Lanterna Rally
eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Eighteenth-century Adaptations of Shakespearean Tragedy
Eighteenth-century Adaptations of Shakespearean Tragedy
Eighteenth-century Adaptations of Shakespearean Tragedy
Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Fiona Ritchie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-04-19
Total Pages: 469
ISBN-13: 0521898609
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book examines Shakespeare's influence and popularity in all aspects of eighteenth-century literature, culture and society.
The Re-Imagined Text
Author: Jean I. Marsden
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-10-21
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 0813185556
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Shakespeare's plays were not always the inviolable texts they are almost universally considered to be today. The Restoration and eighteenth century committed what many critics view as one of the most subversive acts in literary history—the rewriting and restructuring of Shakespeare's plays. Many of us are familiar with Nahum Tate's "audacious" adaptation of King Lear with its resoundingly happy ending, but Tate was only one of a score of playwrights who adapted Shakespeare's plays. Between 1660 and 1777, more than fifty adaptations appeared in print and on the stage, works in which playwrights augmented, substantially cut, or completely rewrote the original plays. The plays were staged with new characters, new scenes, new endings, and, underlying all this novelty, new words. Why did this happen? And why, in the later eighteenth century, did it stop? These questions have serious implications regarding both the aesthetics of the literary text and its treatment, for the adaptations manifest the period's perceptions of Shakespeare. As such, they demonstrate an important evolution in the definition of poetic language, and in the idea of what constitutes a literary work. In The Re-Imagined Text, Jean I. Marsden examines both the adaptations and the network of literary theory that surrounds them, thereby exploring the problems of textual sanctity and of the author's relationship to the text. As she demonstrates, Shakespeare's works, and English literature in general, came to be defined by their words rather than by the plots and morality on which the older aesthetic theory focused—a clear step toward our modern concern for the word and its varying levels of signification.
Shakespeare Adaptations from the Early Eighteenth Century
Author: Kristine Johanson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2013-12-11
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 1611474604
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book presents a scholarly edition of five of the first adaptations of Shakespeare from the eighteenth century, the period when Shakespeare became “Shakespeare.” Written by men influential in early Augustan cultural spheres, these adaptations demonstrate how contemporary literary principles and contemporary politics were applied to Shakespeare’s texts. In these adaptations of Henry V, Richard II, Coriolanus, 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI, we see the various ways that eighteenth-century authors “righted” Shakespeare’s “wrongs”: through the addition and alteration of female characters and romantic sub-plots, the introduction of new scenes, the use of the unities of time and place, and the inclusion of overt moral and political arguments. The critical introduction contextualizes the five adaptations through its discussion of early eighteenth-century theatre and politics. First providing an overview of the state of the theatre at the beginning of the Augustan age, the introduction then examines the multiple political conspiracies that rocked the first years of George I’s reign and that provide the backdrop to these adaptations. Furthermore, the introduction draws particular attention to the importance of the actress in the early eighteenth century, highlighting how Shakespeare’s adaptors drew on actresses’ cultural capital to alter Shakespeare’s texts. Finally, the edition provides a critical introduction to each of the plays. Extensive explanatory notes are provided, which situate further these plays in their contemporary context. In its introduction and explanatory notes, Shakespeare Adaptations supplies an important critical apparatus to five plays which are often noted in the annals of Shakespearean theatrical history with derision. However, this edition reveals how these plays documented their own time and helped shape Shakespeare into the most recognizable literary icon in the Western canon.
Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Fiona Ritchie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-04-19
Total Pages: 469
ISBN-13: 110737765X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the eighteenth century, Shakespeare became indisputably the most popular English dramatist. Published editions, dramatic performances and all kinds of adaptations of his works proliferated and his influence on authors and genres was extensive. By the second half of the century Shakespeare's status had been fully established, and since that time he has remained central to English culture. Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century explores the impact he had on various aspects of culture and society: not only in literature and the theatre, but also in visual arts, music and even national identity. The eighteenth century's Shakespeare, however, was not our Shakespeare. In recovering the particular ways in which his works were read and used during this crucial period in his reception, this book, with its many illustrations and annotated bibliography, is the clearest way into understanding this key phase in the reception of the playwright.
Eighteenth-century Adaptations of Shakespearean Tradegy
Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century
Author: Peter Sabor
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05
Total Pages: 202
ISBN-13: 1351900765
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In 1700, Shakespeare was viewed as one of the leading Renaissance playwrights, but not as supreme. By 1800, he was not only widely performed and read but celebrated as a universal genius and a national literary hero. What happened during the intervening years is the subject of this fascinating volume, which brings together Renaissance and eighteenth-century scholars who examine how Shakespeare gradually penetrated, and came to dominate, the culture and intellectual life of people in the English-speaking world. The contributors approach Shakespeare from a wide range of perspectives, to illuminate the way contemporary philosophy, science and medicine, textual practice, theatre studies, and literature both informed and were influenced by eighteenth-century interpretations of his works. Among the topics are Falstaff and eighteenth-century ideas of the sublime, David Garrick's 1756 adaptation of The Winter's Tale and its relationship to medical theories of femininity, the textual practices of George Steevens, Shakespeare's importance in furthering the careers of actors on the eighteenth-century stage, and the influence of Shakespeare on writers as diverse as Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, and Ann Radcliff. Together, the essays paint a vivid picture of the relationship between eighteenth-century Shakespeare and ideas about shared nationhood, knowledge, morality, history, and the self.
