Elizabethan and Jacobean Reappropriation in Contemporary British Drama: 'Upstart Crows'

Description

This book examines British playwrights' responses to the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries since 1945, from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. Using the work of Julie Sanders and others working in the fields of Adaptation Studies and intertextual criticism, it argues that this relatively neglected area of drama, widely considered to be adaptation, should instead be considered as appropriation - as work that often mounts challenges to the ideologies and orthodoxies within Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and questions the legitimacy and cultural authority of Shakespeare’s legacy. The book discusses the work of Howard Barker, Peter Barnes, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, David Edgar, Elaine Feinstein and the Women’s Theatre Group, David Greig, Sarah Kane, Dennis Kelly, Bernard Kopps, Charles Marowitz, Julia Pascal and Arnold Wesker. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction: Appropriating the Past (Graham Saunders)....Pages 1-24 Why Rewrite Shakespeare and His Contemporaries? (Graham Saunders)....Pages 25-55 A Host of Lears: Howard Barker’s Seven Lears, Elaine Feinstein’s Lear’s Daughters, and Sarah Kane’s Blasted (Graham Saunders)....Pages 57-83 ‘Love in the Museum’: Howard Barker, the Erotic and the Elizabethan/Jacobean Text (Graham Saunders)....Pages 85-103 ‘If Power Change Purpose’: Appropriation and the Shakespearian Despot (Graham Saunders)....Pages 105-126 Anyone for Venice? Wesker, Marowitz, and Pascal Appropriate The Merchant of Venice (Graham Saunders)....Pages 127-149 Festive Tragedy: Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (2009) (Graham Saunders)....Pages 151-175 Back Matter ....Pages 177-194