Research Catalog

Our moonlight revels : a midsummer night's dream in the theatre

Title: Our moonlight revels : a midsummer night's dream in the theatre / Gary Jay Williams.
Author: Williams, Gary Jay.
Publication: Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, ©1997.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	PR2827 .W59 1997	Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 344 pages : illustrations (some color); 26 cm.

Summary

In his richly detailed, beautifully illustrated history of Shakespeare's most popular play - the first comprehensive study of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the theatre - Gary Jay Williams covers four hundred years of landmark productions in Europe, the United States, and Canada as well as important opera, dance, and film adaptations. Williams shows how the visual and musical vocabularies of production can be read as cultural texts and how these mediative texts determine this play's available meanings from generation to generation. His account, then, is the story of our imaginative and astonishing uses of Shakespeare's play. Williams offers detailed theatrical and cultural analyses of the productions of David Garrick, Ludwig Tieck, Elizabeth Vestris, Charles Kean, Harley Granville-Barker, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Max Reinhardt, Peter Brook, Liviu Ciulei, and other artists. His engaging, intelligent study will be invaluable to scholars and teachers of Shakespeare and theatre history and to professional directors, designers, critics, and actors.

Series Statement

Studies in theatre history and culture

Uniform Title

Studies in theatre history and culture

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-322) and index.

Contents

The wedding-play myth and the dream in full play -- Shakespeare absolute : fairies, gods, and oranges in Purcell's Fairy Queen -- "Signor Shakespearelli" -- The scenic language of empire -- "These antique fables ... these fairy toys" -- The national and natural dream -- The dream of modernism : the "new hieroglyphic lanuage of scenery" and the theology of the text -- The dream of modernism : the sacred and the secular -- Postmodernism : "The fierce vexation of a dream."

ISBN

0877455929
9780877455929
0877458294
9780877458296

LCCN

97021764

OCLC

ocm36942599
36942599
SCSB-14694823

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library