Making Shakespeare


Book Description

This volume offers a lively introduction to the major issues of the stage and print history of the plays, and discusses what a Shakespeare play actually is.




Shakespeare


Book Description

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright.




The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage


Book Description

This 2002 Companion is designed for readers interested in past and present productions of Shakespeare's plays, both in and beyond Britain. The first six chapters describe aspects of the British performing tradition in chronological sequence, from the early staging of Shakespeare's own time, through to the present day. Each relates Shakespearean developments to broader cultural concerns and adopts an individual approach and focus, on textual adaptation, acting, stages, scenery or theatre management. These are followed by three explorations of acting: tragic and comic actors and women performers of Shakespeare roles. A section on international performance includes chapters on interculturalism, on touring companies and on political theatre, with separate accounts of the performing traditions of North America, Asia and Africa. Over forty pictures illustrate peformers and productions of Shakespeare from around the world. An amalgamated list of items for further reading completes the book.




A Stage Full of Shakespeare Stories


Book Description

Step on to a stage full of stories with this beautiful anthology of 12 stories from Shakespeare, retold to be accessible for children. Get lost in Shakespeare's most loved stories with this beautiful anthology of some of the most popular stories in the world. Introduce the children in your life to a collection of the most important stories every written, collected and retold by the much-loved author Angela McAllister. Featuring classics such as The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello, each story is rewritten in a comprehensive way that is accessible for children. This perfectly sized anthology is stunningly illustrated by collage artist Alice Lindstrom whose incredible artwork makes these stories dance to life before your very eyes. This lavish follow-up to A Year Full of Stories and A World Full of Animal Stories is the perfect gift for book lovers young and old. The World Full of... series is a collection of beautiful hardcover story treasuries. Discover folktales from all around the world or be introduced to some of the world's best-loved writers with these stunning gift books, the perfection addition to any child's library. Also available from the series: A Year Full of Stories, A World Full of Animal Stories, A World Full of Dickens Stories, A World Full of Spooky Stories, A Year Full of Celebrations and Festivals, and A Bedtime Full of Stories.




Shakespeare


Book Description

Bill Bryson’s bestselling biography of William Shakespeare takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship—updated with a new introduction by the author to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.




As You Like it


Book Description




Shakespeare and Feminist Performance


Book Description

How do performances of Shakespeare change the meanings of the plays? In this controversial new book, Sarah Werner argues that the text of a Shakespeare play is only one of the many factors that give a performance its meaning. By focusing on The Royal Shakespeare Company, Werner demonstrates how actor training, company management and gender politics fundamentally affect both how a production is created and the interpretations it can suggest. Werner concentrates particularly on: The influential training methods of Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg The history of the RSC Women's Group Gale Edwards' production of The Taming of the Shrew She reveals that no performance of Shakespeare is able to bring the plays to life or to realise the playwright's intentions without shaping them to mirror our own assumptions. By examining the ideological implications of performance practices, this book will help all interested in Shakespeare's plays to explore what it means to study them in performance.




Shakespeare on the Stage


Book Description




Contagion and the Shakespearean Stage


Book Description

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.




Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage


Book Description

The professional Yiddish theatre started in 1876 in Eastern Europe; with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, masses of Eastern European Jews began moving westward, and New York—Manhattan’s Bowery and Second Avenue—soon became the world’s center of Yiddish theatre. At first the Yiddish repertoire revolved around comedies, operettas, and melodramas, but by the early 1890s America's Yiddish actors were wild about Shakespeare. In Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage, Joel Berkowitz knowledgeably and intelligently constructs the history of this unique theatrical culture. The Jewish King Lear of 1892 was a sensation. The year 1893 saw the beginning of a bevy of Yiddish versions of Hamlet; that year also saw the first Yiddish production of Othello. Romeo and Juliet inspired a wide variety of treatments. The Merchant of Venice was the first Shakespeare play published in Yiddish, and Jacob Adler received rave reviews as Shylock on Broadway in both 1903 and 1905. Berkowitz focuses on these five plays in his five chapters. His introduction provides an orientation to the Yiddish theatre district in New York as well as the larger picture of Shakespearean production and the American theatre scene, and his conclusion summarizes the significance of Shakespeare’s plays in Yiddish culture.