Slings & Arrows, starring Susan Coyne, Paul Gross, Don McKellar, and Mark McKinney as members of the New Burbage Theatre Festival, was heralded by television critics as one of the best shows ever produced and one of the finest depictions of life in classical theatre. Shakespeare scholars, however, have been ambivalent about the series, at times even hostile. In Shakespeare and the World of “Slings & Arrows” Gary Kuchar situates the three-season series in its cultural and intellectual contexts. More than a roman à clef about Canada’s Stratford Festival, he shows, it is a privileged window onto major debates within Shakespeare studies and a drama that raises vital questions about the role of the arts in society. Kuchar reads the television show – ever fluctuating between faith and doubt in the power of drama – as an allegory of Peter Brook’s widely renowned account of modern theatre, The Empty Space, mirroring Brook’s distinction between holy theatre, a quasi-sacred vocation, and deadly theatre, a momentary entertainment. Combining contextualized interpretations of the series with subtle formalist readings, Kuchar explains how Slings & Arrows participates in a broader recuperation of humanist approaches to Shakespeare in contemporary scholarship. The result is a demonstration of how and why Shakespeare continues to provide not just entertainment, but equipment for living.

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Experiencing Epiphanies in Literature and Cinema uses health humanities and psychological humanities to explore literary and cinematic epiphanies. James Joyce first adopted the term “epiphany” from its religious use to articulate momentsof luminous intensity or “sudden spiritual manifestation.” This study develops and extends Joyce’s use of epiphany through a range of literary and cinematic examples, from William Shakespeare to Ruth Ozeki and from Yasujirō Ozu to Jim Jarmusch. This wealth of epiphanies in the arts is important from a health humanities perspective in that they provide access to aesthetic and sustainable experiences of well-being, joy, and human flowering. They also provide antidotes to aesthetics of anti-epiphany—a showing forth of terror, horror, and panic. Experiencing Epiphanies is accordingly both critical and affirmative, diagnostic and therapeutic. It uses critique to understand the increasing need for well-being in contemporary times, and it uses affirmation to develop underutilized resources in the arts for transforming, configuring, and refiguring our everyday lives.

Authorizing Shakespeare on Film and Television examines recent film and television transformations of William Shakespeare's drama by focusing on the ways in which modern directors acknowledge and respond to the perceived authority of Shakespeare as author, text, cultural icon, theatrical tradition, and academic institution. This study explores two central questions. First, what efforts do directors make to justify their adaptations and assert an interpretive authority of their own? Second, how do those self-authorizing gestures impact upon the construction of gender, class, and ethnic identity within the filmed adaptations of Shakespeare's plays? The chosen films and television series considered take a wide range of approaches to the adaptative process - some faithfully preserve the words of Shakespeare; others jettison the Early Modern language in favor of contemporary idiom; some recreate the geographic and historical specificity of the original plays, and others transplant the plot to fresh settings. The wealth of extra-textual material now available with film and television distribution and the numerous website tie-ins and interviews offer the critic a mine of material for accessing the ways in which directors perceive the looming Shakespearean shadow and justify their projects. Authorizing Shakespeare on Film and Television places these directorial claims alongside the film and television plotting and aesthetic to investigate how such authorizing gestures shape the presentation of gender, class, and ethnicity.

Providing important context for his greatest works, Shakespeare's Life presents a thorough biography of the Bard, featuring the latest findings from scholars about his life and his works. Included is coverage of his upbringing in Stratford, his marriage and family life, the process of writing his greatest works, and his life after the theater. Coverage includes: His early years in Stratford, including his marriage to Anne Hathaway His rise to stardom within the London theater scene The death of his nine-year-old son, Hamnet The writing of his greatest works, including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and others His retirement from the theater and move back to Stratford And much more.

The actor does not create but reacts to the playwrights moments. The dancer glides on a stage to the choreographers movements. The musician and singer, each performs to the composers lead, while painter and writer serves those, who come to see or read.

This collection of scholarly essays offers a new understanding of local and global myths that have been constructed around Shakespeare in theatre, cinema, and television from the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on a definition of myth as a powerful ideological narrative, Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance examines historical, political, and cultural conditions of Shakespearean performances in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The first part of this volume offers a theoretical introduction to Shakespeare as myth from a twenty-first century perspective. The second part critically evaluates myths of linguistic transcendence, authenticity, and universality within broader European, neo-liberal, and post-colonial contexts. The study of local identities and global icons in the third part uncovers dynamic relationships between regional, national, and transnational myths of Shakespeare. The fourth part revises persistent narratives concerning a political potential of Shakespeare’s plays in communist and post-communist countries. Finally, part five explores the influence of commercial and popular culture on Shakespeare myths. Michael Dobson’s Afterword concludes the volume by locating Shakespeare within classical mythology and contemporary concerns.

What would two literary geniuses have in common especially when they come from entirely different social backgrounds and societies and a different point in time? Many, as this unique analysis of Shakespeare and Tolstoy shows. The book has two parts; the first is on Leo Tolstoy and the second, on William Shakespeare and runs to a total of 470 pages. The author analyses these literary figures through their personalities and their respective works: through their internal turmoil and torment, as moral beings wrestling with the vicissitudes and inequities of life. These literary giants¿ consciences and actions are examined in minute detail from the perspective of the Law of Kamma as it is understood in Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism to be precise. The stories that these writers told bespeak of their own trials and tribulations, foibles and insecurities of life, as well as their struggle with social issues of the day. Whereas Tolstoy, being an aristocrat, was prepared to speak his mind loud and clear about the injustices of his society and be ridiculed for his views and his own actions, in contrast Shakespeare wasn¿t prepared to do so largely because of his relatively low social status which obliged him to suck up to the aristocratic and royal classes. It was a matter of earning a living for Shakespeare at the pleasure of the powers-that-were otherwise he won¿t have survived and prospered financially. There are interesting instances where the author highlights similarities between the two historical literary figures and explained why, Tolstoy disdained Shakespeare, for example, for his inability to speak his mind and the hypocrisy of his works¿ characters! Also, surprisingly to many, Tolstoy even disdained his early works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, in the twilight of his life... Why? The analyses present such an interesting insight into the lives of these two great literary giants as to keep one not only entertained but intrigued as to how kamma had wrought their lives and how kamma molded them so; how kamma has made Tolstoy so different from his antecedent self, Shakespeare (if one accepts that Tolstoy was a chip of the old English block) but that the genius of his pen remained as finely tuned and accomplished as he was in his previous life as the celebrated English Bard!