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      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2017

        As You Like It

        by Jim Bulman, Robert Shaughnessy

        This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage productions in Britain, France and Germany, which include Royal Shakespeare Company productions starring Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Juliet Stevenson, the ground-breaking all-male productions at the National Theatre in 1967 and by Cheek by Jowl in 1992, and the versions directed by Jacques Copeau in Paris in 1934, and by Peter Stein in Berlin in 1977. It also addresses the four major screen versions of the play, ranging from Paul Czinner's 1936 film to Kenneth Branagh's seventy years later.

      • Trusted Partner
        Plays, playscripts
        November 2015

        Dr Faustus: The A- and B- texts (1604, 1616)

        A parallel-text edition

        by David Bevington, Eric Rasmussen

        Dr. Faustus is one of the jewels of early modern English drama, and is still widely performed today. Interestingly, the play has come down to the contemporary audience in two distinct versions that have become known as the 'A' and the 'B' texts. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, who edited the original Revels edition over twenty years ago (and are two of the most eminent editors currently working), have hit upon the fascinating idea of presenting both texts on facing pages. This allows readers to compare the two 'versions', the 'A' text which is the one closest to Marlowe, and the longer 'B' text with additions by Samuel Rowley; in this unique edition, the reader is made aware of the changing tastes of audiences, the stage history of the play, and of just how intricate 'editing' a play can be. With a concise and illuminating introduction, and relevant notes and images, this Revels Student Edition of the 'A' and 'B' texts of Dr. Faustus will prove to be an enthralling document, and an excellent edition for student and theatre-goer alike.

      • Trusted Partner
        Plays, playscripts
        November 2015

        Pap with an Hatchet by John Lyly

        An annotated, modern-spelling edition

        by Leah Scragg

        The first fully annotated, modern-spelling edition of Lyly's Pap with an Hatchet, this volume in the Revels Plays Companion Library series opens a window on the most neglected item in the Lylian canon. A response to a series of late sixteenth-century anti-episcopalian pamphlets issued under the pseudonym 'Martin Marprelate', Pap with an Hatchet seeks to beat Martin at his own game, employing all the devices deployed in the tracts to deride and subvert the Martinist position. Written in a racy, colloquial style, and at variance in its format with twenty-first century printing conventions, the pamphlet has remained difficult to access for the modern reader, and it is this barrier to a fuller understanding that the present edition has been designed to overcome. Re-edited from the earliest witnesses, brought into line with contemporary printing practice, richly annotated, and equipped with a substantial introduction, it enables a new insight into the witty interaction between the work and the Martinist tracts, the care underlying its composition, and the relish that Lyly brought to his task.

      • Trusted Partner
        Plays, playscripts
        November 2015

        Pap with an Hatchet by John Lyly

        An annotated, modern-spelling edition

        by Leah Scragg

        The first fully annotated, modern-spelling edition of Lyly's Pap with an Hatchet, this volume in the Revels Plays Companion Library series opens a window on the most neglected item in the Lylian canon. A response to a series of late sixteenth-century anti-episcopalian pamphlets issued under the pseudonym 'Martin Marprelate', Pap with an Hatchet seeks to beat Martin at his own game, employing all the devices deployed in the tracts to deride and subvert the Martinist position. Written in a racy, colloquial style, and at variance in its format with twenty-first century printing conventions, the pamphlet has remained difficult to access for the modern reader, and it is this barrier to a fuller understanding that the present edition has been designed to overcome. Re-edited from the earliest witnesses, brought into line with contemporary printing practice, richly annotated, and equipped with a substantial introduction, it enables a new insight into the witty interaction between the work and the Martinist tracts, the care underlying its composition, and the relish that Lyly brought to his task.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2017

        As You Like It

        by Jim Bulman, Robert Shaughnessy

        This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage productions in Britain, France and Germany, which include Royal Shakespeare Company productions starring Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Juliet Stevenson, the ground-breaking all-male productions at the National Theatre in 1967 and by Cheek by Jowl in 1992, and the versions directed by Jacques Copeau in Paris in 1934, and by Peter Stein in Berlin in 1977. It also addresses the four major screen versions of the play, ranging from Paul Czinner's 1936 film to Kenneth Branagh's seventy years later.

      • Trusted Partner
        Plays, playscripts
        January 2007

        Galatea and midas

        John Lyly

        by Edited by George Hunter and David Bevington

        Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Lyly took up the story of two young women, Galatea (or Gallathea) and Phillida who are dressed up in male clothes by their fathers so that they can avoid the requirement of the god Neptune that every year 'the fairest and chastest virgin in all the country' be sacrificed to a sea-monster. Hiding together in the forest, the two maidens fall in love, each supposing the other to be a young man. Galatea has become the subject of considerable feminist critical study in recent years. Midas (1590) uses mythology in quite a different way, dramatising two stories about King Midas in such a way as to fashion a satire of King Philip of Spain (and of any tyrant like him) for colossal greediness and folly. In the wake of the defeat of Philip's Armada fleet and its attempted invasion of England in 1588, this satire was calculated to win the approval of Queen Elizabeth and her court.

      • Trusted Partner
        Plays, playscripts
        November 2016

        The Tragedy of Antigone, The Theban Princesse

        by Thomas May

        by Edited by Matteo Pangallo. Series edited by Paul Dean

        Thomas May's The Tragedy of Antigone (1631), edited by Matteo Pangallo, is the first English treatment of the story made famous by Sophocles. This edition contains a facsimile of the copy held at the Beinecke Library of Yale University, making the play commercially available for the first time since its original publication. The extensive introduction discusses, among other things, the ownership history of existing copies and their marginal annotations, and of the play's topical political implications in the light of May's wavering between royalist and republican sympathies. Writing during the contentious early years of Charles I's reign, May used Sophocles' Antigone to explore the problems of just rule and justified rebellion. He also went beyond the scope of the original, adding content from a wide range of other classical and contemporary plays, poems and other sources, including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. This volume will be essential reading for advanced students, researchers and teachers of early English drama and seventeenth-century political history.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 1996

        The White Devil

        By John Webster

        by John Brown

        In this study of sexual and political intrigue, a fascinating but dangerous woman consents to the murder of her ineffectual husband. Her defence against the charge of adultery transforms the lurid tale of crime into high tragedy. A compellingly dangerous and fascinating play with a comprehensive set of notes and criticism. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 1998

        The Changeling

        Thomas Middleton & William Rowley

        by N. Bawcutt, David Bevington

        Competitive price and format. Compacted and up-to-date version of the earlier Revels Plays edition by the same editor, taking account of more recent critical works. A key Renaissance text. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 1996

        The Spanish Tragedy

        Thomas Kyd

        by David Bevington

        The "revenge" play became the most durable and commercially successful type of drama on the Elizabethan stage. This example by Thomas Kyd, who was one of the originators of the genre, brings to life the intrigues of the Spanish court, dramatically juxtaposing romantic passion with sudden violent death and clandestine politics. The ghost of Dan Andrea and his guide Revenge observe the dark and bloody action throughout, provoking questions about the nature of the human condition. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 1999

        Volpone

        Ben Jonson

        by David Bevington, Brian Parker, David Bevington

        This edition contains in distilled form the insight and learning found in the fuller Revels critical editions, but with less of the learning apparatus that is appropriate to a critical edition. Compact and up to date introduction and commentary. The price and format are designed to be competitive with any paperback teaching edition of this play. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 1997

        The Duchess of Malfi

        By John Webster (Revels Student Editions)

        by John Brown

        More widely studied and more frequently performed than ever before, John Webster's The Duchesss of Malfi is here presented in an accessible and thoroughly up-to-date edition. Based on the often reprinted Revels Plays Edition of 1964, the notes have been augmented to cast further light on Webster's amazing dialogue and on the stage action which it implies. An entirely new introduction sets the tragedy in the context of pre-Civil War England and gives a revealing view of its themes, action and visual imagery. From its well-documented early performances to the two productions seen in the West End of London in the 1995-96 season, a stage history gives an account of the play in performance. Students, actors, directors and theatre-goers will find here a reappraisal of Webster's artistry in the tragedy which stands in the very first rank of plays from perhaps the greatest age of English theatre, and reasons why it has lived on stage with renewed force in the last decades of the twentieth century. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 1997

        Tis Pity She's a Whore

        John Ford

        by Derek Roper

        John Ford's tragedy, first printed in 1633, is the first major English play to take as its theme a subject still rarely handled: fulfilled incest between brother and sister. It is one of the most studied and performed of all plays of the period, and has been successfully adapted for film and radio. The Revels plays edition by Derek Roper has been the standard scholarly edition since it appeared in 1975. This new edition uses the same authoritative text, but with notes designed for modern undergraduate use. The substantial introduction has been completely rewritten to take account of the studies and new approaches of the last twenty years. It presents the play as an 'interrogative text', in which subversive meanings are inscribed within an apparently orthodox narrative; as a courageous treatment of forbidden love; and as an achieved work of Baroque art. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        August 1997

        The Jew of Malta

        Christopher Marlowe

        by David Bevington

        This edition contains in distilled form the insight and learning found iun the fuller Revels critical edition, but with less of the learned apparatus that is appropriate to a critical edition. The introduction and commentary are compact and up to date. The price and format are designed to be competitive with any paperback teaching edition of this play. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 1999

        The Witch of Edmonton

        by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford

        by Peter Corbin, David Bevington, Douglas Sedge

        The Witch of Edmonton has received considerable attention recently both from scholars and critics interested in witchcraft practices and also from the directors in the theatre. The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time. This edition offers a thorough reconsideration of the text with a complete transcription of the original pamphlet by Henry Goodcole. This edition will be of particular interest not only to students of Renaissance Drama but also of the cultural history of the seventeenth century.. Open University adopted text (for their new Renaissance Drama module). ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 1998

        Tamburlaine the Great

        Christopher Marlowe

        by J. S. Cunningham, David Bevington, Eithne Henson, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

        Expanded footnotes designed to help readers from all levels of familiarity with Elizabethan drama. Emphasis on the play as a theatre text - informative stage-directions. Stimulating introduction, which makes something of a break from the orthodox style . ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 1996

        The Revenger's Tragedy

        Thomas Middleton / Cyril Tourneur

        by R.A. Foakes

        This play depicts a morally corrupt world where the desire for justice is contaminated by the obsession for revenge. The characters take pleasure in watching adultery, incest and murder. The play's chief moral spokesman, Vindice, is at the same time enamoured of and disgusted by, the luxury of the court. Locating the play in relation to the best recent criticism, and exploring its complexities with a contemporary eye, furthers the reputation of these comprehensive student editions. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        February 2018

        All Fools

        By George Chapman

        by Charles Edelman, David Bevington

        Of all the poets Francis Meres names in his famous Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), just two rate a mention as being both 'our best for tragedy' and 'the best poets for comedy': William Shakespeare and George Chapman. All Fools, written in 1599, is the only Elizabethan comedy based directly on the plays of Terence. By taking episodes and characters from two brilliant works, The Self-Tormenter and The Brothers, Chapman creates something that is distinctly Elizabethan while remaining faithful to the spirit of the great Roman master. In this edition, an extensive introduction and commentary show how Chapman combines the literary and theatrical traditions of ancient Rome with everyday life in his own time to fashion a sparkling and innovative comedy that will delight audiences today as much as it did those of 1599.

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