Engaging Audiences provides an insightful introduction to spectatorship from the perspective of cognitive studies. Using performances of several plays and a wide array of scientific evidence, McConachie examines the dynamics of conscious attention, mental concepts, empathy, emot…
Hamlet kills Polonius thinking he is Claudius. Yet he cannot kill Claudius. Why? Hamlet, angry, tells Ophelia: ""Take thee to a nunnery!"" [nunnery: Renaissance slang for brothel] ""There [in Heaven] is no shuffling; there the action lies in his true na.
This collection of passionate and polemical essays deals with drama from its origin in the human mind to the use made of it in history and the present. It explains the hidden working of drama behind the state, religion, family, crime and war.
'Rewriting the Nation' examines the burgeoning 'new writing' system in British theatre, as well as exploring the key concerns being addressed by the main playwrights who have gained acclaim in the last ten years.
This book's underlying claim is that English Renaissance tragedy addresses live issues in the experience of readers and spectators today: it is not a genre to be studied only for aesthetic or ""heritage? reasons. The book considers the way in which tragedy in general, and Englis…
"This book argues for a new way of reading tragedy that attends to how bodies on the ancient Athenian stage pivot between subject and object, human and inhuman, and so serve as vehicles for confronting the edges of the human -for thinking beyond or without or instead of it. At t…
This is the first publication to analyse the ways in which UK theatre has represented, interrogated or contested images of war and terrorism as they are habitually presented in the dominant media. Drawing on theories of spectacle and a wide array of plays and productions - inclu…
In a context of financial crisis that has often produced a feeling of identity crisis for the individual, the theatre has provided a unifying forum, treating spectators as citizens. This book critically deals with representative plays and playwrights who have stood out in the UK…
The relationship between law and literature is rich and complex. In the past three and half decades, the topic has received much attention from literary critics and legal scholars studying modern literature. Despite the prominence of law and justice in Ancient Greek literature, …
This text provides a sample of different approaches to the drama and law of ancient Greece. It shows how knowledge of classic law enhances our understanding of individual passages of Greek drama and enriches our appreciation of classical dramatic techniques.
What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter of structure? This text e…
This volume analyzes early modern cultural representations of children and childhood through the literature and drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Contributors include leading international scholars of the English Renaissance whose essays consider asexuals and sodomite…
A guide to all of Brecht's key plays that sets them in their historical, dramaturgical and political contexts.
This book explores the role of wax as an important conceptual material used to work out the nature and limits of the early modern human. By surveying the use of wax in early modern cultural spaces such as the stage and the artist's studio and in literary and philosophical texts,…
In a series of interviews with fifty playwrights from the US and UK, this book offers a fascinating study of the voices, thoughts, and opinions of today's most important dramatists. Filled with probing questions, Fifty Playwrights on their Craft explores ideas such as how does p…
Are Shakespeare's plays dramatizations of patriarchy or representations of strong women? Or are they sometimes both? And is it relevant that his women were first played by boys? This work shows how many kinds of feminist theory help analyze the dynamics of Shakespeare's plays.
"In Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann associated Shakespeare with the Devil and the demonic guilt of Nazism. Bringing together major scholars from diverse disciplines and countries, this is the first ever book-length study to explore the always fascinating if sometimes disturbing conn…
