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Ben and Imo (Modern Plays)
by Mr Mark RavenhillThe 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is fast approaching. To mark the occasion, Benjamin Britten has just nine months to write a new opera about her predecessor Elizabeth I.Into the world of the disheartened composer enters the exuberant and passionate Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav and an accomplished musician in her own right. Her candid and can-do attitude proves to be the perfect foil for the capricious and often maddening Britten, and what begins as an arrangement of practical support turns into a bond that not only sees Gloriana to its premiere but endures throughout the rest of their lives.This edition is published to coincide with the world premiere at the Swan Theatre, Stratford, in February 2024.
Ben Jonson: Four Comedies
by Ben Johnson Helen OstovichThis edition of Ben Jonson's four middle comedies places the works in the popular history and culture of the times, 1605-1614, and surveys the influences, both classical and contemporary, on Jonson as a playwright. On-the-page annotations recreate the audiences perception of the plays as performances by commenting on the stage-directions, the self-conscious theatricality of characters and scenes, and the vivid colloquialisms of early modern London that give the dialogue a heightened dimension of realism. Brief introductions to each play discuss the local settings, sources, theatre history and further readings. The general introduction includes a biography of Jonson, a chronology of the plays and masques, and separate essays on each play, dealing particularly with Jonson's satirical treatments of trends and shams of the day, whether political, social, commercial, or spiritual.
Ben Jonson: Four Comedies (Longman Annotated Texts)
by Ben Johnson Helen OstovichThis edition of Ben Jonson's four middle comedies places the works in the popular history and culture of the times, 1605-1614, and surveys the influences, both classical and contemporary, on Jonson as a playwright. On-the-page annotations recreate the audiences perception of the plays as performances by commenting on the stage-directions, the self-conscious theatricality of characters and scenes, and the vivid colloquialisms of early modern London that give the dialogue a heightened dimension of realism. Brief introductions to each play discuss the local settings, sources, theatre history and further readings. The general introduction includes a biography of Jonson, a chronology of the plays and masques, and separate essays on each play, dealing particularly with Jonson's satirical treatments of trends and shams of the day, whether political, social, commercial, or spiritual.
Ben Jonson: Four Plays (New Mermaids)
by Ben Jonson Robert N. WatsonBringing together four of the most popular and widely studied of Ben Jonson's plays, this anthology focuses on the city comedies for which Jonson is best known today: The Alchemist (edited by Elizabeth Cook), Volpone (edited by Robert N. Watson), Bartholmew Fair (edited by G.R. Hibbard) and Epicoene or The Silent Woman (edited by Roger Holdsworth). Today Jonson's works are widely considered to be amongst the best produced in his period. The new introduction by Robert N. Watson explores the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and politics, as well as providing a guide to the language, characters and themes. On-page commentary notes gloss the text in greater detail, making this the ideal edition for study and classroom use.
Ben Jonson: Four Plays (New Mermaids)
by Ben Jonson Robert N. WatsonBringing together four of the most popular and widely studied of Ben Jonson's plays, this anthology focuses on the city comedies for which Jonson is best known today: The Alchemist (edited by Elizabeth Cook), Volpone (edited by Robert N. Watson), Bartholmew Fair (edited by G.R. Hibbard) and Epicoene or The Silent Woman (edited by Roger Holdsworth). Today Jonson's works are widely considered to be amongst the best produced in his period. The new introduction by Robert N. Watson explores the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and politics, as well as providing a guide to the language, characters and themes. On-page commentary notes gloss the text in greater detail, making this the ideal edition for study and classroom use.
Ben Jonson: His Craft and Art (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by Rosalind MilesThough he is one of the undisputed giants of English literature, Ben Jonson is known to most people only as the author of one or two masterly plays which regularly appear in the drama repertory. He is much less well-known for his whole oeuvre, which encompasses poetry, criticism, masque-making, and a lifetime of linguistic and lexicographical study. In this book, first published in 1990, the author presents a comprehensive critical study of the whole of Jonson’s output from his earliest beginnings through to the final achievement. Looking at every word he ever wrote, in drama, masque, poetry, philosophy and literary criticism, the author reveals an interesting and varied picture of Jonson. This title will be of interest to students of English literature and Renaissance drama.
Ben Jonson: His Craft and Art (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by Rosalind MilesThough he is one of the undisputed giants of English literature, Ben Jonson is known to most people only as the author of one or two masterly plays which regularly appear in the drama repertory. He is much less well-known for his whole oeuvre, which encompasses poetry, criticism, masque-making, and a lifetime of linguistic and lexicographical study. In this book, first published in 1990, the author presents a comprehensive critical study of the whole of Jonson’s output from his earliest beginnings through to the final achievement. Looking at every word he ever wrote, in drama, masque, poetry, philosophy and literary criticism, the author reveals an interesting and varied picture of Jonson. This title will be of interest to students of English literature and Renaissance drama.
Ben Jonson: His Life and Work (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by Rosalind MilesThe extraordinary character of Ben Jonson has only recently been brought into the light. Critics traditionally exalted Shakespeare, at Jonson’s expense. In this biography, first published in 1986, the author presents a full and accurate account of Jonson’s life in modern times. Rosalind Miles follows Jonson from his obscure beginnings to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the first Poet Laureate, in 1637. Her Jonson is vivid and vigorous, equally alive in his life and in his work. This title will be of interest to students of history, English literature and Renaissance drama.
Ben Jonson: His Life and Work (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by Rosalind MilesThe extraordinary character of Ben Jonson has only recently been brought into the light. Critics traditionally exalted Shakespeare, at Jonson’s expense. In this biography, first published in 1986, the author presents a full and accurate account of Jonson’s life in modern times. Rosalind Miles follows Jonson from his obscure beginnings to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the first Poet Laureate, in 1637. Her Jonson is vivid and vigorous, equally alive in his life and in his work. This title will be of interest to students of history, English literature and Renaissance drama.
Ben Jonson (Routledge Revivals)
by John PalmerOriginally published in 1934, Palmer’s biography of famous playwright Ben Jonson delves into his life and works and what he achieved in both. As first poet laureate of England, Jonson’s life presents a fascinating look into the state of literature and theatre in renaissance Britain which Palmer presents in great detail. This title will be of interest to students of literature.
Ben Jonson (Routledge Revivals)
by John PalmerOriginally published in 1934, Palmer’s biography of famous playwright Ben Jonson delves into his life and works and what he achieved in both. As first poet laureate of England, Jonson’s life presents a fascinating look into the state of literature and theatre in renaissance Britain which Palmer presents in great detail. This title will be of interest to students of literature.
Ben Jonson
by David RiggsBen Jonson’s contemporaries admired him above all other playwrights and poets of the English Renaissance. He was the “great refiner” who alchemized the bleakest aspects of everyday life into brilliant images of folly and deceit. He was also a celebrated reprobate and an ambitious entrepreneur. David Riggs illuminates every facet of this extraordinary career, giving us the first major biography of Jonson in over sixty years. The story of Jonson’s life provides a broad view of the literary procession in early modern England and the milieu in which Elizabethan drama was produced. Beginning as a journeyman actor, Jonson was soon a novice playwright; his first important play was staged in 1598, with Shakespeare in the cast. He was by turns the self-styled leader of a literary elite, a writer of court masques, the first dramatist to publish his own Works, a royal pensioner, and a genteel poet. As Jonson transformed himself from an artisan into a gentleman, his need to transcend his class origins led him to murder, to his notorious quarrels with Thomas Dekker, John Marston, and Inigo Jones, and to his lifelong rivalry with Shakespeare. Riggs traces the roots of Jonson’s aggressiveness back to the turmoil of his childhood and adolescence. He offers new and convincing accounts of Jonson’s latent hostility toward his bricklayer stepfather, his reckless marriage to Anne Lewis, and his conflicted relationships with his children. This vivid portrait synthesizes six decades of scholarship and new historical evidence. Sixty halftones beautifully illustrate the story and capture the spirit of the age. With Riggs’ original interpretations of Jonson’s masterpieces and lesser known works, Ben Jonson: A Life will prove the standard account of this complex man’s life and works for many years to come.
Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind (PDF)
by Katharine Eisaman MausKatharine Maus explores the biographical reasons for Jonson's preference for particular Latin authors; the effects of Roman moral and psychological paradigms on his methods of characterization and generic choices; the connection between his critical theory and artistic practice; and the impact of Roman social theory on his portrayal of communities and on his peculiar relationship with his audiences.Originally published in 1985.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory
by Richard Cave Elizabeth Schafer Brian WoollandBen Jonson and Theatre is an investigation and celebration of Jonson's plays from the point of view of the theatre practitioner as well as the teacher. Reflecting the increasing interest in the wider field of Renaissance drama, this book bridges the theory/practice divide by debating how Jonson's drama operates in performance. Ben Jonson and Theatre includes: * discussions with and between practitioners * essays on the staging of the plays * edited transcripts of interviews with contemporary practitioners The volume includes contributions from Joan Littlewood, Sam Mendes, John Nettles, Simon Russell Beale and Geoffrey Rush, Oscar-winning actor for Shine.
Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory
by Richard Cave Elizabeth Schafer Brian WoollandBen Jonson and Theatre is an investigation and celebration of Jonson's plays from the point of view of the theatre practitioner as well as the teacher. Reflecting the increasing interest in the wider field of Renaissance drama, this book bridges the theory/practice divide by debating how Jonson's drama operates in performance. Ben Jonson and Theatre includes: * discussions with and between practitioners * essays on the staging of the plays * edited transcripts of interviews with contemporary practitioners The volume includes contributions from Joan Littlewood, Sam Mendes, John Nettles, Simon Russell Beale and Geoffrey Rush, Oscar-winning actor for Shine.
Ben Jonson, John Marston and Early Modern Drama: Satire and the Audience
by Rebecca YearlingThis book examines the influence of John Marston, typically seen as a minor figure among early modern dramatists, on his colleague Ben Jonson. While Marston is usually famed more for his very public rivalry with Jonson than for the quality of his plays, this book argues that such a view of Marston seriously underestimates his importance to the theatre of his time. In it, the author contends that Marston's plays represent an experiment in a new kind of satiric drama, with origins in the humanist tradition of serio ludere. His works—deliberately unpredictable, inconsistent and metatheatrical—subvert theatrical conventions and provide confusingly multiple perspectives on the action, forcing their spectators to engage actively with the drama and the moral dilemmas that it presents. The book argues that Marston's work thus anticipates and perhaps influenced the mid-period work of Ben Jonson, in plays such as Sejanus, Volpone and The Alchemist.
Beneatha's Place (Modern Plays)
by Kwame Kwei-ArmahSome things we do for those we are responsible for, some things for ourselves, and some things we do for the ancestors.Today, it's all three!1959. The first wave of independence is sweeping across Africa and Beneatha has left the prejudice of 1950s America for a brighter future with her Nigerian husband in Lagos. But on the day they move into their new house in the white suburbs, it doesn't take long for cracks to appear, changing the course of the rest of their lives.Present day. Now a renowned Dean whose colleagues are questioning the role of African American studies for future generations, Beneatha returns to the same house in search of answers. Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's ground-breaking modern classic, A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha's Place challenges today's culture wars about colonial history and reckoning with the past. A razor-sharp satire from Young Vic Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah, about the power of knowing your history and the cost of letting it go, this edition was published to coincide with the London premiere at the Young Vic Theatre, in June 2023.
Beneatha's Place (Modern Plays)
by Kwame Kwei-ArmahSome things we do for those we are responsible for, some things for ourselves, and some things we do for the ancestors.Today, it's all three!1959. The first wave of independence is sweeping across Africa and Beneatha has left the prejudice of 1950s America for a brighter future with her Nigerian husband in Lagos. But on the day they move into their new house in the white suburbs, it doesn't take long for cracks to appear, changing the course of the rest of their lives.Present day. Now a renowned Dean whose colleagues are questioning the role of African American studies for future generations, Beneatha returns to the same house in search of answers. Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's ground-breaking modern classic, A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha's Place challenges today's culture wars about colonial history and reckoning with the past. A razor-sharp satire from Young Vic Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah, about the power of knowing your history and the cost of letting it go, this edition was published to coincide with the London premiere at the Young Vic Theatre, in June 2023.
Benedict Andrews: Collected Plays (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Benedict AndrewsBenedict Andrews is an internationally renowned theatre and opera director, a film-maker and a poet. This volume presents the first collection of original plays by a theatre-maker at the top of his game. Includes the plays Like A Sun, Every Breath, The Stars, Geronimo and Gloria. Introduction by Marius von Mayenburg.
Berenice and Bajazet
by Alan Hollinghurst Jean RacineThe critical event in Berenice, the death of Titus's father, the Emperor Vespasian, happens a week before the play opens. Thereafter Titus knows that his separation from Berenice is inevitable. The breaking off of a great love affair involves too the hopes of Antiochus, himself long in love with Berenice. The play pushes all three of its principals to the brink, not of revenge but of self-murder, before in her sublime last speech Berenice redeems and directs them all in an act of collective abnegation.Many tears are shed, but not a drop of blood. The effect is unconventional, and profound: the pained acceptance of the irreconcilable in human affairs, and the surrender, by each of the main characters, of the person they most love.Bajazet is Racine's most violent drama; it ends, like Phèdre, with a female character's on-stage suicide, here the culmination of a vividly described sequence of off-stage murders. The setting, in a claustrophobic space within the harem at Constantinople, menaced from both without and within, seems to license a violence of emotion as well as of deed.Violent too are the repeated reversals of fortune, and the terrifying acceleration of the play towards its inexorable catastrophe.Alan Hollinghurst's translation of Berenice premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in October 2012 and Bajazet, at the Almeida Theatre, London, in November 1990.
Berlin Hanover Express (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Ian Kennedy MartinBerlin, in the Autumn of 1942.Inside the Irish consulate, officials and diplomats try to carry on their routine business. Outside, RAF bombing of the capital of the Third Reich intensifies. As the security services start to uncover the true origins of the consulate’s German cook, should the staff step into protect her or will their neutrality render them powerless in preventing the crimes unfolding around them?As the secrets of the Nazi regime are uncovered, can a country remain neutral in a time of war?Berlin Hanover Express premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London in March 2009
Berlin/Wall
by David HareBerlin/WallIn two contrasted readings for the stage, David Hare visits a place where a famous wall has come down; then another where a wall is going up.BerlinFor his whole adult life, David Hare has been visiting the city which so many young people regard as the most exciting in Europe. But there's something in Berlin's elusive character that makes him feel he's always missing the point. Now, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the reunification, he offers a meditation about Germany's restored capital - both what it represents in European history, and the peculiar part it has played in his own life.WallThe Israeli/Palestine security fence will one day stretch 486 miles, from one end of Israel to the other. It will be four times as long as the Berlin wall, and in places twice as high. In this second monologue, the playwright recalls his trips to both Israel and the Palestinian territory and offers a history of the wall's building, an exploration of the philosophy behind it and a personal account of those who live on either side. Berlin premiered at the National Theatre, London, in February 2009 and Wall premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2009.'Of all British dramatists, Hare is the one who has always seemed to have the sharpest awareness of what is going on around him, which is what makes him such an eagerly sought-after journalist.' Michael Billington
Berliner Ensemble Adaptations: The Tutor; Coriolanus; The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431; Don Juan; Trumpets and Drums (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht David BarnettThis volume contains Brecht's post-1950 adaptations of world dramatic classics for the Berliner Ensemble. Brecht's remodeled versions show all of the great dramatist's characteristic preoccupations: hatred of personal greatness, admiration of the people and hatred of war unless waged on behalf of the people who, to him, were the embodiment of wisdom and good sense. The Tutor is a 1950s adaptation of an 18th century play by J.M.R. Lenz and is a savage portrait of the subservience of German intellectuals and schoolmasters to the whims of the rich and powerful. Coriolanus is an unfinished adaptation of Shakespeare's play, using the Roman story to reflect Marxist theories of class struggle. Don Juan, a collaborative adaptation of Molière's play, redefines the charming social parasite as both a ridiculous egoist and an example of a dangerously attractive, theatrically mythic personality type. The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen adapts a radio play by Anna Seghers which was based on the original records of the trial of Joan of Arc. Trumpets and Drums is an adaptation of Farquhar's 18th century Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer, which transfers the action to the American Civil War and introduces comments on imperialism and colonial conquest.
Berliner Ensemble Adaptations: The Tutor; Coriolanus; The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431; Don Juan; Trumpets and Drums (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht David Barnett Wolfgang Sauerlander Ralph Manheim Rose Kastner Martin KastnerThis volume contains Brecht's post-1950 adaptations of world dramatic classics for the Berliner Ensemble. Brecht's remodeled versions show all of the great dramatist's characteristic preoccupations: hatred of personal greatness, admiration of the people and hatred of war unless waged on behalf of the people who, to him, were the embodiment of wisdom and good sense. The Tutor is a 1950s adaptation of an 18th century play by J.M.R. Lenz and is a savage portrait of the subservience of German intellectuals and schoolmasters to the whims of the rich and powerful. Coriolanus is an unfinished adaptation of Shakespeare's play, using the Roman story to reflect Marxist theories of class struggle. Don Juan, a collaborative adaptation of Molière's play, redefines the charming social parasite as both a ridiculous egoist and an example of a dangerously attractive, theatrically mythic personality type. The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen adapts a radio play by Anna Seghers which was based on the original records of the trial of Joan of Arc. Trumpets and Drums is an adaptation of Farquhar's 18th century Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer, which transfers the action to the American Civil War and introduces comments on imperialism and colonial conquest.
Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner, Britten: Great Shakespeareans: Volume XI (Great Shakespeareans)
by Daniel AlbrightGreat Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner and Britten to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.