel Laureate Bernard Shaw. An outspoken critic of the melodramas and formulaic farces that comprised most of the popular theater in the late nineteenth century, Shaw relentlessly campaigned for audiences, actors, theater managers, and even government officials to take theater more seriously, to use the stage as a forum for representing complex real issues such as poverty, marriage and divorce laws, sexual attraction, gender equality, and political power, so that through seeing them acted out, audiences could better understand and address them when they left the theater. Shaw’s commitment to social reform through theater was matched by his expertise in the artistic and practical aspects of drama: whether he was reviewing productions, lecturing about acting, or schooling agents on royalties and copyright law, Shaw set a standard for intelligent professionalism that our own theaters might still aspire to and be measured against. The Critical Shaw series brings together, in five volumes and from a wide range of sources, selections from Bernard Shaw’s voluminous writings on topics that exercised him for the whole of his professional career: Literature, Music, Politics, Religion, and Theater. The volumes are edited by leading Shaw scholars, and all include an introduction, a chronology of Shaw’s life and works, annotated texts, and a bibliography. The series editor is L.W. Conolly, literary adviser to the Shaw Estate and former president of the International Shaw Society.

Download or read book Great Tradition in English Lit Vol 2 written by Annette T. Rubinstein and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an illuminating interpretation of the life and work of twenty-two major literary figures during three hundred years of English literature. It reveals how they were rooted in the political and social movements of their own time, with representative selections from their writings.

Download or read book Shakespeare and Marx written by Gabriel Egan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marxist cultural theory underlies much teaching and research in university departments of literature and has played a crucial role in the development of recent theoretical work. Feminism, New Historicism, cultural materialism, postcolonial theory, and queer theory all draw upon ideas about cultural production which can be traced to Marx, and significantly each also has a special relation with Renaissance literary studies. This book explores the past and continuing influence of Marx's ideas in work on Shakespeare. Marx's ideas about cultural production and its relation to economic production are clearly explained, together with the standard terminology and concepts such as base/superstructure, ideology, commodity fetishism, alienation, and reification. The influence of Marx's ideas on the theory and practice of Shakespeare criticism and performance is traced from the Victorian age to the present day. The continuing importance of these ideas is illustrated via new Marxist readings of King Lear, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, The Comedy of Errors, All's Well that Ends Well, and The Winter's Tale.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen written by James Walter McFarlane and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the history of modern theatre, Ibsen is one of the dominating figures. The sixteen chapters of this 1994 Companion explore his life and work, providing an invaluable reference work for students. In chronological terms they range from an account of Ibsen's earliest pieces, through the years of rich experimentation, to the mature 'Ibsenist' plays that made him famous towards the end of the nineteenth century. Among the thematic topics are discussions of Ibsen's comedy, realism, lyric poetry and feminism. Substantial chapters account for Ibsen's influence on the international stage and his challenge to theatre and film directors and playwrights today. Essential reference materials include a full chronology, list of works and essays on twentieth-century criticism and further reading.

Download or read book Shakespeare A Hand written by Cedric Watts and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you need a helping hand with Shakespeare, this book provides it. Dr Cedric Watts, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Sussex University, offers a broad introductory survey of Shakespeare's works and techniques. Every play is discussed critically - even Love's Labour's Won! Matters of prosody and rhetoric are explained. The Sonnets are interpreted provocatively. 'An ideal book for those coming to Shakespeare for the first time and for more experienced readers. Watts offers the most lively and cheering company', says Professor David Hopkins of Bristol University. The eminent novelist Ian McEwan adds: 'Cedric Watts is a superb critic in the liberal tradition - highly readable, open and generous in spirit, broad and deep in his reading, and wise in judgement.' Cedric Watts has written numerous books on Shakespeare's works, and has edited 21 of the plays for the Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series.

Download or read book Ford Madox Brown written by Colin Trodd and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that Ford Madox Brown’s murals in the Great Hall of Manchester Town Hall (1878–93) were the most important public art works of their day. Brown’s twelve designs on the history of Manchester, remarkable exercises in the making of historical vision, were semi-forgotten by academics until the 1980s, partly because of Brown’s unusually muscular conception of what history painting should set out to achieve. This ground-breaking book explains the thinking behind the programme and indicates how each mural contributes to a radical vision of social and cultural life. It shows the important link between Brown and Thomas Carlyle, the most iconoclastic of Victorian intellectuals, and reveals how Brown set about questioning the verities of British liberalism.

Download or read book The Repertory Movement written by George Rowell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984-10-18 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an account of the origins, development and current state of the repertory theatre movement in Britain. The movement had its roots in ideas, experiments and traditions stretching back into the nineteenth century, and first found its voice in 1907 with Miss Horniman's company in Manchester. Since then it has played a vital - often a dominant - role in British twentieth-century theatre. As a method of theatre organisation, repertory refers to those theatres based primarily in the regions, housing a resident acting company and seeking to maintain each season a programme of plays catering for the tastes of the whole community. But the theory has never been dogmatic and the movement has evolved from a gamut of complex factors, not least the visions of particular personalities. Major landmarks in the history include the effects of the two World Wars, the advent of substantial state funding for the Arts, the growth of cinema and television and the renewal of theatre's link with the community in the form of such initiatives as Theatre- in-Education. The history concludes with a detailed study of six representative regional theatres: The Nottingham Playhouse; The Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow; The Salisbury Playhouse; The Victoria Theatre, Stoke; The Everyman, Liverpool; and The Royal Exchange, Manchester. Appendixes include a Chronology, sample repertory programmes from the period, audience attendance figures and some comparative statistics about funding. Interspersed through the text are photographs of selected theatre exteriors, auditoria, stages and productions.

Download or read book Pitchman s Melody Shaw about Shakespear written by Jerry Lutz and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Coleridge Lamb Hazlitt and the Reader of Drama written by Janet Ruth Heller and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many nineteenth-century writers believed that the best tragedy should be read rather than performed, and they have often been attacked for their views by later critics. Through detailed analysis of Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism, Lamb's On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, and Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Heller shows that in their concern with educating the reader these Romantics anticipate twentieth-century reader response criticism, educational theory, and film criticism."--Publishers website.

Download or read book Shaw s People written by Stanley Weintraub and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How could Bernard Shaw have found anything to admire in Queen Victoria? Or in the passionate evangelical "General" William Booth of the Salvation Army? What possible connections could there be between Shaw, the passionate socialist, and the Tory Winston Churchill, who seemed to represent everything Shaw should have rejected and despised? In Shaw's People, noted Shaw scholar Stanley Weintraub explores the relationships between Shaw and twelve of his contemporaries, including Queen Victoria, Oscar Wilde, H. L. Mencken, James Joyce, and Winston Churchill. Weintraub chose these individuals as lenses through which to look at Shaw but also for the ways in which their lives are illuminated through their often paradoxical relationships with Shaw. While Shaw never met Queen Victoria, his sovereign during the first forty-five years of his life, the degree of her influence is apparent in Shaw's reference to himself, in his ninth decade, as "an old Victorian." Weintraub explores those in the literary world who interacted with Shaw, such as H. L. Mencken, one of Shaw's earliest American fans, who turned against his hero at the peak of his translatlantic reputation, and James Joyce, who was loath to confess his respect for his fellow Irishman. He investigates the curious mutual admiration between Shaw and W. B. Yeats and Shaw's championing of Oscar Wilde despite the vast difference in their lifestyles. Weintraub's skillful investigation of each of these twelve relationships illuminates a different facet of Shaw, from his pre-dramatist years in London through the close of his long life.

Download or read book John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre written by K. Newey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the involvement of John Ruskin with the popular theatre of his time. Based on original archival research, this book offers a fresh look at the aesthetic and social theories of Ruskin and his direct and indirect influence on the commercial theatre of the late nineteenth century.

Download or read book Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-29 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AUSTRALIAN THEATRE in the 1990s is a vigorous enterprise displaying the energies and contradictions of a multicultural society. This collection of essays by leading scholars of Australian theatre and drama surveys the emergence and directions of the new theatrical energies which have challenged or redefined the Australian 'mainstream': Aboriginal, multicultural, Asian-Australian, women's, gay and lesbian, community and young people's theatre; and charts the exciting growth of physical theatre. The contributors assess the impact of evolving funding and industrial priorities, and examine the theoretical and cultural debates surrounding Australian playwriting and theatre-making from the 1970s Vietnam dramas to the postmodern present.

Download or read book Macready Booth Terry Irving written by Richard Schoch and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive critical analysis of the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors. This volume focuses on Shakespeare's reception by figures in Victorian theatre.

Download or read book Open Hatch written by James R Russo and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-18 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Hatch's critical life spanned five decades. Starting in 1947 and continuing until 1984, he wrote about drama (and film) for The New Republic, The Nation, Theatre Arts, The Reporter, and Horizon. Along with John Simon, Robert Brustein, Richard Gilman, and Stanley Kauffmann, Hatch was one of the most potent, influential authors in the New York school of twentieth-century American arts criticism. With style and erudition Open Hatch discusses plays and productions from the following countries: England, the United States, France, Russia, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Greece, and Australia. Among the many works discussed are The Master Builder, by Henrik Ibsen; The Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams; The Bourgeois Gentleman, by Molière; The Iceman Cometh, by Eugene O'Neill; Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare; The Good Woman of Setzuan, by Bertolt Brecht; Exiles, by James Joyce; Endgame, by Samuel Beckett; The Blacks, by Jean Genet; The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee; Dutchman, by LeRoi Jones; and Leonce and Lena, by Georg Büchner. Also included in Open Hatch are articles on the following subjects: the idea of repertory; the Living Theatre; the Actors' Studio; Broadway and Off-Broadway; melodrama; and scene design. In addition, one may find in this rich collection bio-critical pieces on such figures as Tyrone Guthrie, Orson Welles, and John Arden. The precision, wit, and wisdom of Hatch's writing chime in Open Hatch, as he reveals his sense of cultural mission - and love of all the arts - by applying to theater and drama the same high standards that are applied to fiction, poetry, art, and music.

Download or read book Great Shakespeareans Set II written by Adrian Poole and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 1051 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second set of volumes in the eighteen-volume series Great Shakespeareans, covering the work of nineteen key figures who influenced the global understanding of Shakespeare

Download or read book Shakespeare on the American Stage From Booth and Barrett to Sothern and Marlowe written by Charles Harlen Shattuck and published by Associated University Presses. This book was released on 1976 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set of essays, which surveys major developments in the winding down of nineteenth-century methods of Shakespeare staging, spans the decades from the 1880s to about 1920. The Epilogue describes the American celebration of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death.