Drama History Criticism category: 905 books

From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time comes “a timely reminder of the power and possibility of words [and] the last love letter to the shaping spirit of Bloom’s imagination” (front page, The New York Times Book Review) and an intimate, wise, deeply compelling...

The Dutch Courtesan is a riotous tragicomedy that explores the delights and perils afforded by Jacobean London. While Freevill, an educated young Englishman and the play's nominal hero, frolics in the city's streets, taverns and brothels, Franceschina, his cast-off mistress and the Dutch courtesan...

As well as 'play-makers' and 'poets', playwrights of the early modern period were known as 'play-patchers' because their texts were made from separate documents. This book is the first to consider all the papers created by authors and theatres by the time of the opening performance, recovering types...

This CliffsNotes guide includes everything you’ve come to expect from the trusted experts at CliffsNotes, including analysis of the most widely read literary works.

From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work,...

"Phoenician Women", one of Euripides' later tragedies, is an intriguing play that arguably displays some of his finest dramatic technique. Rich in cast and varied in incident, it is an example of Euripides' experimentation with structure. It dramatises the most fertile mythical tradition...

When it comes to Christian morality tales, most people think of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Before Pilgrim's Progress, there was The Summoning of Everyman (more commonly known as Everyman); much like Bunyan's classic work, Everyman uses allegorical characters to examine the question of salvation...

Preface The importance of this collection is that it places three essential storytelling principles under one cover: the dramatic principle (code) found in every human psychology, weakness and need as seen and understood by its character developmental schema; lastly, the catalyst, which is...

What makes Shakespeare's late plays so special? Through detailed analyses of key passages, Kate Aughterson shows how these plays portray a world of political intrigue, familial chaos and crisis, which teeters continually into tragedy: a world we can recognise today. Part I of this engaging...

“[Beckett] is a serious writer with something serious to say about the human condition: and therefore one of the dozen or so writers those who are concerned with modern man in search of his soul should read.”-Stephen Spender, The New York TimesRenowned Beckett scholar Ruby Cohn has selected some of...

In this new monograph, Claire Hansen demonstrates how Shakespeare can be understood as a complex system, and how complexity theory can provide compelling and original readings of Shakespeare’s plays. The book utilises complexity theory to illuminate early modern theatrical practice, Shakespeare...

This is the annotated edition including a rare and very detailed essay about the life and works of the author. It is a common tribute to Sir Barrie that he is whimsical. We might repeat that tribute when speaking of this volume, Echoes of the War, but hasten to add that this time it is not the same...

From one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, a beloved professor who has taught the Bard for over half a century—an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Lear, arguably Shakespeare’s most tragic and compelling character, the third in a series of five short books hailed as...

From the greatest Shakespeare scholar of our time, comes a portrait of Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare’s most complex and compelling anti-heroes—the final volume in a series of five short books about the great playwright’s most significant personalities: Falstaff, Cleopatra, Lear, Iago,...