The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream retains R. A. Foakes' text and has been extensively updated by him. In the Introduction to what is widely acknowledged as Shakespeare's most popular comedy, Foakes describes the two main traditions in the play's stage history, one emphasising charm and innocence, the other stressing darker suggestions of violence and sexuality. He shows that both are necessary to a full understanding of the play. For this edition the editor has added a new account of important theatrical productions and scholarly criticism on the play that have appeared in recent years. The reading list has also been revised and updated. Citește tot Restrânge
Introduction, with new section on recent stage and critical interpretations; Note on the text; List of characters; The play; Textual analysis; Appendix: A further note on sources; Reading list.
Recenzii
'… a fine example of judicious editorial writing. Foakes guides the reader securely and fluently through the critical and scholarly disputes that have accumulated around the play. He manages to be informative without being patronizing, and detached with out failing to offer opinions.' The Times Higher Education Supplement
Descriere
The second edition of Shakespeare's most popular comedy with an updated introduction and reading list.
Notă biografică
William Shakespeare 26 April 1564 ¿ 23 April 1616was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 39 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. . Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. Until about 1608, he wrote mainly tragedies, among them Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, Shakespeare's works have been continually adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain popular and are studied, performed, and reinterpreted through various cultural and political contexts around the world.
Textul de pe ultima copertă
Perhaps the most popular of all of Shakespeare's comedies, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" humorously celebrates the vagaries of love. The approaching wedding festivities of Theseus, Duke of Athens, and his bride-to-be, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, are delightfully crisscrossed with in-again, off-again romances of two young pairs of Athenian lovers; a fateful rivalry between the King and Queen of the Fairies; and the theatrical aspirations of a bumbling troupe of Athenian laborers. It all ends happily in wedding-night revelry complete with a play-within-a-play presented by the laborers to the ecstatic amusement of all. This edition, complete with explanatory footnotes, is reprinted from a standard British edition.
Caracteristici
Leading actor Simon Russell Beale is one of three distinguished Series Editors who have developed the series