This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage produ...

This edition of four Renaissance comedies represents the vitality, range and diversity of the English comic drama of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, reflecting both its capacity for escapist fantasy and its concern with the intrigues of everyday city life. Comprehensive textual notes establish the plays in their originating cultural and theatrical circumstances, as well as explaining obscure references and allusions. A general introduction provides a helpful overview of...

The National Theatre's years at the Old Vic were the most Shakespearean period in its history, one which included Laurence Olivier's Othello and Shylock, a radical all-male As You Like It, the Berliner Ensemble's Coriolanus and Tom Stoppard's classic offshoot, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead. Drawing extensively upon the company archives, this book tells the interlinked stories of the National's relationship with Shakespeare through a series of production ...

This Element addresses the question of what Shakespeare in contemporary performance is about, and whether it really is, as it may claim to be, about Shakespeare. Far from charting a smooth journey from page to stage, the work of making Shakespeare into performances often involves deflection, evasion and circumnavigation. Drawing upon the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe and the Schaubühne Berlin, About Shakespeare examines theatrical bodies, the spaces inhabited b...

Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans.In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy:introduces Shakespeare’s life and works in context, providing crucial historical backgroundlooks at each of Shakespeare’s plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contem...

This text traces the changing theatrical and cultural identity of the History plays in the context of postwar social and political conflict, crisis and change. Since the company's inception in the early 1960s, the RSC's commitment to relevance has fostered close relationships between Shakespearean criticism and performance, and between the theatre and its audiences. Through a detailed discussion of key productions, from "The War of the Roses" in 1963 to "The Plantegenets" in 1988, Robert S...

This Companion explores the remarkable variety of forms that Shakespeare's life and works have taken over the course of four centuries, ranging from the early modern theatrical marketplace to the age of mass media, and including stage and screen performance, music and the visual arts, the television serial and popular prose fiction. The book asks what happens when Shakespeare is popularized, and when the popular is Shakespeareanized; it queries the factors that determine the definitions of...

Shakespeare’s roots in applied and participatory performance practices have been recently explored within a wide variety of educational, theatrical and community settings. Shakespeare and Social Engagement explores these settings, as well as audiences who have largely been excluded from existing accounts of Shakespeare’s performance history. The contributions in this collected volume explore the complicated and vibrant encounters between a canonical cultural force and work that fr...

One of Shakespeare's last plays, The Winter's Tale provides tragedy and comedy in equal measure. The King of Sicily, Leontes, accuses Queen Hermione, his wife, of adultery and sets off a series of events driven by royal betrayal, jealousy and the possibility of pastoral love that builds to a fantastical ending.Arden Performance Editions are ideal for anyone engaging with a Shakespeare play in performance. With clear facing-page notes giving definitions of ...

Everywhere we go in rural New England, the past surrounds us. In the woods and fields and along country roads, the traces are everywhere if we know what to look for and how to interpret what we see. A patch of neglected daylilies marks a long-abandoned homestead. A grown-over cellar hole with nearby stumps and remnants of stone wall and orchard shows us where a farm has been reclaimed by forest. And a piece of a stone dam and wooden sluice mark the site of a long-gone mill. Although slumpi...

The Rivals marks the first joint project from the top sports writers of New York Times and the Boston Globe--and what better subject than the two baseball teams whose crossed fortunes obsess and define each city.**A Struggle for the Ages. . .BOSTON GLOBE JANUARY 6, 1920RED SOX SELL RUTH FOR $100,000 CASH--------Demon Slugger of American League, Who Made 29 Home Runs Last Season, Goes to New York Yankees--------...

Contents: 1. Use Preview To See Table of Contents Inside Also available: The Complete Harvard Classics Collection (51 Volumes + The Harvard Classic Shelf Of Fiction) 50 Masterpieces You Have To Read Before You Die (Golden Deer Classics)