History & Criticism

The legendary 1964 Broadway run of Hamlet directed by John Gielgud is one of the most famous productions of Shakespeare's most important play. Audacious for its time in concept and execution, it placed the actors in everyday clothes within an unassuming...

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! In a...

'The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.' Or was it 'The only duty of a storyteller is to tell a story'?A writer in a totalitarian state is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of...

'One drink. And if you never want to see me again you never have to see me again.'A quantum physicist and a beekeeper meet. They hit it off, or perhaps they don't. They might go home together, they might not.Constellations explores love, free will, and...

Adapted from a series of four lectures, originally delivered as the first of the Granada Northern Lectures Peter Brook's The Empty Space is an exploration of four aspects of theatre, 'Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate', published in Penguin Modern...

Harnessing the romance of the world of fashion and high art, this fascinating story of a collection of miniature mannequins describes the birth of Theatre de la Mode, the Theater of Fashion. Full of stars such as Robert Ricci (Nina Ricci's son),...

Acting, direction, stagecraft, theatre architecture and design, the extraordinary evolution of dramatic literature - here is an all-embracing and richly illustrated history, global in scope and ranging from the ancient origins of the theatre in the...

Musical Theatre: A History is a new revised edition of a proven core text for college and secondary school students - and an insightful and accessible celebration of twenty-five centuries of great theatrical entertainment. As an educator with...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and...

Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.Childlike in his innocence but...

"The next good mood I find my father in, I'll get him quite discarded" With these chillingly offhand words, Beatrice-Joanna, the spoilt daughter of a powerful nobleman, plots to get rid of the family servant who has crossed her once too often...

First published in 1938, The Theatre and Its Double is a collection of essays detailing Antonin Artaud's radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and lack of experimentation. Containing the famous manifestos of...

'The Royal Court has been at the centre of British cultural life for the past 50 years, an engine room for new writing and constantly transforming the theatrical culture' - Stephen Daldry. For half a century the Royal Court has been at the cutting edge...

In 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger changed the course of English theatre.'Look Back in Anger presents post-war youth as it really is. To have done this at all would be a significant achievement; to have done it in a first play is a minor miracle...

The sharpest, funniest comedy about money and morals in the 17th century is still the sharpest and funniest about those things in the 21st. The full play text is accompanied by incisive commentary notes which communicate the devastating comic energy of...

Exam Board: Edexcel Level: GCSE Grade 9-1 Subject: English Literature Suitable for the 2024 exams Everything you need to revise for your...

Tales of the Tricycle Theatre provides an inside look at the history of the north London theatre which has achieved renown with its staging of black, Irish, verbatim and political drama. Co-published with the Society for Theatre Research, the book draws...

A look at how Pamela Colman Smith's theatrical knowledge and experience came into play when she drew the iconic cards of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.The "secrets" in this book have been known all along, and they work in all who read Tarot on a...

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age.Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires...

This volume offers a critique of cultural and intellectual life in Greece during the dictatorship of 1967-1974, discussing how Greek playwrights, directors, and actors reconceived the role of culture in a state of crisis and engaged with questions of...

Teddy, a philosophy professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his father, uncle and two brothers at his old London home, after years of estrangement. In the intense conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of their...

Since the sixties, Keith Johnstone has led the work on improvisation in theatre, schools and universities. His unique ideas, set out in the classic text, Impro, have now been taken up by practitioners the world over. Impro for Storytellers builds on and...

Musical theatre is often perceived as either a Broadway based art form, or as having separate histories in London and New York. Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative, however, depicts the musical as neither American nor British, but both and...

How many times have you experienced a musical that was fabulous or just didn't work at all, but you had no idea how to communicate why? How do you differentiate between a flaw in the performance portrayal of a character to a structural flaw in the...

A bold new account of how celebrity worksWhy do we care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? Do celebrities deserve the outsized attention they receive? Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession...

Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this is a classic work on the power and importance of drama by renowned American playwright, screenwriter and essayist David Mamet. In this short but arresting series of essays, David Mamet explains...

**As featured on Barack Obama's Summer 2022 Reading List**Winner of the Gordon Burn PrizeWinner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardFinalist for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spievogel...

This volume contains Harold Pinter's first six plays, including The Birthday Party.The Birthday PartyStanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by two strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for Stanley turns into a...

Dramaturgy is at the heart of any musical theatre score, proving that song and music combined can collectively act as drama. The Musical Theatre Composer as Dramatist: A Handbook for Collaboration offers techniques for approaching a musical with the...

It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success, and its production history since it was first performed in 1960 has established the work as a landmark in twentieth-century drama.The obsessive caretaker, Davies, whose papers are in...

From the 'Winner of Winners' of the Baillie Gifford Prize, a timely and dramatic story of a utopian American experiment, and the self-serving politicians that engineered its downfall.1935. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's progressive New...

Written specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Student Editions provide in-depth explanatory material alongside the play texts frequently studied at Key Stage 4. Whether for use in the classroom or...

What if the work of a nurse, physio, or homecare worker was designated an art, so that the qualities of the experiences they create became understood as aesthetic qualities? What if the interactions created by artists, directors, dancers, or workshop...

In London in 1770 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) remarked, 'What a work could be written on Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick! There is something similar in the genius of all three.' Two-and-a-half centuries on, Robin Simon's highly original and...

Act of violence or show of strength? In a world of spectacular suffering and power plays - large and small - what is theatre's role in protecting human dignity? With its impassioned plays, inspired activism and outspoken artists, the theatre has long...

The most controversial and newsworthy plays of British theatre are a rash of rude, vicious and provocative pieces by a brat pack of twentysomethings whose debuts startled critics and audiences with their heady mix of sex, violence and street-poetry...

A ghost summoned with bizarre rituals from the underworld, the elaborate protocol of the Persian court, desperate lamentation, self-mutilation, and a thrilling eye-witness account of the battle of Salamis - these are some of the features of Aeschylus'...

This unique anthology presents the important historical essays on tragedy, ranging from antiquity to the present, divided into historical periods and arranged chronologically. Across its span, it traces the development of theories and philosophies of...

Frantic Assembly have had a powerful and continuing influence on the popularisation of devising practices in contemporary theatre-making. Their work blends brave and bold physical theatre with exciting new writing, and they have collaborated with some of...

What happens to politics when it takes the form of theatre? How has theatre both exploited and undermined politics both in society and on the stage?Theatre& Politics explores the complex relationship between theatre and politics, questioning some of the...