Зарубежная драматургия
Различные книги в жанре Зарубежная драматургияFour Plays
Contained within this volume are some of the best of O’Neill’s early one-act plays, which foreshadowed the longer plays that have given this dramatist his most enduring fame. “Beyond the Horizon” was the first of O’Neill’s three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. It follows the disappointed dreams of two brothers on their family farm. “The Emperor Jones” is an expressionistic transformation of a black man named Brutus Jones. In fleeing from his rebelling subjects in the West Indies, Jones is taken back to his racial past and undergoes a night of personal destruction. In “Anna Christie”, we find a drama focusing on the relationship of a young woman and her sailor father, who has not seen her for twenty years. As their story unfolds, Anna’s troubled romantic past comes to light, and the hardships of women during that time period become as apparent as the power of forgiveness and love. In the final play in this collection, “The Hairy Ape”, a ship’s fireman becomes disillusioned concerning the work he performs in a society that is quickly industrializing and taking a heavy human toll. This edition includes a biographical afterword.
Medea and Other Plays
Euripides, along was Sophocles, and Aeschylus, is largely responsible for the rise of Greek tragedy. It was in the 5th Century BC, during the height of Greece’s cultural bloom, that Euripides lived and worked. Of his roughly ninety-two plays, only seventeen tragedies survive. Both ridiculed and lauded during his life, Euripides now stands as an innovator of the Greek drama. Collected here are six of Euripides’ tragedies in prose translation by Edward P. Coleridge: “Medea”, “Hippolytus”, “Hecuba”, “Electra”, “Heracles”, and “Helen”. The first play in this collection, “Medea”, tells the horrific tale of a woman who seeks revenge on her husband by killing her children. “Hippolytus” relates the tragedy of its titular character, son of Theseus, and his tragic fall at the hands of Phaedra. “Hecuba” is the tale of a fallen Queen, the grief she feels for the death of her daughter, and the revenge she takes for the murder of her son. In “Electra” we find the daughter of a slain king plotting her revenge. In “Heracles” we find a hero racing to save his family from a death sentence. Lastly, “Helen” presents an alternate tale regarding Helen of Troy than that which sparked the Trojan War. For the lover of drama and the ancient world, this collection is not to be missed—Euripides is seen here in all of his valor and brilliance. This edition includes a biographical afterword.
Volpone, The Alchemist, and Other Plays
Benjamin Jonson was a Renaissance dramatist, poet, and actor, known best for his satirical plays and lyric poems. Jonson focused on creating works that implemented elements of the realistic as well as the absurd. Jonson’s most performed play, and the one that sparked a period of great success for the playwright, is “Volpone, or The Fox”. Volpone, a Venetian con artist, is feigning to be on his death bed, pitting several aspirant heirs against one another. The dark comedy is as much serious as it is amusing, exposing the audience to greedy, corrupt characters that at first seem absurdly fictional, but who ultimately reveal a number of societal flaws. Also included in the is collection are “The Alchemist”, a comedy which relates the fraudulent enterprise of a butler when left in charge of his master’s house who has fled to the country during an outbreak of the plague; “The Epicoene”, which concerns the farcical scheme of Dauphine to get his inheritance from his uncle; and “Bartholomew Fair”, the comedic tale of a plot to win the widow Dame Purecraft from the hypocritical Puritan Zeal-of-the-Land Busy. All together this collection presents Jonson’s most admired and often performed works. This edition includes a biographical afterword.
Ghosts
First performed in 1882, “Ghosts” is the controversial and tragic play by the famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is the story of Helen Alving, a wealthy widow who was unhappily married to her unfaithful husband. Helen has tried to shelter her son, Oswald, from the corrupting influence of his father’s immoral behavior and has sent him away only to discover that he is suffering from syphilis inherited from his father. Oswald has also unfortunately fallen in love with Regina, his mother’s maid, who is revealed to be Oswald’s illegitimate half-sister. Oswald is heartbroken and asks his mother to help him end his life with an overdose of morphine, as he fears slipping into a vegetative state as his disease progresses. “Ghosts” is a scathing indictment of Victorian society in which Ibsen refutes the notion that if one simply fulfills one’s duty according to the morals of the time then a good and noble life is guaranteed. Scandalous in its day for its frank discussion of venereal disease, marital infidelity, incest, and euthanasia, “Ghosts” continues to resonant with modern audiences for its intense psychological drama and sharp social criticism. This edition includes a biographical afterword.
The School for Scandal and Other Plays
Combined in this volume are three of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s most loved works. “The School for Scandal” is Sheridan’s classic comedy that pokes fun at London upper class society in the late 1700s. Often referred to as a “comedy of manners”, “The School for Scandal” is one Sheridan’s most performed plays and a classic of English comedic drama. “The Rivals” was Sheridan’s first play and while at first it was not well received it would go on to prove to be a great success and establish Sheridan as a major talent. “The Rivals” satirizes the pretentiousness of English society in the late 18th century. As witty and accessible today as when it was first written, “The Rivals” sparkles with the humor that Sheridan and his writing are known for. In “The Critic” Sheridan turns his attention to satirize the theatre and all the people engaged in the business of it in late 18th century England. The critic of the story is a man by the name of Mr. Dangle and the play that is the subject of criticism is a horribly written production named “The Spanish Armada”. Fans of Sheridan will delight in this lesser known work. Together these works make a great introduction to the works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Phaedra
First performed in Paris in 1677, Jean Racine’s “Phaedra” is the tenth of twelve plays by the author and his last to be based on Greek mythology. Racine, the famed French dramatist and master of dodecasyllabic alexandrine, the 12-syllable poetic meter, was a contemporary of Molière and Corneille. This classic story concerns its titular character, who though married to Theseus, the King of Athens, falls in love with Hippolytus, Theseus’ son from his first marriage. Hippolytus also has a forbidden desire in his heart for Aricia, who is held by Theseus under a vow of chastity and is the lone survivor of the royal house vanquished by Theseus. Phaedra unleashes a tragic series of events when she is mistakenly told that Theseus has died and she reveals her taboo love for her stepson. Her husband returns and both Phaedra and Hippolytus pay the ultimate price for their forbidden desires. “Phaedra” was incredibly well received with praise from the likes of Voltaire who described the work as a “masterpiece of the human mind”. The drama remains to this day widely performed, studied, and translated, and endures as one of Racine’s most highly regarded works. This edition follows the translation of Robert Bruce Boswell.
Tragedies
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known commonly as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He is most noted for developing a new type of drama, the Senecan tragedy, which differed greatly from Greek tragedy. While the Greek tragedies were expansive and periodic, Senecan tragedies are more succinct and balanced. In Senecan tragedy, characters do not undergo much change, there is little or no catharsis in the end, and violence is acted out on stage instead of being recalled by characters to the audience. Often, Seneca’s plays contain pronounced elements of the macabre, grotesque, and even the supernatural. Not only have these plays withstood the test of time, but they essentially fueled the growth of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in England many centuries after their creation. Seneca’s work exerted significant influence on writers like Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare, to name a few. This edition includes the ten tragedies thought to be authored by Seneca and follows the translations of Ella Isabel Harris.
Miss Julie and Other Plays
This collection of plays by Swedish playwright and writer, August Strindberg, are a testimony to his title as “the father of modern literature” in Sweden, as well as to his distinction as one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. Beginning with two of his popular, early plays, “The Father” and “Miss Julie”, this edition explores Strindberg’s crucial transition from Naturalism to Modernism, concluding with “The Dance of Death”, “A Dream Play”, and “The Ghost Sonata”. As an author unafraid of exploring new possibilities in dramatic fiction, Strindberg is noted for his psychological realism, blatant misogyny, symbolism, and his utterly fluid and subjective sequences of events. His works bore intense scrutiny in their time, but have since been recognized for the prodigious influence they exhibited not only in the Naturalist and Expressionist genres, but on modern theatre as a whole.
The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays
J. M. Synge, an Irish poet, playwright, and prose writer, was also one of the cofounders of the storied Abbey Theatre. Synge was known as a strange and enigmatic man, quiet and reserved, not even understood by his own family members. After graduating from school, Synge decided to pursue music, but his shy nature prevented him from performing, causing him to turn to literature as a creative outlet. When it opened at the Abbey Theatre in 1907, his most acclaimed play, “The Playboy of the Western World”, met with rioting and chaos, as it garnered a very hostile reaction from the Irish public. Arthur Griffith, an Irish nationalist, described the play as “a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform.” Synge who suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, and died shortly before his 38th birthday, is best remembered for his dramatic works. His complete plays are collected together here in this volume. This edition includes a biographical afterword.
The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays
John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi” is a macabre and tragic play written between 1612 and 1613. Misuse of power, revenge, deception, cruelty, and corruption are among the many themes that run throughout this work. The work is set in the court of Malfi, in reality Amalfi in Italy, and concerns the story of the titular Duchess who is recently widowed and falls in love with Antonio, a lowly steward. However the Duchess’ family, wishing her to not split up her inheritance, forbids the union. Also included in this volume are three other plays by John Webster. “The White Devil” is a revenge tragedy loosely based on the murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in Padua on December 22, 1585. “The Devil’s Law Case” is the story of Romelio, a prominent merchant of Naples, and Contarino, a young nobleman indebted to the merchant, who hopes to marry Romelio’s sister Jolenta. Lastly in “A Cure for a Cuckold” we have a work co-authored by John Webster and William Rowley. The story takes place at the wedding of Justice Woodroff’s daughter Annabel with her suitor Bonvile, whose wedding night is interrupted when Bonvile’s friend Lessingham asks Bonvile to second him in a duel. This collection brings together the best works of English Jacobean dramatist and Shakespearean contemporary John Webster. This edition includes a biographical afterword.