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