Product Description

This book is a compact guide to reading plays, and to the art and techniques of drama. Ranging from classical Greece to modern Drama and performance, but with particular emphasis on the playwrights (including Shakespeare) who are most widely taught and performed, the Handbook covers the whole range of literary, aesthetic, and political questions attending drama, from theatre designs and acting styles to audience composition and editing printed texts. Looking closely at both text and performance, successive sections give clear and detailed information about the conventions of playtexts, the histories of genre, performance spaces, and theatre personnel, as well as current theatre practices. Each chapter also provides an appropriate technical and critical vocabulary, conveniently gathered in a full, indexed glossary. A final section, dealing with drama essays and exams, includes sample student essays, and the bibliography includes targeted further reading as well as extensive guides to playwrights in print and plays on film. Lucid, practical, and thorough, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone who reads plays.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180199 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Steven Poole, The Guardian
"Could be read with profit and pleasure by any theatregoer."

Review
Could be read with profit and pleasure by any theatregoer. (Steven Poole, The Guardian )

A good basic introduction for first year students to problems of reading plays as performance texts, i.e. reading theatrically. (Professor R. A. Cave, Royal Holloway )

Steven Poole, The Guardian
"Could be read with profit and pleasure by any theatregoer."

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly Brilliant
Like many students, I was dubious about a "guide to reading" but reading the introduction soon put my mind at rest. This book is written in an accessible style that is engaging and also interesting. I learnt things about plays I'd read ('Hamlet', Ibsen's 'A Doll's House') and why the Quarto was called thus. Loads more interesting drama/lit facts written in a way that makes you want to read it from cover to cover rather than the usual "flick through" style of text book.

I ordered Lennard's Poetry Handbook hours after I'd received this text.

Five stars.