The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy
Author: Alexander Leggatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2002
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521779425

An accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, dark comedies and romances, first published in 2001.

Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England

Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England
Author: R. Loughnane
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2016-01-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137349352

Staged Transgression in Shakespeare's England is a groundbreaking collection of seventeen essays, drawing together leading and emerging scholars to discuss and challenge critical assumptions about the transgressive nature of the early modern English stage. These essays shed new light on issues of gender, race, sexuality, law and politics. Staged Transgression was followed by a companion collection, Staged Normality in Shakespeare's England (2019), also available from Palgrave: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-00892-5

Shakespeare and laughter

Shakespeare and laughter
Author: Indira Ghose
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2013-07-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1847797040

This book examines laughter in the Shakespearean theatre, in the context of a cultural history of early modern laughter. Aimed at an informed readership as well as graduate students and scholars in the field of Shakespeare studies, it is the first study to focus specifically on laughter, not comedy. It looks at various strands of the early modern discourse on laughter, ranging from medical treatises and courtesy manuals to Puritan tracts and jestbook literature. It argues that few cultural phenomena have undergone as radical a change in meaning as laughter. Laughter became bound up with questions of taste and class identity. At the same time, humanist thinkers revalorised the status of recreation and pleasure. These developments left their trace on the early modern theatre, where laughter was retailed as a commodity in an emerging entertainment industry. Shakespeare ́s plays both reflect and shape these changes, particularly in his adaptation of the Erasmian wise fool as a stage figure, and in the sceptical strain of thought that is encapsulated in the laughter evoked in the plays.

Shakespeare in Jest

Shakespeare in Jest
Author: Indira Ghose
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2021-09-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000432637

Shakespeare in Jest draws fascinating parallels between Shakespeare's humour and contemporary humour. Indira Ghose argues that while many of Shakespeare's jokes no longer work for us, his humour was crucial in shaping comedy in today's entertainment industry. The book looks at a wide variety of plays and reads them in conjunction with examples from contemporary culture, from stand-up comedy to late night shows. Ghose shows the importance of jokes, the functions of which are remarkably similar in Shakespeare’s time and ours. Shakespeare's wittiest characters are mostly women, who use wit to puncture male pretensions and to acquire cultural capital. Clowns and wise fools use humour to mock their betters, while black humour trains the spotlight on the audience, exposing our collusion in the world it skewers. In a discussion of the ethics of humour, the book uncovers striking affinities between Puritan attacks on the theatre and contemporary attacks on comedy. An enjoyable and accessible read, this lively book will enlighten and entertain students, researchers, and general readers interested in Shakespeare, humour, and popular culture.

Laughter, Pain, and Wonder

Laughter, Pain, and Wonder
Author: David Richman
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1990
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780874133882

This work's chief aim is to restore to readers, performers, and audiences the richness and vitality of Shakespeare's comedies. Richman explores the way in which a reader's relations to Shakespeare's literary texts differ from those of the relations between performers of Shakespeare's works and their audiences. Richman also examines the forms of humor and empathy that Shakespeare's comedies elicit.

Shakespeare & the Uses of Comedy

Shakespeare & the Uses of Comedy
Author: Joseph Allen Bryant
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1986
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780813130958

In Shakespeare's hand the comic mode became an instrument for exploring the broad territory of the human situation, including much that had normally been reserved for tragedy. Once the reader recognizes that justification for such an assumption is presented repeatedly in the earlier comedies -- from The Comedy of Errors to Twelfth Night -- he has less difficulty in dispensing with the currently fashionable classifications of the later comedies as problem plays and romances or tragicomedies and thus in seeing them all as manifestations of a single impulse. Bryant shows how Shakespeare, early a.

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.

The Shakespeare Requirement

The Shakespeare Requirement
Author: Julie Schumacher
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2018-08-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385542356

A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune keep hitting beleaguered English professor Jason Fitger right between the eyes in this hilarious and eagerly awaited sequel to the cult classic of anhedonic academe, the Thurber Prize-winning Dear Committee Members. Once more into the breach... Now is the fall of his discontent, as Jason Fitger, newly appointed chair of the English Department of Payne University, takes arms against a sea of troubles, personal and institutional. His ex-wife is sleeping with the dean who must approve whatever modest initiatives he undertakes. The fearsome department secretary Fran clearly runs the show (when not taking in rescue parrots and dogs) and holds plenty of secrets she's not sharing. The lavishly funded Econ Department keeps siphoning off English's meager resources and has taken aim at its remaining office space. And Fitger's attempt to get a mossbacked and antediluvian Shakespeare scholar to retire backfires spectacularly when the press concludes that the Bard is being kicked to the curricular curb. Lord, what fools these mortals be! Julie Schumacher proves the point and makes the most of it in this delicious romp of satire.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare
Author: Roland Mushat Frye
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-10-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136561536

This edition first published in 1982. Previous edition published in 1972 by Houghton Mifflin. Outlining methods and techniques for reading Shakespeare's plays, Roland Frye explores and develops a comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare's drama, focussing on the topics which must be kept in mind: the formative influence of the particular genre chosen for telling a story, the way in which the story is narrated and dramatized, the styles used to convey action, character and mood, and the manner in which Shakespeare has constructed his living characterizations. As well as covering textual analysis, the book looks at Shakespeare's life and career, his theatres and the actors for whom he wrote and the process of printing and preserving Shakespeare's plays. Chapters cover: King Lear in the Renaissance; Providence; Kind; Fortune; Anarchy and Order; Reason and Will; Show and Substance; Redemption and Shakespeare's Poetics.

The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare

The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare
Author: Margreta De Grazia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2010-03-25
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0521886325

Twenty-one essays provide lively and authoritative approaches to the literary, historical, cultural and performative aspects of Shakespeare works.