Shakespeare's plays had to " made fit" to suit the new theatrical conditions, and were dratically revised. Because the list of revisions and reworkings goes on almost indefintiely, in this volume Sandra Clark has brought together five important and intruiging pieces which have particular relevance to readers now.

Shakespeare's plays have long been open to reimagining and reinterpretation, from John Fletcher's riposte to The Taming of the Shrew in 1611 to present day spin-offs in a whole range of media, including YouTube videos and Manga comics. This book offers a clear route map through the world of adaptation, selecting examples from film, drama, prose fiction, ballet, the visual arts and poetry, and exploring their respective political and cultural interactions with Shakespeare's plays. 36 specific case studies are discussed, three for each of the 12 plays covered, offering additional guidance for readers new to this important area of Shakespeare studies. The introduction signals key adaptation issues that are subsequently explored through the chapters on individual plays, including Shakespeare's own adaptive art and its Renaissance context, production and performance as adaptation, and generic expectation and transmedial practice. Organized chronologically, the chapters cover the most commonly studied plays, allowing readers to dip in to read about specific plays or trace how technological developments have fundamentally changed ways in which Shakespeare is experienced. With examples encompassing British, North American, South and East Asian, European and Middle Eastern adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, the volume offers readers a wealth of insights drawn from different ages, territories and media.

This short history of Shakespeare in global performance-from the re-opening of London theatres upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to our present multicultural day-provides a comprehensive overview of Shakespeare's theatrical afterlife and introduces categories of analysis and understanding to make that afterlife intellectually meaningful. Written for both the advanced student and the practicing scholar, this work enables readers to situate themselves historically in the broad field of Shakespeare performance studies and equips them with analytical tools and conceptual frameworks for making their own contributions to the field.

The first book on Restoration Shakespeare in performance, drawing on theatre history, musicology and literary criticism.

The first full-length study since the 1920s of the Restoration and eighteenth-century's revisions and revaluations of Shakespeare, and the first to consider the period's much-reviled stage adaptions in the context of the profound cultural changes of their times. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Dobson examines how and why Shakespeare was retrospectively claimed as both a respectable Enlightenment author and a crucial and contested symbol of British national identity. The book provides thorough analysis, both engaging and informative, the definitive account of the theatre's role in establishing Shakespeare as Britain's National Poet. - ;The century between the Restoration and David Garrick's Stratford Jubilee saw William Shakespeare's promotion from the status of archaic, rustic playwright to that of England's timeless Bard, and with it the complete transformation of the ways in which his plays were staged, published, and read. But why Shakespeare, and what different interests did this process serve? The Making of the National Poet is the first full-length study since the 1920s of the Restoration and eighteenth century's revisions and revaluations of Shakespeare, and the first to consider the period's much-reviled stage adaptations in the context of the profound cultural changes in which they participate. Drawing on a wide range of evidence - including engravings, prompt-books, diaries, statuary, and previously unpublished poems (among them traces of the hitherto mysterious Shakespeare Ladies' Club) - it examines how and why Shakespeare was retrospectively claimed as both a respectable Enlightenment author and a crucial and contested symbol of British national identity. It shows in particular how the deification of Shakespeare co-existed with, and even demanded, the drastic and sometimes bizarre rewriting of his plays for which the period is notorious. The book provides thorough analysis, both engaging and informative, the definitive account of the theatre's role in establishing Shakespeare as Britain's National Poet. -

Between 1660 and 1682 seventeen of Shakespeare's plays were altered for the new Restoration stages and times. Shakespeare Adaptations from the Restoration: Five Plays now publishes five of these plays for the first time in a critical edition.

Shakespeare's plays have been adapted or rewritten in various, often surprising, ways since the seventeenth century. This groundbreaking anthology brings together twelve theatrical adaptations of Shakespeares work from around the world and across the centuries. The plays include The Woman's Prize or the Tamer Tamed John Fletcher The History of King Lear Nahum Tate King Stephen: A Fragment of a Tragedy John Keats The Public (El P(blico) Federico Garcia Lorca The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Bertolt Brecht uMabatha Welcome Msomi Measure for Measure Charles Marowitz Hamletmachine Heiner Müller Lears Daughters The Womens Theatre Group & Elaine Feinstein Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief Paula Vogel This Islands Mine Philip Osment Harlem Duet Djanet Sears Each play is introduced by a concise, informative introduction with suggestions for further reading. The collection is prefaced by a detailed General Introduction, which offers an invaluable examination of issues related to

This book examines Shakespeare's influence and popularity in all aspects of eighteenth-century literature, culture and society.

In Shakespeare, Adaptation, Psychoanalysis, Matthew Biberman analyzes early adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in order to identify and illustrate how both social mores and basic human psychology have changed in Anglo-American culture. Biberman contests the received wisdom that Shakespeare’s characters reflect essentially timeless truths about human nature. To the contrary, he points out that Shakespeare’s characters sometimes act and think in ways that have become either stigmatized or simply outmoded. Through his study of the adaptations, Biberman pinpoints aspects of Shakespeare’s thinking about behavior and psychology that no longer ring true because circumstances have changed so dramatically between his time and the time of the adaptation. He shows how the adaptors’ changes reveal key differences between Shakespeare’s culture and the culture that then supplanted it. These changes, once grasped, reveal retroactively some of the ways in which Shakespeare’s characters do not act and think as we might expect them to act and think. Thus Biberman counters Harold Bloom’s claim that Shakespeare fundamentally invents our sense of the human; rather, he argues, our sense of the human is equally bound up in the many ways that modern culture has come to resist or outright reject the behavior we see in Shakespeare’s plays. Ultimately, our current sense of 'the human' is bound up not with the adoption of Shakespeare’s psychology, perhaps, but its adaption-or, in psychoanalytic terms, its repression and replacement.