Theater - History and Criticism

Shakespeare Observed
Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen
By Samuel Crowl

In this lively study of both modern film and stage productions of Shakespeare, Samuel Crowl provides fascinating insights into the ways in which these productions have been influenced by one another as well as by contemporary developments in critical approaches to Shakespeare’s plays.

Curtain Calls
British and American Women and the Theater, 1660–1820
Edited by Mary A. Schofield and Cecilia Macheski

“I here and there o’heard a Coxcomb cry, Ah, rot—’tis a Woman’s Comedy.”Thus Aphra Behn ushers in a new era for women in the British Theatre (Sir Patient Fancy, 1678). In the hundred years that were to follow—and exactly those years that Curtain Calls examines—women truly took the theater world by storm.For each woman who chose a career in the theater world of the eighteenth century, there is a unique tale of struggle, insult, success, good or bad fortune, disaster, seduction, or fame.

An Introduction to Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen
A Handbook
By William O. Cord

Today, more than a century after its first performance, Richard Wagner’s The Ring of Nibelung endures as one of the most significant artistic creations in the history of opera. This monumental work not only altered previously accepted concepts of music and drama but also inspired creative and intellectual efforts far beyond the field of opera.Previous studies of the Ring have appealed only to those already acquainted in some way with the Wagnerian art.