Лучшие книги Томаса Миддлтона

В книгу включены пьесы английских драматургов первой трети XVII века: С.Тернера, Т.Мидлтона, Д.Форда и У.Роули, Д.Уэбстера, Б.Джонсона и Д.Шерли.
Представлены основные жанры: трагедия, трагикомедия, комедия.

В книгу включены три пьесы-шедевра, созданные во вторую половину правления короля Иакова I: "БУРЯ" Уильяма Шекспира, "ЧЁРТ ВЫСТАВЛЕН ОСЛОМ" Бена Джонсона, "ОБОРОТЕНЬ" Томаса Мидлтона и Уильяма Роули. Написанные в разных творческих манерах и жанрах, они, напечатанные под одной обложкой, выгодно оттеняют друг друга, демонстрируя богатство и яркую самобытность английской драматургии эпохи позднего Возрождения. При всей несхожести пьес есть и нечто, их роднящее, - это тема контраста иллюзии и реальности, кажущегося и сущего, их взаимопроникновения и трансформации.

Книга предназначена для читателя, интересующегося английской литературой эпохи позднего Возрождения.
И новый перевод "БУРИ", и две другие пьесы могут иметь театральную перспективу в России.

A changeling is a fickle person, a waverer, a person posing as another person, or an idiot. The Changeling portrays them all. The play interchanges not only characters, but authors, too. Written in 1622, it is one of the most successful collaborations in the history of the theater.

The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean play that survives only in manuscript. The play comes from a handwritten manuscript and it is the only one left in existence in that form. It was written in 1611, and performed in the same year by the King's Men. The play itself was written during the Jacobean era. Included in the manuscript are stage directions as well as the text.

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a writer of great versatility, and his career as a London dramatist spans the most productive, innovative, and exciting period of theatrical activity in the history of English drama.

Best known for his tragedies, he also wrote many successful comedies of city life. This volume brings together the greatest among them: A Mad World, My Masters, Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and No Wit, No Help Like a Woman's. The first three plays, written between 1604 and 1606, are witty and rambunctious satires on the predatory life of the aspiring London citizen. Sex and money are the characters' obsessions; their caustic exposure Middleton's. In the later play, No Wit (1612), satire shades into romance, prose into verse. Together the four plays reveal the range and exuberance of Middleton's writing for the comic stage.

Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation.

This volume contains the four plays by Thomas Middleton which have most impressed the modern world: "A Chaste Maid in Cheapside" is the most complex amd effective of the city comedies; "Women Beware Women" and "The Changeling" (with William Rowley) are two of the most powerful Jacobean tragedies outside of Shakespeare — studies in lust, power, violence, and self-delusive psychology; "A Game at Chess" was the single most popular play of the whole Shakespearean era, a satirical exposé of Jesuit plotting and Anglo-Spanish politics which played tp pacifist houses at the Globe until King James and his ministers banned it. The best-value collection available with the most officially up-to-date introduction; all the play texts are newly edited with richly informative annotation.

Oxford English Drama offers plays from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries in selections that make available both rarely printed and canonical works. The texts are freshly edited using modern spelling. Critical introductions, wide-ranging annotation, and informative bibliographies illuminate the plays' cultural contexts and theatrical potential for reader and performer alike.

'The series should reshape the canon in a number of significant areas. A splendid and imaginative project.' Professor Anne Barton, Cambridge University

The lyrical, bloodthirsty tragedies and witty urban comedies in this original collection were first performed during the reign of King James I (1603—25). Though nearly four centuries old, they display surprisingly modern sensibilities regarding sex, violence, morality, and honor. Brilliantly introduced and annotated by Frank Kermode, these seven Jacobean masterpieces are the finest and most representative plays of a time when drama was the most vital and important mirror of English society.

Following Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, the new court of King James was beset by political instability and moral corruption. This atmosphere provided fertile ground for the dramatists of the age, who explored the ways in which social decadence and the abuse of power breed resentment, leading inexorably to violent retribution. In Cyril Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, the debauched son of an Italian Duke attempts to rape the virtuous Gloriana—a veiled reference to Elizabeth I. John Webster’s The White Devil depicts a sinister world of intrigue and murderous infidelity, while The Changeling, perhaps Thomas Middleton’s supreme achievement, powerfully portrays a woman bringing about her own unwitting destruction. All three are masterpieces of brooding intensity, dominated by images of decay, disillusionment, and death.

Book DescriptionThomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a writer of great versatility, and his career as a London dramatist spans the most productive, innovative, and exciting period of theatrical activity in the history of English drama. Best known for