Drama

This title is a study of Samuel Beckett's affinity with the British 18th century and of the influence of such writers as Swift, Pope, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, and Johnson on his work. It demonstrates how Becket was not only influenced by them but how he interprets them for us in a quite modern way. more...

Price: $115.84

This new guide to the English renaissance’s most erudite and yet most street-wise dramatist strongly asserts the theatrical brilliance of his greatest plays in performance, then and now. It traces the sources of that phenomenon to Jonson’s vision of himself as a poet in the Roman tradition, and to his commitment to the sane and progressive ideals of humanism in a city where a rampant free-market and political authoritarianism made life conflicted, dangerous, and yet darkly, hilariously absurd. In his best plays, all of these forces are crafted into formal structures glittering with wit and provocation.Ben Jonson, Renaissance Dramatist integrates all of Jonson’s major plays into the milieu of the turbulent years which produced them, and analyses the way each work examines the issues and challenges of those years: money, power, sex, crime, identity, gender, the theatre itself. It offers a lucid guide to the competing critical views of a playwright who is far more than the obverse of his friend and rival William Shakespeare, and it explains in detail how the undoubted power and energy of these plays in modern performance should be the touchstone of their quality to both critic and reader.The plays discussed include the early Comedies, the Roman Tragedies (Sejanus and Catiline), Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair and The Devil is an Ass. more...

Price: $99.99

Looks at the Jonson canon from the point of view of the theatre practitioner. It bridges the theory/practice divide by debating how his drama operates in performance and includes discussion with and between practitioners. more...

Price: $44.95

This study suggests that Shakespeare's plays represent the pathos of our civilization with extraordinary force and clarity. His characters remain interesting because we recognize what they are going through. Shakespeare's contradictory understanding of the social and cultural past is examined. more...

Price: $41.95

Black Mary is a play telling the story of Aboriginal bushranger Mary Ann and her partner, Captain Thunderbolt, roaming north-western New South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century. A contemporary play, Gunjies combines family life, young love, a football match and a debutante ball with political activism, racial discrimination and uneasy relations with police (the gunjies). It was highly commended by the Human Rights Commission in 1993. more...

Price: $17.50