Download or read book Death By Shakespeare written by Kathryn Harkup and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions – shock, sadness, fear – that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up? In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the chances of seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the theatre were high. It was also a time of important scientific progress. Shakespeare kept pace with anatomical and medical advances, and he included the latest scientific discoveries in his work, from blood circulation to treatments for syphilis. He certainly didn't shy away from portraying the reality of death on stage, from the brutal to the mundane, and the spectacular to the silly. Elizabethan London provides the backdrop for Death by Shakespeare, as Kathryn Harkup turns her discerning scientific eye to the Bard and the varied and creative ways his characters die. Was death by snakebite as serene as Shakespeare makes out? Could lack of sleep have killed Lady Macbeth? Can you really murder someone by pouring poison in their ear? Kathryn investigates what actual events may have inspired Shakespeare, what the accepted scientific knowledge of the time was, and how Elizabethan audiences would have responded to these death scenes. Death by Shakespeare will tell you all this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed, with an occasional death by bear-mauling for good measure.
Download or read book Shakespeare in the Time of Plague written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare in the Time of Plague takes place in England mostly during a period of frequent episodes of bubonic plague, which greatly affected London for long stretches of time. No one was immune to the misery and death the plague produced, particularly in the poorer parishes of London. Daniel Defoe described the great plague in London of 1665 from survivor accounts, but much of the response to that plague was based upon laws and regulations laid down by King James I during the plague visitation of 1603-1609. It was, also, a time when Shakespeare wrote some of his greatest plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth and Lear. Losses animate the lead characters in those plays in complicated ways, e.g.: Hamlet loses his father and becomes obsessed with it, and cannot move on, until he finally is joined with his father in death. Macbeth's ambition leads him to destroy all those who have helped him and blinds him to his own fatal end. Lear rages on when his children abandon him. Shakespeare may have drawn upon responses he observed in reactions to the conditions of the plague around him.
Download or read book Hamnet written by Maggie O'Farrell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'She's like no one I've ever met... She's like fire and water all at once.' Warwickshire, 1582. Agnes Hathaway, a natural healer, meets the Latin tutor, William Shakespeare. Drawn together by powerful but hidden impulses, they create a life together and make a family. As William moves to London to discover his place in the world of theatre, Agnes stays at home to raise their three children but she is the constant presence and purpose of his life. When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. This new play based on Maggie O'Farrell's best-selling novel and adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet, Hymn), pulls back a curtain on the imagined family life of the greatest writer in the English language. Hamnet is a love letter to passion, birth, grief and the magic of nature. This updated and revised edition was published to coincide with the West End transfer of the original RSC production in October 2023.
Download or read book Living with Pandemics written by Bryson, John R. and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an integrated and multi-level analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on people, place, economies and policies, across the globe, this timely book explores how the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic combines failure with success. It focuses on exploring rapid adaptation and improvisation by individuals, organisations, and governments as they attempted to minimise and mitigate the socio-economic and health impacts of the pandemic.
Download or read book Living with Shakespeare written by Geoffrey Marsh and published by EUP. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the 100 or so families who lived in Shakespeare's parish and demonstrates how their interests, work and connections formed part of the background environment that Shakespeare probably borrowed from as he reworked existing stories.
Download or read book The Hot Hand written by Ben Cohen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can you maximize success—and limit failure? Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen brilliantly investigates the mystery and science of streaks, from basketball to business. "A feast for anyone interested in the secrets of excellence." —Andre Agassi For decades, statisticians, social scientists, psychologists, and economists (among them Nobel Prize winners) have spent massive amounts of precious time thinking about whether streaks actually exist. After all, a substantial number of decisions that we make in our everyday lives are quietly rooted in this one question: If something happened before, will it happen again? Is there such a thing as being in the zone? Can someone have a “hot hand”? Or is it simply a case of seeing patterns in randomness? Or, if streaks are possible, where can they be found? In The Hot Hand, Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen offers an unfailingly entertaining and provocative investigation into these questions. He begins with how a $35,000 fine and a wild night in New York revived a debate about the existence of streaks that was several generations in the making. We learn how the ability to recognize and then bet against streaks turned a business school dropout named David Booth into a billionaire, and how the subconscious nature of streak-related bias can make the difference between life and death for asylum seekers. We see how previously unrecognized streaks hidden amidst archival data helped solve one of the most haunting mysteries of the twentieth century, the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. Cohen also exposes how streak-related incentives can be manipulated, from the five-syllable word that helped break arcade profit records to an arc of black paint that allowed Stephen Curry to transform from future junior high coach into the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history. Crucially, Cohen also explores why false recognition of nonexistent streaks can have cataclysmic results, particularly if you are a sugar beet farmer or the sort of gambler who likes to switch to black on the ninth spin of the roulette wheel.
Download or read book King of Shadows written by Susan Cooper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only in the world of the theater can Nat Field find an escape from the tragedies that have shadowed his young life. So he is thrilled when he is chosen to join an American drama troupe traveling to London to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream in a new replica of the famous Globe theater. Shortly after arriving in England, Nat goes to bed ill and awakens transported back in time four hundred years -- to another London, and another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Amid the bustle and excitement of an Elizabethan theatrical production, Nat finds the warm, nurturing father figure missing from his life -- in none other than William Shakespeare himself. Does Nat have to remain trapped in the past forever, or give up the friendship he's so longed for in his own time?
Download or read book Will in the World How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare Anniversary Edition written by Stephen Greenblatt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-05-03 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.
Download or read book Contagion and the Shakespearean Stage written by Darryl Chalk and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-17 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays considers what constituted contagion in the minds of early moderns in the absence of modern germ theory. In a wide range of essays focused on early modern drama and the culture of theater, contributors explore how ideas of contagion not only inform representations of the senses (such as smell and touch) and emotions (such as disgust, pity, and shame) but also shape how people understood belief, narrative, and political agency. Epidemic thinking was not limited to medical inquiry or the narrow study of a particular disease. Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and other early modern writers understood that someone might be infected or transformed by the presence of others, through various kinds of exchange, or if exposed to certain ideas, practices, or environmental conditions. The discourse and concept of contagion provides a lens for understanding early modern theatrical performance, dramatic plots, and theater-going itself.
Download or read book 1603 written by Christopher Lee and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1603 was the year that Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died. Her cousin, Robert Carey, immediately rode like a demon to Scotland to take the news to James VI. The cataclysmic time of the Stuart monarchy had come and the son of Mary Queen of Scots left Edinburgh for London to claim his throne as James I of England. Diaries and notes written in 1603 describe how a resurgence of the plague killed nearly 40,000 people. Priests blamed the sins of the people for the pestilence, witches were strangled and burned and plotters strung up on gate tops. But not all was gloom and violence. From a ship's log we learn of the first precious cargoes of pepper arriving from the East Indies after the establishment of a new spice route; Shakespeare was finishing Othello and Ben Jonson wrote furiously to please a nation thirsting for entertainment. 1603 was one of the most important and interesting years in British history. In 1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era, Christopher Lee, acclaimed author of This Sceptred Isle, unfolds its story from first-hand accounts and original documents to mirror the seminal year in which Britain moved from Tudor medievalism towards the wars, republicanism and regicide that lay ahead.
Download or read book Lady Romeo written by Tana Wojczuk and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Marfield Prize For fans of Book of Ages and American Eve, this “lively, illuminating new biography” (The Boston Globe) of 19th-century queer actress Charlotte Cushman portrays a “brisk, beautifully crafted life” (Stacy Schiff, bestselling author of The Witches and Cleopatra) that riveted New York City and made headlines across America. All her life, Charlotte Cushman refused to submit to others’ expectations. Raised in Boston at the time of the transcendentalists, a series of disasters cleared the way for her life on the stage—a path she eagerly took, rejecting marriage and creating a life of adventure, playing the role of the hero in and out of the theater as she traveled to New Orleans and New York City, and eventually to London and back to build a successful career. Her Hamlet, Romeo, Lady Macbeth, and Nancy Sykes from Oliver Twist became canon, impressing Louisa May Alcott, who later based a character on her in Jo’s Boys, and Walt Whitman, who raved about “the towering grandeur of her genius” in his columns for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. She acted alongside Edwin and John Wilkes Booth—supposedly giving the latter a scar on his neck that was later used to identify him as President Lincoln’s assassin—and visited frequently with the Great Emancipator himself, who was a devoted Shakespeare fan and admirer of Cushman’s work. Her wife immortalized her in the angel at the top of Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain; worldwide, she was “a lady universally acknowledged as the greatest living tragic actress.” Behind the scenes, she was equally radical, making an independent income, supporting her family, creating one of the first bohemian artists’ colonies abroad, and living publicly as a queer woman. And yet, her name has since faded into the shadows. Now, her story comes to brilliant life with Tana Wojczuk’s Lady Romeo, an exhilarating and enlightening biography of the 19th-century trailblazer. With new research and rarely seen letters and documents, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of 1800s New York City and featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries who changed the cultural landscape of America forever. The story of an astonishing and uniquely American life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable forgotten figures in our history and restores her to center stage, where she belongs.
Download or read book The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus written by William Shakespeare and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-04-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus" by William Shakespeare is a gripping and intense drama that explores themes of revenge, betrayal, and the destructive consequences of violence. Set in ancient Rome, the play follows the tragic downfall of the noble general Titus Andronicus and his family as they become embroiled in a cycle of vengeance and bloodshed. At the heart of the story is the brutal conflict between Titus Andronicus and Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose sons are executed by Titus as retribution for their crimes. In retaliation, Tamora and her lover, Aaron the Moor, orchestrate a series of heinous acts of revenge against Titus and his family, plunging them into a spiral of madness and despair. As the body count rises and the atrocities escalate, Titus is consumed by grief and rage, leading to a climactic showdown that culminates in a shocking and tragic conclusion. Along the way, Shakespeare explores themes of honor, justice, and the nature of humanity, offering a searing indictment of the cycle of violence and the capacity for cruelty that lies within us all.
Download or read book The Shakespeare Stealer written by Gary Blackwood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-07-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightful adveture full of humor and heart set in Elizabethan England! Widge is an orphan with a rare talent for shorthand. His fearsome master has just one demand: steal Shakespeare's play "Hamlet"--or else. Widge has no choice but to follow orders, so he works his way into the heart of the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's players perform. As full of twists and turns as a London alleyway, this entertaining novel is rich in period details, colorful characters, villainy, and drama. * "A fast-moving historical novel that introduces an important era with casual familiarity." --School Library Journal, starred review "Readers will find much to like in Widge, and plenty to enjoy in this gleeful romp through olde England" --Kirkus Reviews "Excels in the lively depictions of Elizabethan stagecraft and street life." --Publishers Weekly An ALA Notable Book
Download or read book Shakespeare s England written by Louis B. Wright and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When William Shakespeare was about twenty, his life changed forever. He left Stratford and walked to London, where he became the world's greatest playwright. Here is his little-told story of Shakespeare, presented against the colorful tapestry of his England, the kingdom under Elizabeth I and James I. In the reigns of those monarchs, the nation was emerging from centuries of medieval turmoil. The small island that had changed so little since the Norman Conquest of 1066 suddenly became a center of international adventure, political experimentation, and artistic development. Young Shakespeare was fortunate to be in England, and in London, when he was. The first professional theatre opened in the capital in 1576; he arrived, stage-struck and in search of a job, around 1587. He retired to Stratford as a wealthy gentleman in 1611, only a generation before the theatres of England were closed by the Puritans. During Shakespeare's London years, England seethed with plots and intrigue and throbbed with pageantry; everywhere a writer looked there was a scene to fire his imagination. Like Sir Walter Raleigh and other daring contemporaries, William Shakespeare was, indeed, an Elizabethan who took advantage of his time.
Download or read book Four Birds of Noah s Ark written by Thomas Dekker and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timeless, little-known literary classic to engage a new generation of readers As the Black Death ravaged London in 1608, in the midst of societal chaos and tragedy, playwright Thomas Dekker wrote Four Birds of Noah’s Ark, a book containing fifty-six prayers for the people of London and all of England. The prayers in this book bear witness to Dekker’s deep faith with a power and poignancy that few written prayers in English literature achieve. Bringing Dekker’s devotional classic back into print for the first time since 1924, editor Robert Hudson has annotated the prayers and modernized their language without sacrificing their enchanting beauty and simplicity. Hudson’s substantive and illuminating introduction is a gem in itself.
Download or read book Angels at the Table written by Yvette Alt Miller and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritative and personal, this is an introduction to all aspects of a traditional Jewish Shabbat, providing both an inspirational call to observe this weekly holiday and a comprehensive resource.
Download or read book Shakespeare s England written by R. E Pritchard and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2003-04-24 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of some of the best, wittiest and most unusual excerpts from 16th- and 17th-century writing. "Shakespeare's England" brings to life the variety, the energy and the harsh reality of England at this time. Providing a portrait of the age, it includes extracts from a wide variety of writers, taken from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries and pamphlets by and about Shakespeare's contemporaries. These include William Harrison and Fynes Moryson (providing descriptions of England), Nicholas Breton (on country life), Isabella Whitney and Thomas Dekker (on London life), Nashe (on struggling writers), Stubbes (with a Puritan view of Elizabethan enjoyments), Harsnet and Burton (on witches and spirits), John Donne (meditations on prayer and death), King James I (on tobacco) and Shakespeare himself.
