Download or read book The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries written by Kevin A. Quarmby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early seventeenth century, the London stage often portrayed a ruler covertly spying on his subjects. Traditionally deemed 'Jacobean disguised ruler plays', these works include Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Marston's The Malcontent and The Fawn, Middleton's The Phoenix, and Sharpham's The Fleer. Commonly dated to the arrival of James I, these plays are typically viewed as synchronic commentaries on the Jacobean regime. Kevin A. Quarmby demonstrates that the disguised ruler motif actually evolved in the 1580s. It emerged from medieval folklore and balladry, Tudor Chronicle history and European tragicomedy. Familiar on the Elizabethan stage, these incognito rulers initially offered light-hearted, romantic entertainment, only to suffer a sinister transformation as England awaited its ageing queen's demise. The disguised royal had become a dangerously voyeuristic political entity by the time James assumed the throne. Traditional critical perspectives also disregard contemporary theatrical competition. Market demands shaped the repertories. Rivalry among playing companies guaranteed the motif's ongoing vitality. The disguised ruler's presence in a play reassured audiences; it also facilitated a subversive exploration of contemporary social and political issues. Gradually, the disguised ruler's dramatic currency faded, but the figure remained vibrant as an object of parody until the playhouses closed in the 1640s.
Download or read book The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries written by Kevin A. Quarmby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early seventeenth century, the London stage often portrayed a ruler covertly spying on his subjects. Traditionally deemed 'Jacobean disguised ruler plays', these works include Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Marston's The Malcontent and The Fawn, Middleton's The Phoenix, and Sharpham's The Fleer. Commonly dated to the arrival of James I, these plays are typically viewed as synchronic commentaries on the Jacobean regime. Kevin A. Quarmby demonstrates that the disguised ruler motif actually evolved in the 1580s. It emerged from medieval folklore and balladry, Tudor Chronicle history and European tragicomedy. Familiar on the Elizabethan stage, these incognito rulers initially offered light-hearted, romantic entertainment, only to suffer a sinister transformation as England awaited its ageing queen's demise. The disguised royal had become a dangerously voyeuristic political entity by the time James assumed the throne. Traditional critical perspectives also disregard contemporary theatrical competition. Market demands shaped the repertories. Rivalry among playing companies guaranteed the motif's ongoing vitality. The disguised ruler's presence in a play reassured audiences; it also facilitated a subversive exploration of contemporary social and political issues. Gradually, the disguised ruler's dramatic currency faded, but the figure remained vibrant as an object of parody until the playhouses closed in the 1640s.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Theatres and the Effects of Performance written by Farah Karim Cooper and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays? Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.
Download or read book The Definitive Shakespeare Companion 4 volumes written by Joseph Rosenblum and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-06-22 with total page 3141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This expansive four-volume work gives students detailed explanations of Shakespeare's plays and poems and also covers his age, life, theater, texts, and language. Numerous excerpts from primary source historical documents contextualize his works, while reviews of productions chronicle his performance history and reception. Shakespeare's works often served to convey simple truths, but they are also complex, multilayered masterpieces. Shakespeare drew on varied sources to create his plays, and while the plays are sometimes set in worlds before the Elizabethan age, they nonetheless parallel and comment on situations in his own era. Written with the needs of students in mind, this four-volume set demystifies Shakespeare for today's readers and provides the necessary perspective and analysis students need to better appreciate the genius of his work. This indispensable ready reference examines Shakespeare's plots, language, and themes; his use of sources and exploration of issues important to his age; the interpretation of his works through productions from the Renaissance to the present; and the critical reaction to key questions concerning his writings. The book provides coverage of each key play and poems in discrete sections, with each section presenting summaries; discussions of themes, characters, language, and imagery; and clear explications of key passages. Readers will be able to inspect historical documents related to the topics explored in the work being discussed and view excerpts from Shakespeare's sources as well as reviews of major productions. The work also provides a comprehensive list of print and electronic resources suitable for student research.
Download or read book Measure for Measure written by William Shakespeare and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-11 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of one of Shakespeare's most complex and enigmatic plays.
Download or read book Hamlet s Moment written by András Kiséry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hamlet's Moment identifies a turning point in the history of English drama and early modern political culture: the moment when the business of politics became a matter of dramatic representation. Drama turned from open, military conflict to diplomacy and court policy, from the public contestation of power to the technologies of government. Tragedies of state turned into tragedies of state servants, inviting the public to consider politics as a profession-to imagine what it meant to have a political career. By staging intelligence derived from diplomatic sources, and by inflecting the action and discourse of their plays with a Machiavellian style of political analysis, playwrights such as Shakespeare, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston transformed political knowledge into a more broadly useful type of cultural capital, something even people without political agency could deploy in conversation and use in claiming social distinction. In Hamlet's moment, the public stage created the political competence that enabled the rise of the modern public sphere.
Download or read book Measure for Measure written by William Shakespeare and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-06 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Shakespeare Italy and Intertextuality written by Michele Marrapodi and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Newly available in paperback, this collection of essays, written by distinguished international scholars, focuses on the structural influence of Italian literature, culture and society at large on Shakespeare's dramatic canon. Exploring recent methodological trends coming from Anglo-American new historicism and cultural materialism and innovative analyses of intertextuality, the volume's four thematic sections deal with 'Theory and practice', 'Culture and tradition', 'Text and ideology' and 'Stage and spectacle'.In their own views and critical perspectives, the individual chapters throw fresh light on the dramatist's pliable technique of dramatic construction and break new ground in the field of influence studies and intertextuality as a whole.A rich bibliography of secondary literature and a detailed index round off the volume.
Download or read book Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries written by A. J. Hoenselaars and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The connection between Renaissance ideas about the character of individual nations and the presentation of stage characters of various nationalities in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is examined in this volume.
Download or read book A Guide to Scenes Monologues from Shakespeare and His Contemporaries written by Kurt Daw and published by Heinemann Educational Publishers. This book was released on 1998 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This complete guide to more than six hundred playable scenes and monologues from the theatre of Shakespeare's time is the most extensive offering of its kind.
Download or read book The Malcontent written by John Marston and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections that ever conversed with nature: a man, or rather a monster, more discontent than Lucifer." The Malcontent is a striking example of the new satiric tone and moral seriousness in English comedy of the early 1600s. The play's vision of a fallen humanity driven by lust and ambition is created partly by its depiction of Machiavellian intrigue in the court of Genoa, and partly by the disaffected Malevole, the malcontent of the title, who is actually the deposed Duke Altofronto in disguise. Marston's tragi-comedy is full of reversals, surprises and moral transformations and offers a thin disguise for the Jacobean court and its vices. This new student edition contains a lengthy new Introduction with background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical interpretation and stage history.
Download or read book Henry V written by William Shakespeare and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2003-02-27 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time depicted in this play, Henry has turned into the greatest of English kings. Though he has retained the common touch and sense of humor he showed as Falstaff's bosom buddy in the two parts of Henry IV, he has become fiercely focused. He punishes those who have plotted against him; in battle against the French, he shows himself an indomitable leader of men; and, at the end, he conquers even the heart of Catherine, the beautiful daughter of the French king. Henry V is one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays — partly because it brings further news of the downward-spiraling fortunes of some of the beloved scoundrels from Henry IV, and partly because it is so intensely patriotic. Who can keep dry-eyed, who can keep his or her heart from welling up, when Henry gives his great speech before the battle of Agincourt?
Download or read book King Lear written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1785 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shakespeare written by Dennis Kay and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Texts and Traditions written by Beatrice Groves and published by Oxford English Monographs. This book was released on 2007 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores Shakespeare's engagement with the religious culture of his time. Through readings of a number of plays - "Romeo and Juliet", "King John", "1 Henry IV", "Henry V", and "Measure for Measure", this work explains allusions to the Bible, the Church's liturgy, and to the mystery plays performed in England in Shakespeare's boyhood.
Download or read book King Richard II written by William Shakespeare and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first play in Shakespeare's "Henriad" series depicts the overthrow of a king, offering a poignant exploration of character as well as intense psychological struggles within a taut political drama.
Download or read book Shakespeare and Intertextuality written by Michele Marrapodi and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
