Cynthia's Revels

Cynthia's Revels
Author: Ben Jonson
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2015-07-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781515119753

Cynthia's Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love is a late Elizabethan stage play, a satire written by Ben Jonson. The play was one element in the so-called Poetomachia or War of the Theatres between Jonson and rival playwrights John Marston and Thomas Dekker. The play begins with three pages disputing over the black cloak usually worn by the actor who delivers the prologue. They draw lots for the cloak, and one of the losers, Anaides, starts telling the audience what happens in the play to come; the others try to suppress him, interrupting him and putting their hands over his mouth. Soon they are fighting over the cloak and criticizing the author and the spectators as well. In the play proper, the goddess Diana, also called Cynthia, has ordained a "solemn revels" in the valley of Gargaphie in Greece. The gods Cupid and Mercury appear, and they too start to argue. Mercury has awakened Echo, who weeps for Narcissus, and states that a drink from Narcissus's spring causes the drinkers to "Grow dotingly enamored of themselves." The courtiers and ladies assembled for the Cynthia's revels all drink from the spring.

Cynthia ́s Revels

Cynthia ́s Revels
Author: Ben Jonson
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2018-05-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3732694275

Reproduction of the original: Cynthia ́s Revels by Ben Jonson

Cynthia's Revels

Cynthia's Revels
Author: Ben Jonson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2017-10-23
Genre:
ISBN: 9781979089357

Cynthia's Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love is a late Elizabethan stage play, a satire written by Ben Jonson. The play was one element in the so-called Poetomachia or War of the Theatres between Jonson and rival playwrights John Marston and Thomas Dekker.

Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England

Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England
Author: Matthew Steggle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1317150791

This book establishes new information about the likely content of ten lost plays from the period 1580-1642. These plays’ authors include Nashe, Heywood, and Dekker; and the plays themselves connect in direct ways to some of the most canonical dramas of English literature, including Hamlet, King Lear, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi. The lost plays in question are: Terminus & Non Terminus (1586-8); Richard the Confessor (1593); Cutlack (1594); Bellendon (1594); Truth's Supplication to Candlelight (1600); Albere Galles (1602); Henry the Una (c. 1619); The Angel King (1624); The Duchess of Fernandina (c. 1630-42); and The Cardinal's Conspiracy (bef. 1639). From this list of bare titles, it is argued, can be reconstructed comedies, tragedies, and histories, whose leading characters included a saint, a robber, a Medici duchess, an impotent king, at least one pope, and an angel. In each case, newly-available digital research resources make it possible to interrogate the title and to identify the play's subject-matter, analogues, and likely genre. But these concrete examples raise wider theoretical problems: What is a lost play? What can, and cannot, be said about objects in this problematic category? Known lost plays from the early modern commercial theatre outnumber extant plays from that theatre: but how, in practice, can one investigate them? This book offers an innovative theoretical and practical frame for such work, putting digital humanities into action in the emerging field of lost play studies.

Laughing and Weeping in Early Modern Theatres

Laughing and Weeping in Early Modern Theatres
Author: Matthew Steggle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351922998

Did Shakespeare's original audiences weep? Equally, while it seems obvious that they must have laughed at plays performed in early modern theatres, can we say anything about what their laughter sounded like, about when it occurred, and about how, culturally, it was interpreted? Related to both of these problems of audience behaviour is that of the stage representation of laughing, and weeping, both actions performed with astonishing frequency in early modern drama. Each action is associated with a complex set of non-verbal noises, gestures, and cultural overtones, and each is linked to audience behaviour through one of the axioms of Renaissance dramatic theory: that weeping and laughter on stage cause, respectively, weeping and laughter in the audience. This book is a study of laughter and weeping in English theatres, broadly defined, from around 1550 until their closure in 1642. It is concerned both with the representation of these actions on the stage, and with what can be reconstructed about the laughter and weeping of theatrical audiences themselves, arguing that both actions have a peculiar importance in defining the early modern theatrical experience.