Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

The Many Faces Of Cleopatra: How Performance And Characterization Change Cleopatra In Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Legend Of Good Women," William Shakespeare's The Tragedy Of Antony And Cleopatra, And John Dryden's All For Love; Or, The World Well Lost, Rebecca Piazzoni Chatham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and John Dryden presented the character of Cleopatra differently, through both the written language of their pieces and their own and others’ performances of her, in order to meet the demands of their respective audiences and performance conditions. Chaucer, in “The Legend of Cleopatra,” portrays and performs Cleopatra comically. Shakespeare, in his Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, characterizes Cleopatra as a complex woman. In All for Love; or, The World Well Lost, Dryden characterizes Cleopatra as sentimental, but the performance of her on stage by female actresses added depth to the role. For Chaucer and Dryden, …

Mansfield Park Comes To Life: Teaching And Staging Elizabeth Inchbald’S Lovers’ Vows In An Austen Course, Misty Krueger

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay discusses how I incorporated readers theatre into a senior seminar on Jane Austen and her contemporaries. The article recounts how my students read Elizabeth Inchbald’s 1798 drama, Lovers’ Vows, and Austen’s 1814 novel, Mansfield Park, and then were inspired at the end of the seminar to take part in a readers theatre production of the play. In order to set up this pedagogical example, the essay addresses the theatrical episode of Mansfield Park, the controversies surrounding Lovers’ Vows, and the ways in which I edited the play and prepared students to create a “little …

The Story Of Us: College As A Modern Rite Of Passage For Emerging Adults, Tamara Ulana Bodnar

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The movement from adolescence to adulthood has often been identified by certain rites of passage across cultures. These rites are ceremonious, ritualistic events such as a bar/bat mitzvah, marriage, and graduation, They indicate a transition from one stage of life to another and sometimes contain difficult obstacles and challenges that assist in the maturation process. College provides contemporary American students with a modern rite of passage; it is a time of transition between youth and the "real world" of adulthood. At its core, the purpose of going to college is to become educated, so that by the time one leaves, …

Review Of The Comedia Of Virginity: Mary And The Politics Of Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater, Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Mirzam Perez

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Writing The Wrongs: How Gay And Lesbian Playwrights Use The Paranormal In Autobiographical Writing, George William Zorn

Dissertations

Playwrights have been using ghost and spirit-characters in stage works since the classical era. From their beginnings as speechless, vengeful catalysts and informational narrators, the ghost-character has evolved to something that would not be recognizable to Greek playwrights. This is no more evident than in the works of contemporary gay and lesbian dramatists. Examining the selected works of playwrights Claudia Allen, Larry Kramer and Victor Bumbalo will illuminate the use of ghosts and the paranormal by these playwrights as a way to overcome personal trauma by either creating closure with autobiographical scenes or by using the absence of these characters …

Wheeler, Beatrice Irene (Isenberg), 1915-2004 (Sc 867), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 867. Two skits by Beatrice Irene (Isenberg) Wheeler, written in 1988 and 1989, based on her childhood experiences in Northtown, a very small Hart County, Kentucky community. Written for a presentation at College Street Church of Christ in Lebanon, Tennessee. One play describes a country school and the other documents a worship service.

Playing Devil's Advocate: The Attractive Shakespearean Villain, Jonathan Montgomery Green

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The characters of William Shakespeare have spawned countless words of critical interpretation inspired by the playwright's aptitude for fashioning intricate and conflicted figures. As a master character craftsman, Shakespeare is consistent in creating fascinatingly deep characters, and many of them have even gone so far as to generate entire literary archetypes. From the contemplative Prince Hamlet to the despicable yet charming John Falstaff, Shakespeare's characters remain eternal representatives of what any good character should be: interesting, provocative, and complicated.

However, among the playwright's most hypnotic figures are his villains, those characters whom audiences should by all counts detest but cannot …

Teatre (Panorama Crític De La Literatura Catalana)), Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

L'activitat teatral entre 1959 i 1991 està marcada pels intents de creació d'un teatre nacional a partir dels grups independents i, després del 1975, amb el suport institucional. Moltes de les iniciatives del teatre independent, allunyades del teatre espanyol comercial, professional i/o «oficial» del moment, tingueren l'origen en l'Agrupació Dramàtica de Barcelona (establerta el 1955 per Ferran Soldevila, amb un divers grup d'artistes), el Teatre Viu (creat el 1956 per Ricard Salvat, Miquel Porter i Elena Estellés) i l'Escola d'Art Dramàtic Adrià Gual, que havien fundat Salvat i Maria Aurèlia Capmany el 1960. En aquests nuclis es formaren Josep Anton …

Sati In Philadelphia: The Widow(S) Of Malabar, Jeffrey H. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

La Fragilitat Del Paisatge, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Dins de la galáxia teatral formada per estrelles de grans i petites dimensions que és l'escena catalana contemporània, Josep M. Benet i Jornet (Barcelona, 1940) és com un cometa; no un d'aquells estels fugaços que apareix en una de les seves obres més reeixides (Fugaç, 1992), sinó com un cometa la trajectória creativa del qual ha estat marcada per un procés constant d'evolució i renovació estètiques, un cometa que ha deixat una lluïssor indeleble, que li ha permès d'omplir el buit entre generacions. Es podria afirmar que Benet i Jornet és el dramaturg en vida més eminent i …

Stages Of Evil: Occultism In Western Theater And Drama, Robert Lima

Studies in Romance Languages Series

“The evil that men do” has been chronicled for thousands of years on the European stage, and perhaps nowhere else is human fear of our own evil more detailed than in its personifications in theater. In Stages of Evil, Robert Lima explores the sociohistorical implications of Christian and pagan representations of evil and the theatrical creativity that occultism has engendered. By examining examples of alchemy, astronomy, demonology, exorcism, fairies, vampires, witchcraft, hauntings, and voodoo in prominent plays, Stages of Evil explores American and European perceptions of occultism from medieval times to the modern age.

Making Sense Of Matter In Deleuze's Conception Of Cinema Language, Roger Dawkins

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Writing in the 1960s and early 1970s, Christian Metz's work on the cinema favoured systematic exactitude, and was concerned with uprooting film theory from what he saw as the generalized approach of the early twentieth century (Andrews 213). Metz thought that a more scientific approach to the cinema was to be found with the question of language, and although this question was metaphorically present since the 1920s [1], Metz was the first to apply modern linguistic models to this problem (Guzzetti 292). What resulted was a methodology of analysis based on the formalism inherent to …

Catalunya Invisible: Contemporary Drama In Barcelona, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

During the winter of 2000, Lluís Pasqual staged a Catalan version of Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard at Barcelona's Teatre Lliure, the historic home of Catalonia's most stable, accomplished, and distinguished repertory theatre company. In Chekov's play, Madame Lyobov Andreyevna Ranyevskaya, an emblem of the fading elegance and dwindling supremacy of the Russian aristocracy, is compelled by her situation of financial despair to sell her estate and cherry orchard to the nouveau-riche Lopakhin and then return to Paris on the eve of the Revolution. The orchard that was once admired for its beauty eventually will be destroyed in order to …

The Miser, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1997-1998 Season

The plot concerns the classic conflict of love and money. The miser Harpagon wishes his daughter Elise to marry a wealthy old man, Anselme, who will accept her without a dowry, but she loves the penniless Valère. www.britannica.com

Christopher Fry's Contribution To Modern Drama, Jane Mcelroy

Graduate Thesis Collection

In a modern theatre increasingly preoccupied with the mundane, the sordid, the perverse, and the hopeless, Christopher Fry's plays loom like beacons~ For Hr. Fry finds the world, however chaotic, magnificent; and he chooses to explore its more civilized areas in a language undauntedly poetic, through characters cultivated enough to speak that poetry...

Jean Giraudoux, Anachronizer Of Myth, Larry Allen Fletcher

Graduate Student Research Papers

This paper will attempt to show the anachronism of setting, theme, tradition, character delineation, and speech that Giraudoux deliberately puts into his dramatic world. Only two of his neo-Hellenic plays are studied in detail tor this paper, Amphytryon 38 and Tiger at the Gates (In France called La Guerre de Trois n’aura pas lieu--The Trojan War will not take place). His third neo-Hellenic play, Electra, will be commented upon briefly. The paper will also attempt to show how Giraudoux's anachronism is used as a device to give contemporary meaning to traditional myth. The plays are considered as dramatic literature, not …

An Analysis Of The Humanism Of Euripides As Expressed In His Plays And Reflected In Selected Plays Of Modern Drama, Robert Henry English

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Because of the great importance of the human element in the drama of today we shall attempt to trace it from its first great exponent down to our times. Therefore, within the following pages we shall conduct an analysis of the humanism of Euripides as expressed in his plays and reflected in selected plays of modern drama. Our analysis, by necessity, shall have a six-fold purpose; (1) to analyze briefly the characteristics of the Attic theatre for which Euripides wrote; (2) to study the life and philosophy of Euripides in order to determine the presence of humanism; (3) to conduct …

Seventeenth Century Golden Era Of French Drama, Vera P. Duplessis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drama is a word belonging to the Greek language which means actions. It is applied to that form of literature which has action in it and is suited for performance.

R.U.R., Karel Capek

OER Main

R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots is a play written in 1920 by Karel Čapek, a Czech writer who wrote many plays and novels, many of them with science-fiction and dystopian themes. R.U.R. is perhaps the most well-known of these works in the English-speaking world because it brought the word “robot” into the language. “Robot” is derived from the Czech word meaning “worker.”

The play is set in the island headquarters of the R.U.R. corporation. The corporation has been manufacturing artificial beings which resemble humans, but who are tireless workers. They can be mass-produced in large numbers and are being adopted …

Bulwer's New Play: Review Of The Duchess De La Valliere, N. Beverley Tucker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.