Webster: the Duchess of Malfi - A guide to the text and the play in performance by David Carnegie

$8.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Series: Shakespeare Handbooks Ser. | Reading Level: very good

The Duchess of Malfi is generally regarded as John Webster's finest play, a masterpiece of tragic depth and emotional complexity. The conflict between private love and public political behaviour for a passionate but circumscribed woman is as theatrically pertinent now as when first performed. This timel y Handbook: - examines the play's sources and its cultural context- offers a detailed theatrical commentary that aids visualisation of the underlying dynamics and structure of the play in performance, and explores performance possibilities- analyses influential productions on stage and screen, from when it was first performed by the actors of Shakespeare's theatre company, the King's Men, to the present day- presents key critical debates and assessments of The Duchess of Malfi. ...Show more

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

$7.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: very good

Plays and Petersburg Tales - Petersburg Tales; Marriage; the Government Inspector by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol; Christopher English (Editor, Translator); Richard Peace (Introduction by)

$10.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Series: Oxford World's Classics Ser. | Reading Level: good

This volume brings together Gogol's Petersburg Tales with his two most famous plays, all of which guide us through the streets of St. Petersburg, the city erected by force and ingenuity on the marshes of the Neva estuary. Something of the deception and violence of the city's creation seems to lurk benea th its harmonious facade, however, and it confounds its inhabitants with false dreams and absurd visions. This new translation by Christopher English brings out the unique vitality and humor of Russia's finest comic writer. ...Show more

Volpone by Ben Jonson; Robert Watson (Editor, Volume Editor)

$10.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Series: New Mermaids Ser. | Reading Level: very good

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, a nd promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work. ...Show more

Twelve Plays by Anton Chekhov

$12.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: very good

The Works of John Webster - An Old-Spelling Critical Edition Volume Four by David Gunby (Editor); David Carnegie (Editor); MacDonald P. Jackson (Editor)

$65.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Series: The\Works of John Webster Ser. | Reading Level: near fine

This is the fourth and final volume of the Cambridge edition of the works of John Webster. It contains four plays Webster wrote in collaboration, one - Sir Thomas Wyatt, a historical tragedy based around Lady Jane Grey - as part of a team of five led by Thomas Dekker, two - Westward Ho and Northward Ho, city comedies that prompted Chapman, Jonson, and Marston's Eastward Ho - with Thomas Dekker alone, and one - The Fair Maid of the Inn, an Italianate tragicomedy of which Webster wrote the largest share - with John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and John Ford. With the inclusion of these four plays, this Cambridge edition becomes the first complete works of John Webster. The edition preserves the original spelling of the plays, poetry, and prose, and incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including information on Webster's share in the collaborative plays, and new critical methods, textual theory, and theatrical analysis. ...Show more

The Works of John Webster - An Old-Spelling Critical Edition Volume Three by David Gunby (Editor); David Carnegie (Editor); MacDonald P. Jackson (Editor)

$45.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Series: The\Works of John Webster Ser. | Reading Level: near fine

This is the third and final volume of the Cambridge edition of the works of John Webster. It contains the final complete play in the edition, the City comedy Anything for a Quiet Life, as well as Webster's spectacular Lord Mayor's pageant Monuments of Honour and his Induction and additions to John Marst on's The Malcontent. Webster's non-dramatic work is also included: the deeply felt verse elegy to Prince Henry entitled A Monumental Column, his various shorter poems, including verses for the engraving of The Progeny of ... Prince James, and the thirty-two New Characters added to the sixth edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters. This Cambridge critical edition preserves the original spelling of all the plays, poetry and prose, and incorporates the most recent editorial scholarship, including valuable information on Webster's share in the collaborative plays, and new critical methods and textual theory. ...Show more

William Percy's Mahomet and His Heaven - A Critical Edition by Matthew Dimmock (Editor)

$125.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: near fine

William Percy's Mahomet and His Heaven (1601) is extraordinary. Not only is it the only early modern play purportedly based upon the Qur'an, but it is also the first to place the Prophet Muhammad on the stage. While there existed a remarkable range of texts concerning Islamic characters and themes in Re naissance England, from chronicles and pamphlets to popular drama, the publication of this edition of Mahomet and His Heaven represents a major step forward in the study of Islam on the early modern stage. Roughly contemporary with Shakespeare's Othello, William Percy makes the remarkable and potentially highly provocative gesture of locating the Prophet as its central character, presiding over an apocalyptic drought to chastise the sins of mankind. The play takes place in around the mosques of 'Medina' and the action mirrors early Christian 'translations' of the Qur'an, the Islamic holy text that was rarely available in England at the time. Furthermore, the play provides a fascinating insight into the way that Islamic characters were portrayed on the early modern stage, containing as it does remarkably detailed stage directions, stipulating for example that the Prophet wears 'all greene and greene his Turban' and that his Angels are 'rainbow powdered'. Such details offer an entirely new perspective upon this aspect of early modern stagecraft. Matthew Dimmock presents here the play in its entirety, with a critical introduction which introduces some of its key themes, and places it in a textual and social context. A section of detailed explanatory scholarly notes follow the play, containing a full translation of the short Latin sections and references to the many political and literary parallels. This book should be required reading for historians, literary scholars and students dealing with notions of race, religion, magic, astrology and stagecraft in early modern England. ...Show more

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

$14.00 NZD

Category: Shakespeare | Reading Level: very good

The Tempest is one of the ten most popular titles from the best-selling Cambridge School Shakespeare series now available in a new edition. The new edition includes new and revised activities throughout, new black and white photos from the widest selection of stage and film interpretations of the plays, and a larger glossary providing extra support with the language of Shakespeare. In addition, expanded sections on characters, language, and performance history offer the best support for the KS3 SATs and GCSE coursework. The new edition also includes exciting new features to bring the play to life such as a visually stunning eight-page section packed with full-colour production photographs and a striking new cover design. The new edition remains faithful to the Cambridge School Shakespeare active approach, which treats the play as theatre and the text as a script to be acted, explored and enjoyed. ...Show more

Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture - A Companion to the Collected Works by Gary Taylor (General Editor); John Lavagnino (General Editor)

$45.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: very good

Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture is not only a companion to The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, which every scholar of Renaissance literature will find indispensable. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the book in early modern Europe.The book is di vided into two parts. The first part, on 'The Culture', situates Middleton within an historical and theoretical overview of early modern textual production, reproduction, circulation, and reception. An introductory essay by Gary Taylor ('The Order of Persons') surveys lists of personswritten by or connected to Middleton, using the complex relationship between textual and social orders to trace the evolution of textual culture in England during the 'Middleton century' (1580-1679). Ten original essays then focus on Middleton's connections to different aspects of textual culture inthat century: authorship (by MacD. P. Jackson), manuscripts (Harold Love), legal texts (Edward Geiskes), censorship (Richard Burt), printing (Adrian Weiss), visual texts (John Astington), music (Andrew Sabol), stationers and living authors (Cyndia Clegg), posthumous publishing (Maureen Bell), andearly readers (John Jowett).The second part, 'The Texts', supplies the documentation for claims made in the first part. This includes detailed evidence for the canon and chronology of Middleton's works in all genres, greatly extending previous scholarship, and using the latest corpus-based attribution techniques. A fulleditorial apparatus is supplied for each item in The Collected Works: an Introduction, which summarizes and extends previous scholarship, is followed by textual notes, recording substantive departures from the control-text, variants between early texts, press-variants, discussions of emendations,and (for plays) an exact transcription of all original stage directions. Cross-references make it easy to move between the two volumes.This authoritative account of the early texts includes some extraordinarily complicated cases, which have never before been systematically collated: 'Hence, all you vain delights' (the most popular song lyric from the Renaissance stage), The Two Gates of Salvation, The Peacemaker, and A Game atChess (the most complex editorial problem in early modern drama, with eight extant texts and numerous reports of the early performances). ...Show more

Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works by Gary Taylor (Editor); John Lavagnino (Editor)

$45.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: very good

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - 'our other Shakespeare' - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created lasting masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London (the unique history play A Game at Chess ). His range extends beyond these tradi tional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare, Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representations of the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God. The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton's works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton's life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the varied theatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new information on Middleton's life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously 'federal edition', The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorial practice. ...Show more

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

$6.00 NZD

Category: Drama | Reading Level: good