The relationship between modern drama and Shakespeare remains intense and fruitful, as Shakespearian themes continue to permeate contemporary plays, films, and other art-forms. Shakespeare/Adaptation/Modern Drama is the first book-length international study to examine the critical and theatrical connections among these fields, including the motivations, methods, and limits of adaptation in modern performance media.
Top scholars including Peter Holland, Alexander Leggatt, Brian Parker, and Stanley Wells examine such topics as the relationship between Shakespeare and modern drama in the context of current literary theories and historical accounts of adaptive and appropriative practices. Among the diverse and intriguing examples studied are the authorial self-adaptations of Tom Stoppard and Tennessee Williams, and the generic and political appropriations of Shakespeare's texts in television, musical theatre, and memoir. This illuminating and theoretically astute tribute to Renaissance and modern drama scholar Jill Levenson will stimulate further research on the evolving adaptive and intertextual relationships between influential literary works and periods.
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
PART I. Shakespeare and Modern Drama
Chapter 1: Unwinding Coriolanus: Osborne, Grass and Brecht
Peter Holland
Chapter 2: Three Men in a Boat: Stoppard, Beckett, and the Ghost of Arnold Geulincx
Hersh Zeifman
Chapter 3: West Side Story and the Vestiges of Theatrical Liberalism
Andrea Most
Chapter 4: Staging Shakespeare for 'Live' Performance in The Eyre Affair and Stage Beauty
Margaret Jane Kidnie
Chapter 5: Macbeth and Modern Politics
John H. Astington
Chapter 6: Shakespeare as Memoir
Katherine Scheil
Chapter 7: 'Bold, but Seemingly Marketable': The 2007 Stratford Ontario Merchant
Robert Ormsby
PART II. Shakespeare
Chapter 8: 'To gain the language, 'tis needful that the most immodest word be looked
upon and learnt': Editing the Bawdy in Henry IV, Part Two
James C. Bulman
Chapter 9: Extremes of Passion
Stanley Wells
Chapter 10: Shakespeare and the Indifference of Nature
Alexander Leggatt
Chapter 11: Pauline Cartography, Missionary Nationalism, and The Tempest
Randall Martin
Chapter 12: Lear's conversation with the philosopher
Hanna Scolnicov
PART III. Modern Drama
Chapter 13: An Experiment in Teaching: Pygmalion, My Fair Lady and the Pursuit of Happiness
Alan Ackerman
Chapter 14: 'The Going To Pieces of T. Lawrence Shannon': Notes On Tennessee Williams' Drafts of The Night of the Iguana (1961)
Brian Parker
Chapter 15: 'How do you play this game?': Nonsensical Language Games in Shaw, Coward, and Pinter
Rebecca S. Cameron
Afterword: A Tapestry of Thanks: Reflections on the Work of Jill L. Levenson
Jane Freeman
Jill L. Levenson's Publications
Index
Edited by Randall Martin and Katherine Scheil