ENGL 3998: Late-Victorian and Modern Drama

The classic play about a woman's fight for independence and her desire to break free of her role as housewife.   One of the best-known, most frequently performed modern plays, A Doll's House richly displays the genius with which Henrik Ibsen pioneered realistic prose drama. The central character, Nora, epitomizes the human struggle against the humiliating constraints of social conformity. Her ultimate rejection of a smothering marriage and life in a "doll's house" shocked theatergoers of the late nineteenth century and opened new horizons for playwrights and their audiences.   However, daring social themes are only one aspect of Ibsen's power as a dramatist. A Doll's House demonstrates his ability to create realistic dialogue and a suspenseful flow of events, and bring to life the psychologically penetrating characterizations that make the struggles of his dramatic personages utterly convincing. Here is a deeply absorbing dramatic work as readable as it is eminently playable.   This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

A woman of extraordinary energy, talent and versatility. Elizabeth Robins was an actress who popularised Ibsen on the British stage, a prolific and popular writer of novels and non-fiction, and an Edwardian suffragette. Her extensive circle of friends included Florence Bell, Henry James, John Masefield and William Archer. She worked with the Pankhursts and knew the Woolfs. Through examining the life and work of this vivid and transatlantic figure born during the American Civil War yet surviving into the England of the 1950s, Angela John raises questions about the shaping of historical identities. Situating Elizabeth Robins's achievement in the context of the British and American cultural history of the period, this is a book which will attract historians, teachers and students of theatre studies and all those fascinated by biography.

Originally published in 1984. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a time of considerable change in the English theatre. Victorian attitudes were shocked or shattered by the new drama of Ibsen; the major figure of George Bernard Shaw dominated the period; theatre censorship was the subject of a long and furious contest; and staging conventions changed from the spectacular stylings of Irving and Beerbohm Tree to the masking and statuesque styles of Isadora Duncan and the inner realism of Stanislavsky. This book traces the activities of the leading figures in the English theatre, notably William Archer who introduced Ibsen to this country and who became one of the main promoters of the idea of a National Theatre. Other personalities discussed include Harley Granville Barker, particularly his association with Shaw at the Court Theatre and his part in campaigns against censorship and for changes in the staging of Shakespeare, and Edward Gordon Craig, whose rebellion against the Victorian theatre took and anti-realist direction. This is a stimulating account of the background to the modern English theatre which can only increase appreciation of its standard and variety.

The author challenges the rejection of realistic drama that has characterized much recent feminist drama criticism. The book focuses specifically on the Progressive Era, the Harlem Renaissance, and the post-1960s contemporary scene.

'Writer Files is an important series documenting the work of major dramatists of the last hundred years Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1856. In the years following his graduation from Oxford in 1878 he published poems and stories which included The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lady Windermere's Fan was produced in 1892, A Woman of No Importance in 1893 and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. Later work included De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He died in 1900.Each volume contains a comprehensive checklist of all the writer's plays, with a detailed performance history, excerpted reviews and a selection of the writers' own comments on their work.'

Githa Sowerby's Rutherford and Sontook the London theatre by storm in 1912. Following its triumphant run, the play toured to New York, was produced throughout England, and was translated and staged in multiple European locations. Yet Sowerby's initial theatrical success would not be repeated. With historical hindsight, we can see Sowerby's experience as comparable to that of many other women writers who struggled to achieve lasting recognition, especially when their work was perceived as critiquing the forces restricting women's lives. These vivid domestic dramas explore timely questions of capitalism, feminism, and personal freedom. With the acclaimed revival of Rutherfordat the National Theatre in 1994, and with the efforts by feminist scholars and theatre artists to rediscover the work of such forgotten women writers, Sowerby and her dramas have secured renewed interest. This edition gathers Rutherford and Son, its companion piece A Man and Some Women, and the postwar play The Stepmother. The edition will provide teachers, students, and artists with important historical contexts for Sowerby's dramas and will demonstrate the ongoing cogency of these dynamic, insightful, and engaging plays.

Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century. He was largely forgotten during the twentieth century--though he continued to influence popular culture (the iconic image of a woman tied to railway tracks as a train rushes towards her, for example, originates in a Boucicault melodrama). In the twenty-first century the gripping nature of his plays is being discovered afresh; when The Octoroonwas produced as a BBC Radio play in 2012, director and playwright Mark Ravenhill described Boucicault's dramas as "the precursors to Hollywood cinema." In The Octoroon--the most controversial play of his career--Boucicault addresses the sensitive topic of race and slavery. George Peyton inherits a plantation, and falls in love with an octoroon--a person one-eighth African American, and thus, in 1859 Louisiana, legally a slave. The Octoroonopened in 1859 in New York City, just two years prior to the American Civil War, and created a sensation--as it did in its subsequent British production. This new edition includes a wide range of background contextual materials, an informative introduction, and extensive annotation.

This is an account of the origins, development and current state of the repertory theatre movement in Britain. The movement had its roots in ideas, experiments and traditions stretching back into the nineteenth century, and first found its voice in 1907 with Miss Horniman's company in Manchester. Since then it has played a vital - often a dominant - role in British twentieth-century theatre. As a method of theatre organisation, repertory refers to those theatres based primarily in the regions, housing a resident acting company and seeking to maintain each season a programme of plays catering for the tastes of the whole community. But the theory has never been dogmatic and the movement has evolved from a gamut of complex factors, not least the visions of particular personalities. Major landmarks in the history include the effects of the two World Wars, the advent of substantial state funding for the Arts, the growth of cinema and television and the renewal of theatre's link with the community in the form of such initiatives as Theatre- in-Education. The history concludes with a detailed study of six representative regional theatres: The Nottingham Playhouse; The Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow; The Salisbury Playhouse; The Victoria Theatre, Stoke; The Everyman, Liverpool; and The Royal Exchange, Manchester. Appendixes include a Chronology, sample repertory programmes from the period, audience attendance figures and some comparative statistics about funding. Interspersed through the text are photographs of selected theatre exteriors, auditoria, stages and productions.

This is the first book to explore the complex relationship between theatre, fashion and society in the late Victorian and early modern era. Examining such diverse topics as the emergence of the society playhouse, fashion journalism, the role of the couturier-costumier, department store marketing, and the establishment of 'dress codes' by militant suffragettes, Kaplan and Stowell provide a new context for assessing plays by established writers like Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, Arthur Pinero and Harley Granville Barker, as well as lesser known figures, such as Edith Lyttelton, Emily Symonds and Cicely Hamilton.

Votes for Women provides an innovative re-examination of the suffrage movement, presenting new perspectives which challenge the existing literature on this subject. This fascinating book charts the history of the movement in Britain from the nineteenth century to the postwar period, assessing important figures such as; * Emmeline Pankhurst and the militant wing * Millicent Garrett Fawcett, leader of the constitutional wing *Jennie Baines and her link with the international suffrage movements.

The boldest and most distinguished introduction to drama available today, W.B. Worthen's pace-setting text continues to provide exciting plays usefully situated within their historical and cultural contexts. Based on the best-selling WADSWORTH ANTHOLOGY OF DRAMA, the Brief Edition provides many of the important elements of that anthology but in a more streamlined form.