Comparative Drama articles from June 2008

Comparative Drama archives from June 2008

The secular morality of Middleton's city comedies.(Thomas Middleton)
June 22, 2008... In a book published in 2000, Herbert Jack Heller declared that "the debate on whether Middleton's works are immoral, amoral, or moral" is "now exhausted" (1) The announcement of the debate's demise, however, was decidedly premature. (2) It is...

Dragon fathers and unnatural children: warring generations in King Lear and its sources.
June 22, 2008... Most productions of King Lear today center on Lear: a king, a father, a man who "smells of mortality." (1) Gloucester's experience in the second plot simply repeats Lear's in another register--on a lower social level, or on a physical rather...

Zimmerman's Metamorphoses: mythic revision as a ritual for grief.
June 22, 2008... If we weren't thinking all the time in terms of persons, if we were thinking of Nature, all Nature going on and on, parts of it dying--well not dying, changing, changing is the word I want, changing into something else, all those elements that...

Staging a new literary history: Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus, In the Blood, and Fucking A.
June 22, 2008... The early plays of Suzan-Lori Parks often are referred to as "the history plays in which the playwright reconstructs historical events to fill a lack or hole in history caused by the exclusion of any African-American presence. (1) These...

"The end of Nigerian history": Wole Soyinka and Yoruba historiography.
June 22, 2008... There is no shortage of prophecy in the Yoruba spiritual world. This prophecy, however, is not teleological in the sense that it lacks a distinct end point toward which it is developing. In other words, there is no apocalypse in the various...

Clovis E. Semmes. The Regal Theater and Black Culture.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Clovis E. Semmes. The Regal Theater and Black Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. 294. $69.95. Clovis E. Semmes, the author of The Regal Theater and Black Culture, is a sociologist by training. His other publications include...

Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare. Ed. Scott L. Newstok. West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2007. Pp. lv + 308. $65.00 casebound; $32.00 paperbound; $18.00 Acrobat e-book. Only singular obtuseness could fail to value a work whose cover...

Russell Jackson. Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production and Reception.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Russell Jackson. Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 280. $95.00. Russell Jackson's bold and engaging Shakespeare Films in the Making takes the study of...

Jeffrey H. Richards. Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Jeffrey H. Richards. Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic. Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama 22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. x + 392. $100.00 casebound; $50.00 paperbound. Readers who...

John McGavin. Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early-Modern Scotland.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... John McGavin. Theatricality and Narrative in Medieval and Early-Modern Scotland. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. xi + 160. $100.00. An important result of the publication to date of twenty...

Ira Clark. Rhetorical Readings, Dark Comedies, and Shakespeare's Problem Plays.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Ira Clark. Rhetorical Readings, Dark Comedies, and Shakespeare's Problem Plays. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. Pp. 160. $59.95. Ira Clark's Rhetorical Readings, Dark Comedies, and Shakespeare's Problem Plays examines the...

Oliver Arnold. The Third Citizen: Shakespeare's Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Oliver Arnold. The Third Citizen: Shakespeare's Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. 328 + 9 illus. $55.00. Oliver Arnold's book The Third Citizen deals with Shakespeare's...

Elizabeth Baldwin, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills, eds. Cheshire including Chester.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Elizabeth Baldwin, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills, eds. Cheshire including Chester. Records of Early English Drama. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. ccxxvi + 1234. This, the latest contribution to the growing...

Ilka Saal. New Deal Theater: The Vernacular Tradition in American Political Theater.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Ilka Saal. New Deal Theater: The Vernacular Tradition in American Political Theater. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. 232. $69.95. Ilka Saal begins her book New Deal Theater with a story about the 1935 Theatre Union production of...

Enoch Brater, ed. Arthur Miller's Global Theater: How an American Playwright in Performed on Stages Around the World.(Brief Notices)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Enoch Brater, ed. Arthur Miller's Global Theater: How an American Playwright in Performed on Stages Around the World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Pp. x + 154. $49.50. This volume begins with acknowledgments (vii-viii) and...

David N. Klausner and Karen Sawyer Marsalek, eds. 'Bring furth the pagants': Essays in Early English Drama Presented to Alexandra F. Johnston.(Brief Notices)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... David N. Klausner and Karen Sawyer Marsalek, eds. 'Bring furth the pagants': Essays in Early English Drama Presented to Alexandra F. Johnston. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. vi + 329. $60.00. Following a brief biography of...

Laurie Postlewate and Wim Husken, eds. Acts and Texts: Performance and Ritual in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.(Brief Notices)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Laurie Postlewate and Wim Husken, eds. Acts and Texts: Performance and Ritual in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Pp. 361. $99.00. Following an introduction by Laurie Postlewate (7-16), this volume contains...

Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon, eds. Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity.(Brief Notices)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon, eds. Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Pp. xx + 203. $74.95. This volume begins with a list of illustrations (vii-viii),...

Joe Brandesky, ed. Czech Theatre Design in the Twentieth Century: Metaphor and Irony Revisited.(Brief Notices)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Joe Brandesky, ed. Czech Theatre Design in the Twentieth Century: Metaphor and Irony Revisited. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007. Pp xvi + 97. $39.95. This volume includes a CD with interactive multimedia content. The text begins...

Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins, eds. Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama.(Brief Notices)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins, eds. Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. xx + 177. $99.95. This volume begins with contributor biographies (vii-viii), a preface (ix-xii), a foreword by Arthur F....