The Haunted dusk

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Arthur Sherbo

In Samuel Johnson's Critical Opinions, Prof. Arthur Sherbo resurrects Johnson's notes in which he expresses critical opinions that not only further illuminate his critical theories but are also of interest to those Shakespeareans who have relied on previous work by Joseph Epes Brown and Walter Raleigh. While the notes on Shakespeare form the single largest body of critical opinions on one writer, this volume also reprints critical opinions on a host of other writers and works derived from Johnson's other writings and from his conversations as recorded by James Boswell and Hester Piozzi, among others. To Professor Brown's original compilation, Sherbo has added some four hundred new notes from more than 130 authors and works. He has also made a few comments on Johnson's notes and on his other critical opinions, particularly to point out how Johnson used books he owned at one time or another. This work also includes a short essay entitled "What Johnson Did Not 'Understand' in Shakespeare's Plays," in which Sherbo isolates those notes in which Johnson confessed he did not "understand" and then compares the notes to the same passages in a modern edition.

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Paul Fussell

In this classic work, Paul Fussell illuminates the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing primarily on the literary means by which The Great War has been remembered, conventionalized, and mythologized. Drawing on the work of important wartime poets such as David Jones and Wilfred Owen, on the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden, and on numerous other personal records housed in the Imperial War Museum, this award-winning volume provides an intimate and intensely poetic account of the event that revolutionized the way we see the world. It has been hailed as "humanly wise and compassionate" (Saturday Review), "original and brilliant" (Lionel Trilling), "bright and sensitive" (The New Yorker), and "probing, sympathetic, and illuminating" (The New Republic). It is an undisputed classic of cultural criticism. (from Amazon)

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David M. Bergeron

"This book is the first to offer a systematic analysis of prefatory material in English dramatic texts, compelling literary scholars, cultural historians and historians of the book to take seriously the intersection of patronage, book production, and playwrights' textual frames. As Bergeron persuasively argues, we cannot fully comprehend the practice of Renaissance patronage without understanding these documents from England's richest theater period."--Jacket.

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Samuel Crowl

In this lively study of both modern film and stage productions of Shakespeare, Samuel Crowl provides fascinating insights into the ways in which these productions have been influenced by one another as well as by contemporary developments in critical approaches to Shakespeare's plays. Crowl's study demonstrates the surprising resonances between Roman Polanski's 1971 film of Macbeth and Adrian Noble's heralded recent production of the play for The Royal Shakespeare Company; argues that Orson Welles's films of Othello and Chimes at Midnight are not only brilliant re-imaginings of Shakespeare in another art form but make a powerful contribution to our contemporary understanding of performance as interpretation; and chronicles the impact of Peter Hall's creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 on performance approaches to Shakespeare in the past thirty years. Shakespeare Observed provides full interpretative readings of key recent Shakespeare productions in England and includes an intimate behind-the-scenes glimpse into the rehearsal process which produced Ron Daniels's emotionally charged version of Romeo and Juliet for the RSC in 1980. The final chapter uses Kenneth Branagh's highly successful film of Henry V as a summary example of the trends and influences Crowl's study traces, seeing the film as gathering its interpretative energies from both Olivier's famous film version of the play and Adrian Noble's stage production featuring Branagh as the king. Written in a style which places a premium on capturing the vivid and often dazzling moments of stage and film performances of Shakespeare, Crowl's study will be of interest to the avid film and theater-goer as well as to the scholar and student. Shakespeare Observed joins a growing list of recent critical works which have significantly expanded and redefined the boundaries of Shakespeare studies in our time.