Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays

Download or read book Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays written by Peter Corbin and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Jacobean society, witchcraft was a potent and very real force, an area of sharp controversy in which King James I himself participated and a phenomenon that attracted many dramatists and writers. The three plays in this book - Sophonisba, The Witch and The Witch of Edmonton - reflect the variety of belief in witches and practice of witchcraft in the Jacobean period. Jacobean understanding of witchcraft is illuminated by the close study of these contrasting texts in relation to each other and to other contemporary works: The Masque of Queenes; Dr Faustus; Macbeth and The Tempest. The introduction and detailed commentaries explore the considerable theatrical potential of plays which, with the exception of The Witch of Edmonton, have been hitherto lost to the dramatic repertory.

Download or read book Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays written by Peter Corbin and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Witch of Edmonton written by William Rowley and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time ..."--Back cover.

Download or read book Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage written by Lisa Hopkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic contests and in its recurrent linkage to national defence; the extent to which magic can trope other concerns, and what these might be; and how magic is staged and what the representational strategies and techniques might mean. The essays range widely over both canonical plays-Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Doctor Faustus, Bartholomew Fair-and notably less canonical ones such as The Birth of Merlin, Fedele and Fortunio, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Devil is an Ass, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch of Edmonton, putting the two groups into dialogue with each other and also exploring ways in which they can be profitably related to contemporary cases or accusations of witchcraft. Attending to the representational strategies and self-conscious intertextuality of the plays as well as to their treatment of their subject matter, the essays reveal the plays they discuss as actively intervening in contemporary debates about witchcraft and magic in ways which themselves effect transformation rather than simply discussing it. At the heart of all the essays lies an interest in the transformative power of magic, but collectively they show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects or even to the subjects of magic, but that the plays themselves can be seen as working to bring about change in the ways that they challenge contemporary assumptions and stereotypes.

Download or read book Three Marriage Plays written by Thomas Heywood and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text contains three plays on the subject of courtship and marriage by the Jacobean playwright Thomas Heywood, best known for his domestic drama A Woman Killed With Kindness. The varied relationships in these plays are explored against the vivid life of London's city and suburbs, the city and seashore of Marseilles, a friary and a country house.

Download or read book The Visual Spectacle of Witchcraft in Jacobean Plays written by Shokhan Rasool Ahmed and published by Author House. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Visual Spectacle of Witchcraft in Jacobean Plays: Blackfriars Theatre is an ideal reference for early modern scholars and lecturers who seek a thorough and practical guide to stage directions in print and performance, and paying particular attention to the early texts as evidence of performance practice. Stage directions here are re-thought in the light of early theatre practice, and the issues of stage directions as evidence of performance practice and later interpolations, in association with witchcraft, of several Jacobean plays can be found in this book. This book includes a general introduction to Blackfriars witchcraft plays and the Jacobean theatre, a chronology, suggestions for further reading and discussing performance options on both indoor and outdoor playhouses, and a commentary. The illuminating and informative general introduction and the short introductions to individual plays have been revised in the light of current scholarship.

Download or read book Shakespeare's Visual Theatre written by Frederick Kiefer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-25 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of Shakespeare's visual culture Frederick Kiefer looks at the personified characters created by Shakespeare in his plays, his walking, talking abstractions. These include Rumour in 2 Henry IV, Time in The Winter's Tale, Spring and Winter in Love's Labour's Lost, Revenge in Titus Andronicus, and the deities in the late plays. All these personae take physical form on the stage: the actors performing the roles wear distinctive attire and carry appropriate props. The book seeks to reconstruct the appearance of Shakespeare's personified characters; to explain the symbolism of their costumes and props; and to assess the significance of these symbolic characters for the plays in which they appear. To accomplish this reconstruction, Kiefer brings together a wealth of visual and literary evidence including engravings, woodcuts, paintings, drawings, tapestries, emblems, civic pageants, masques, poetry and plays. The book contains over forty illustrations of personified characters in Shakespeare's time.