Based on the author's thesis (Ph.D., Anglia Ruskin University).

Shelley's tragedy, The Cenci, has been regarded as an avant-garde attack on orthodox Christian principles, a celebrated cause for Victorian intellectuals, a vehicle for innovative minds of the theater, a historical oddity, a neglected masterpiece. Derived from the dark legends of one of Rome's great families, the Cenci records a history of sadism, incest, and murder. Shelley's one actable play has received little attention in modern times. Professor Curran studies it first as a poem-its patterns, themes, imagery-then as a play. After showing its relationship to England's Regency theater, he analyzes the fascinating course of its stage history, and finds Shelley foreshadowing such modern emphases as psychodrama, the existential vision, the Theatre of Cruelty. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Nightwood Theatre is the longest-running and most influential feminist theatre company in Canada. Since 1979, the company has produced works by Canadian women, providing new opportunities for women theatre artists. It has also been the "home company" for some of the biggest names in Canadian theatre, such as Ann-Marie MacDonald. In Nightwood Theatre, Scott describes the company?s journey toward defining itself as a feminist theatre establishment, highlighting its artistic leadership based on its relevance to diverse communities of women. She also traces Nightwood?s relationship with the media and places the theatre in an international context by comparing its history to that of like companies in the U.K. and the U.S

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 grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, adapted for the stage by Nick Dear, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in February 2011.

Today, Percy Bysshe Shelley is an emblem of the Romantic movement and one of the lights of English culture--his poems memorized by schoolchildren, his life honored with a memorial in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. That wasn't always the case, however. In his own day, Shelley was widely loathed, seen as an immoral atheist and a traitor to his class for his revolutionary politics. His work was damned as well, receiving scathing reviews rooted as much in disapproval of his politics and personal life as in the verse itself. That's the Shelley that Jacqueline Mulhallen brings to life in this accessible, political biography: the Shelley who, though writing when the working class was in its infancy, clearly grasped--and wanted to change--the system of oppression under which laborers and women lived. The revolutionary Shelley, Mulhallen shows, has long served as an inspiration to figures from Karl Marx to W. B. Yeats to the poets and writers of today, and for popular movements like the Chartists and the suffragettes, even as his public image and poetry became part of the establishment. An engaging look at one of English history and literature's most compelling, complicated, and talented figures, Percy Bysshe Shelley will be a valuable contribution to our understanding of the man and his work.

The long awaited new edition of this celebrated bestseller.

The great noh actor, theorist, and playwright Zeami Motokiyo (ca. 1363-1443) is one of the major figures of world drama. His critical treatises have attracted international attention ever since their publication in the early 1900s. His corpus of work and ideas continues to offer a wealth of insights on issues ranging from the nature of dramatic illusion and audience interest to tactics for composing successful plays to issues of somaticity and bodily training. Shelley Fenno Quinn's impressive interpretive examination of Zeami's treatises addresses all of these areas as it outlines the development of the playwright's ideas on how best to cultivate attunement between performer and audience. Quinn begins by tracing Zeami's transformation of the largely mimetic stage art of his father's troupe into a theater of poiesis in which the playwright and actors aim for performances wherein dance and chant are re-keyed to the evocative power of literary memory. prosodies and associated auras with the flow of dance and chant led to the creation of a dramatic prototype that engaged and depended on the audience as never before.Later chapters examine a performance configuration created by Zeami (the nikyoku santal) as articulated in his mature theories on the training of the performer. Drawing on possible reference points from Buddhist and Daoist thought, the author argues that Zeami came to treat the nikyoku santai as a set of guidelines for bracketing the subjectivity of the novice actor, thereby allowing the actor to reach a certain skill level or threshold from which his freedom as an artist might begin.

A riveting new drama exploring the life and work of one of the 19th century's most extraordinary women.