Stanley Cavell

Philosophy, literature and criticism

by James Loxley

Stanley Cavell: Philosophy, literature, and criticism is the first book to offer a comprehensive examination of the relationship between the celebrated philosophical work of Stanley Cavell and the discipline of literary criticism. In this volume, the editors have assembled an impressive range of interlocutors who set out to explore the shape and substance of Stanley Cavell's persistent acknowledgement of the literary as a category in which, and through which, philosophical work can be undertaken. A number of essays address his engagements with modernism, tragedy, and romanticism, while others consider Cavell's own aesthetic modes as a writer. Stanley Cavell: Philosophy, literature, and criticism will be of interest to all those who are concerned with the ways in which the reading of literature, and the practice of philosophy, might continue both to influence each other across disciplinary boundaries, and to challenge the internal topographies of those disciplines. ;

Robert Bresson

by Keith Reader

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work of Robert Bresson, one of the most respected and acclaimed directors in the history of cinema.. The first monograph on his work to appear in English for many years dealing not only with his thirteen feature-length films but also his little-seen early short Affaires publiques and his short treatise Notes on cinematography.. The films are considered in chronological order, using a perspective that draws variously on spectator theory, Catholic mysticism, gender theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.. The major critical responses to his work, from the adulatory to the dismissive, are summarized and analyzed.. The work includes a full filmography and a critical bibliography.

Thomas of Woodstock

by Peter Corbin, David Bevington, Douglas Sedge, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

This anonymous manuscript play has long been the subject of scholarly dispute regarding its relationship with Shakespeare's Richard II. This edition, which thoroughly re-examines the text, situates the play within its historical and political context, relating it to the genre of chronicle drama to which it belongs. The manuscript is of particular interest in that it appears to have been used in the playhouse over a considerable period of time and contains what seems to be evidence of the theatre practice of the time. The play is also of special interest for its skilful and original handling of source material which may well have influenced Shakespeare's Richard II. The extensive appendices drawn from Holinshed, Grafton and Stow provide the reader with the opportunity to investigate the manner in which the dramatist has shaped the material. The editors argue for the play's stage-worthiness and dramatic complexity, suggesting that its range both of dramatic tone and social inclusiveness indicate the work of a dramatist of considerable skill and subtlety, equal or superior to the Shakespeare of the Henry VI plays. ;

Robert Walser

Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten

by Bernhard Echte, Bernhard Echte

Robert Walsers Biographie ist von spannender Rätselhaftigkeit. Zeit seines Lebens verlief sein Weg am Rande der literarischen und bürgerlichen Welt, so daß er in den Zeugnissen seiner Zeitgenossen kaum Niederschlag fand. Und Walser seinerseits vermied es, sein Leben irgendwie anders zu dokumentieren als in seiner Literatur. Dort aber spielt er mit seiner Biographie – phantasierend und verwandelnd, so daß die Texte von seinen Lebensumständen mehr verschweigen als verraten. In mehr als 20jähriger Forschung ist es dem Herausgeber gelungen, eine Fülle unbekannter Materialien und Bilder zusammenzutragen. Annähernd 1000 zeitgenössische Bilddokumente erlauben es, Walsers Lebenswelt in einer Nähe und Dichte kennenzulernen, wie es bislang nicht möglich war. »Sein Lebensbild wird nie komplett geschrieben werden können. Schon scheint mancher seinen Charakter zu umkleiden versucht zu haben.« Robert Walser

The Duchess of Malfi

By John Webster

by John Brown, David Bevington, John Brown, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

More widely studied and more frequently performed than ever before, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi is here presented in an improved, accessible and throughly up-to-date edition. Starting with the authoritative Revels Plays edition of 1964, John Russell Brown has augmented the notes and collations, and casts new light on Webster's dramatic dialogue and on the stage action. An entirely new introduction encompasses a stage history from its well-documented early performances right through to recent productions in the twenty first century. The bibliography has also been expanded. Students, actors, directors, academics and theatre-goers will find here a reappraisal of Webster's artistry in the greatest age of English theatre. ;

The First and Second Parts of King Edward the Fourth

By Thomas Heywood

by David Bevington, Richard Rowland, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

'Edward IV' (1599) was printed no less than six times up to 1626, and was one of the best loved plays of the early modern period, but this edition is the first since the 1870s. The play premiered at a moment when the representation of medieval history in any format was coming under the hostile scrutiny of the Elizabethan government. Yet the playwright produced a text which was at once generically complex (the play blurs the distinction between chronicle history and 'domestic' tragedy), brilliantly assured in its dramatic craftsmanship, and politically explosive. The text of this new paperback edition has already been used by the actors at Shakespeare's Globe when they gave the first London performance of 'Edward IV' for more than four centuries. By demonstrating the playwright's dextrous marshalling of a remarkable range of sources, and by examining afresh the dramatist's singular theatrical technique, this volume reopens an exciting if difficult play to a new generation of scholars and performers. ;

The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England

By George Peele

by David Bevington, Charles Forker, Charles R. Forker, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

Forker's critical edition fills the need for a fully annotated, historically contextualised and modernised text of the most important Elizabethan chronicle play apart from Shakespeare and Marlowe's Edward II. Now attributed definitely to George Peele, this drama helped to establish a major theatrical genre, raising contemporary political and religious issues through the dramatisation of medieval history in a compelling and popular fashion. A major source for Shakespeare, it throws new light on the bard's adaptation of earlier drama and helps to illustrate his working methods. With the full introduction and generous notes this Revels Plays edition will be the first port of call for students and enthusiasts of Elizabethan and early modern drama. ;

Volpone, or The Fox

Ben Johnson

by David Bevington, Brian Parker, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

This is the most thoroughly investigated edition of Volpone to date, based on a wider collation of the 1607 quarto and 1616 folio versions than was previously possible. It calls into question several accepted textual conclusions. The introduction sets Volpone in the context of Jonson's career at the time of writing and introduces new material on its relation to the Reynard beast epic and the commedia dell' arte. Ambiguities in the play are discussed with reference to two Renaissance perversions of the myth of the Golden Age. Particular attention is paid to the rhythmic effects of the play in performance, especially interweavings of the main plot and subplot. Fresh suggestions are made about the play's opening and its controversial conclusion in the light of experiments that have been made in performance since Volpone 's stage revival in 1921. The modernized text is accompanied by full commentary, notes and illustrations. The appendices include a discussion by John Cutts of the original music, passages translated from the original sources and analogues, and a full record of the play's modern stage history, its many adaptations, and its transformations into opera, musical comedy, film and television. ;

A King and No King

by David Bevington, Lee Bliss, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich, Kim Latham

An Humorous Day's Mirth

by George Chapman

by David Bevington, Charles Edelman, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

George Chapman is known today as a translator of Homer and as the author of dark tragedies such as Bussy D'Ambois. An Humorous Day's Mirth, written in 1597, was one of the most popular plays of the Elizabethan era. Not only was Chapman's play the Rose Theatre's greatest box-office success of that year, but it also presented an entirely new type of comedy, one that has profoundly influenced comic writing up to the present day. This play is the English theatre's first 'comedy of humours', in which the attitudes, behaviour, and social pretensions of contemporary men and women are satirised. Charles Edelman's is the first fully annotated, modern spelling edition of this long-neglected play. In his extensive introduction and commentary, Edelman discusses the intellectual, philosophical and theatrical background to Chapman's comedy, and shows that An Humorous Day's Mirth would delight the readers and audiences of today as much as it did those in 1597. ;

Every Man Out of His Humour

Ben Jonson

by David Bevington, Helen Ostovich, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

Despite its popularity when it first appeared in print in 1600, Every Man out of His Humour has never appeared as a single modern critical edition until now. The volume's introduction and annotations convey early modern obsessions with wealth and self-display by providing historical contexts and pointing out the continuity of those obsessions into modern life. The play is of interest because of its influence on the course of city comedy and its wealth of information about social relationships and colloquial language at the end of Elizabeth's reign. Jonson's experiments in generating theatrical meaning continued throughout his career, but Every Man out of His Humour - with its youthful vigour and extraordinary visualizations of the urban capacity for self-deceit - is a text that enriches the understanding of all the plays that come after it. ;

A Trick to Catch the Old One

By Thomas Middleton

by David Bevington, Paul Mulholland, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

This is the first single volume edition of A Trick to Catch the Old One for many decades. This edition presents a thoroughly reconsidered text based on collation of all known copies of the 1608 quarto (including material unnoticed by earlier editors). Textual analysis draws on detailed internal investigation and the printer's wider practice to propose that relatively improvisational procedures and a paper quota governed A Trick's printing operations. Discovery of an overlooked record revises the date of court performance to 1 January 1607, with implications for the play's early history. Critical discussion freshly examines the play's multi-layered ironic texture in relation to such issues as the status of women, marriage's relation to prostitution and vice versa, and the contemporary marriage market. And the Courtesan receives special attention in the context of this overarching ironic scheme. An extensive stage history explores original staging and documents revivals to 2011. The commentary is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive of all modern editions. ;

Antonio and Mellida

John Marston

by David Bevington, W Gair, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

Antonio and Mellida was the first play by John Marston performed by the newly revived Paul's Company in 1599. Marston sought to display a variety of talents, comic, tragic, satiric and historical, advertising his own dramatic skills and the prowess of the choristers of Paul's. The play is based on incidents in the reigns of Sforza, Francesco, Galeazzo and Lodovico, who were Dukes of Milan in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Marston displays a detailed knowledge of the dramatic works of Shakespeare, Seneca, Kyd and Nashe as well as the prose of Sidney, Erasmus, Montaigne, Florio and others. This edition relates the play to a wide variety of literary contexts. It also includes a comprehensive introduction, an analysis of staging, and full commentary. The text is based on a collation of all known copies of the 1602 Quarto and is presented in a thoroughly modernised format. ;

Michaelmas Term

Thomas Middleton

by David Bevington, Gail Paster, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich, Hazel Bell

Michaelmas Term is one of five satiric city comedies that the young playwright Thomas Middleton wrote for the boy players of St Paul's Cathedral, sometime before 1607. Set in a vividly detailed, realistic urban milieu at the start of London's social season, the play comes alive through the central contest between Ephestian Quomodo, an ambitious, land-hungry city merchant, and Richard Easy, a naive landowning gallant just arrived in the city. Easy is soon deep in debt and his struggle to recoup his debts and reclaim his land from Quomodo takes places against a sharply drawn set of London types - Quomodo's socially and sexually ambitious wife and daughter, the Scottish upstart Andrew Lethe, and his mistress the Country Wench, eager to exchange her virginity for an elegant new wardrobe. With its witty, bawdy dialogue and complex gulling action, the play offers an unusually cynical assessment of the social and familial displacements, and of the alienation and loss of cultural memory, so characteristic of life in the great metropolis of early modern London. In this sense, the play is an early satiric diagnosis of urban modernity. This edition, newly collated and edited, features complete explanations of the play's often bawdy exchanges and the complex stage action of the gulling and secondary plots. It will be invaluable for advanced students of the Middleton canon as well as all those interested in early modern London and its vibrant theatrical culture, especially the tradition of boy choristers as professional actors. ;

A King and No King

by David Bevington, Lee Bliss, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich, Rebecca Mortimer, Kim Latham

Theatre and religion

Lancastrian Shakespeare

by Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Richard Wilson

This important collection of essays focuses on the place of Roman Catholicism in early modern England, bringing new perspectives to bear on whether Shakespeare himself was Catholic. In the Introduction, Richard Wilson reviews the history of the debate over Shakespeare's religion, while Arthur Marotti and Peter Milward offer current perspectives on the subject. Eamon Duffy offers a historian's view of the nature of Elizabethan Catholicism, complemented by Frank Brownlow's study of Elizabeth's most brutal enforcer of religious policy, Richard Topcliffe. Two key Catholic controversialists are addressed by Donna Hamilton (Richard Vestegan) and Jean-Christophe Mayer (Robert Parsons). Robert Miola opens up the neglected field of Jesuit drama in the period, whilst Sonia Fielitz specifically proposes a new, Jesuit source-text for Timon of Athens. Carol Enos (As You Like It), Margaret Jones-Davies (Cymbeline), Gerard Kilroy (Hamlet) and Randall Martin (Henry VI 3) read individual plays in the light of these questions, while Gary Taylor's essay fittingly investigates the possible influence of religious conflicts on the publication of the Shakespeare First Folio. Theatre and religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare as a whole represents a major intervention in this fiercely contested current debate. ;

Philaster: or Love Lies a-Bleeding

Or, Love Lies A-Bleeding by Beaumont and Fletcher

by David Bevington, Andrew Gurr, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

Now back in print after a lengthy absence, one of the most enduring plays of its time. Edited by the renowned scholar, and recent advisor to the Globe Theatre, Andrew Gurr. No real competition for this singular play. Joins the now very impressive roster of The Revels Plays, almost thirty of which are now in print. ;

The Magnetic Lady

By Ben Jonson

by David Bevington, Peter Happe, Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, Helen Ostovich

This is the new paperback edition of the first fully annotated volume of Ben Jonson's 'The Magnetic Lady' written in 1632. It contains textual and explanatory notes and the text is modernised for student use. The introduction places the play in the context of Jonson's later dramatic and poetic works and discusses the political context of the Caroline court. A performance history of the play and fresh material relating to its seventeenth-century reception are also provided. This edition by Peter Happè critically reappraises Jonson's much-neglected play and argues for its recognition as a work of real distinction. ;