anti-play
A theatre work in which the creator sets out to subvert and counter the theatrical conventions of the day, e.g. by the use of long silences, inactivity, nonsequential plotting or ...
anti-play Reference library
The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre
...-play A theatre work in which the creator sets out to subvert and counter the theatrical conventions of the day, e.g. by the use of long silences, inactivity, nonsequential plotting or nonsense dialogue. The term ‘anti-theatre’ was also used, mainly after the Second World War, to describe plays that flouted the accepted conventions. Examples range from Jarry 's Ubu Roi ( 1896 ) to Handke 's Offending the Audience ( 1966 ). As categories dissolved towards the end of the twentieth century, the terms became rarely used. Colin Chambers See also dada ; ...
anti-play
King John Reference library
Michael Dobson, Will Sharpe, and Anthony Davies
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...The play is closely related to an anonymous two-part play, The Troublesome Reign of King John , published in 1591 , which is itself based on Holinshed and on John Foxe ’s Book of Martyrs : although this play was attributed to Shakespeare in its 1611 and 1623 reprints, most scholars now believe that this was a source for Shakespeare’s play rather than a derivative version of it. Shakespeare’s condensation of The Troublesome Reign is marked chiefly by a toning down of its strident anti-Catholicism: the main point of the earlier play is to...
Coriolanus Reference library
Michael Dobson, Will Sharpe, and Anthony Davies
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...of the relationship between the play’s protagonist and the most fully developed older woman in the canon: the most influential example would be Janet Adelman . Stage history: Apart from the early allusions by Armin and Jonson , there are no records of specific performances of the play before the 1680s, and its stage history thereafter is largely one of more and less propagandist adaptations until the early 19th century: Nahum Tate ’s anti-Whig The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth ( 1681 ), John Dennis ’s anti-Jacobite The Invader of his Country (...
Troilus and Cressida Reference library
Michael Dobson and Anthony Davies
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...and a penchant for set-piece displays of rhetoric, which have sometimes been adduced in support of the theory that it was written for the Inns of Court. The play’s scepticism about all forms of chivalric idealism, most obviously expressed by the cynical Thersites (who reduces the epic of Troy and the love of Troilus and Cressida to ‘wars and lechery’), has led some to see it as merely a satirical, anti-heroic burlesque, but Shakespeare’s compassion for his characters—most obviously the lovers, who for all their failings are given one of the most moving...
The Merchant of Venice Reference library
Michael Dobson, Will Sharpe, and Anthony Davies
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...anti-Semitic and would have found Shylock’s torments hilarious, continues to this day, though since the early 20th century accounts of Shylock’s significance (such as that offered by Auden in 1948 ) have been more inclined to see him in thematic relation to the play’s other outsider, Antonio. Antonio’s erotically charged patron–client relationship with Bassanio has come under considerable scrutiny over the last century, while psychoanalytic criticism has been interested in the symbolism of the play’s plots since Freud ’s own remarks on the play (in ...
Julius Caesar Reference library
Michael Dobson, Will Sharpe, Anthony Davies, and Will Sharpe
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...New York, when Orson Welles directed the play in modern dress, giving the conspiracy strong anti-fascist overtones: the idea was imitated at the Embassy theatre in London soon after the outbreak of war. Notable post-war productions have included Anthony Quayle ’s in Stratford in 1950 (with Quayle as Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius), Minos Volanakis’s production of 1962 (with Robert Eddison as Cassius), and Peter Hall ’s interval-free production for the RSC in 1996 , with Hugh Quarshie as Antony. The play has remained popular on the stage, both as...
The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster Reference library
Randall Martin, Will Sharpe, and Anthony Davies
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
... Wars of the Roses (RSC 1963–4 ), a two-part adaptation of the three plays. Randall Martin , rev. Will Sharpe On the screen: The play featured as one episode of the BBC’s An Age of Kings in 1960 , and in Barton’s rewritten form as part of the televised The Wars of the Roses in 1965 . Jane Howell ’s full-text version for BBC TV in 1983 , with its Brechtian asides-to-camera and visible use of the TV studio space, had Cade (Trevor Peacock, returning as anti-hero after playing Talbot in 1 Henry VI ) leading his followers in a book-burning...
The Tempest Reference library
Michael Dobson, Anthony Davies, and Will Sharpe
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...The play’s interpreters in other media include Hogarth , Fuseli (who based his drawings of Prospero on portraits of Leonardo da Vinci), Iris Murdoch , Aimé Césaire (anti-colonialist author of Une tempête ), and W. H. Auden , and very nearly included Mozart . From the Restoration onwards the play was regarded as a display of imaginative liberties not possible (or permissible) for lesser writers: Dryden , for example, cited both Caliban and Ariel as specimens of Shakespeare’s abilities to go beyond nature. His critical observations on the play,...
Richard Duke of York Reference library
Randall Martin, Will Sharpe, and Anthony Davies
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...1987 and 1989 (and is preserved on videotape). Adrian Noble followed their abridgement in The Plantagenets in 1988 , but with more traditional spectacle in the second play, ‘House of York’. Katie Mitchell’s stand-alone production at the RSC’s Other Place in 1994 , ‘Henry VI: The Battle for the Throne’, underlined the play’s religious ritual and natural imagery to heighten its anti-war themes. In America, Pat Patton, recalling the experiences of Vietnam, chose Noble’s ‘House of York’ for his stirring Oregon Shakespeare Festival production in 1992 ....
Othello Reference library
Michael Dobson, Will Sharpe, Anthony Davies, and Will Sharpe
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...Americans (including Joseph Quincy Adams ) found the play’s depiction of interracial marriage objectionable (and even Coleridge refused to see Othello as black, preferring to envisage him as an aristocratic Arab), most 19th-century critics found Othello convincingly noble. It was only in the 20th century, when T. S. Eliot took issue with A. C. Bradley ’s account of the play, that some began to adopt Iago’s view of Othello as a bombastic self-deceiver. This argument between pro- and anti-Othello factions has now been largely displaced by the...
Utopianism Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...radicalism in the mid-1790s: radical aims were satirized in at least one anti-Jacobin dystopia, John *Reeves 's Publicola: A Sketch of the Times ( 1810 ). Equally important was the publication of the most important modern anti-utopian tract, Thomas *Malthus 's Essay on Population ( 1798 ). Here Godwin was a special target, and vice, in the form of the seemingly inextinguishable desire to procreate, triumphed over virtually every proposal for assisting the poor. Some apocalyptic anti-utopias were constructed with Malthus's ideas partially in mind. The...
The Downhill Path and Defense, Not Surrender Reference library
Rusmir Mahmutćehajić
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
... 2. Today, when the greater part of Bosnia is under military occupation and outside the control of the Bosnian authorities, we must return to the contradictory plans from which the conflicts and the anti-Bosnian onslaught arose. Bosnia’s awareness of herself as a country has emerged from the long course of history, turning gradually to a memory and a prophecy of a state. When the Croat and Serb peoples tied their ethnic identities to plans for statehood, Bosnia became an arena for...
Antiquarianism (Popular) Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...Douce's second target was the exclusive Shakespeare—both the canonical writer, only begetter of great plays, and the newly purified texts emerging from the coterie of scholar-collectors who liked to keep their manuscripts and their rare, expensive Folios and Quartos among themselves. In his best book, Illustrations of Shakespeare's Characters (2 vols, 1807 ), Douce concentrates on the comedies and low-life scenes in the English history plays, meticulously investigating their sources from his unrivalled knowledge of medieval *romance and narrative....
Compatibility: Neither Required nor an Issue Reference library
Ullah Jan Abid
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...as) finding out if incompati-bility is really as much a threat as is being presented. Interestingly, no one asks what will happen if Muslims are allowed to form their own institutions and models on the basic principles of Islam which can, at the very least, serve as an antidote to anti-Westernism and global insecurity. Instead the focus has been on the misconception that only a “soft,” “civil” and “moderate” Islam can live with free elections, tolerate a free press, grant equal rights to women, tolerate secular authorities, and the rest. Although there is little...
Religion and Liberty Reference library
Mehdi Bazargan
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
... Religious Scholars 7 and Freedom Let us return now to the original question: whether or not the liberal political and intellectual movement that triggered Europe's great leap forward was an essentially anti-religious, anti-church, and anti-clerical movement. We need to first explore the origins of the church's opposition to freedom. The question is whether this antagonism was due to particular doctrinal and historical circumstances or a result of universal properties of all religions at...
Religion Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...outside the Church known collectively as Nonconformity or Dissent, destined to play a significant role in both the revolutionary and the Romantic insurgencies. Roman Catholics may have been an overwhelming majority in Ireland and a significant presence in the Highlands of Scotland, but in England they were a small minority, perhaps 80,000 in 1770 , with disproportionate representation among old aristocratic and gentry families who had the standing to survive the pervasive anti-Catholic prejudice endemic in most of the population. Unobtrusive and deeply...
Transitions and Trajectories: Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire Reference library
Barbara Geller
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...it is likely that the Jews of Mesopotamia, newly annexed by Rome, participated in an anti-Roman rebellion that began in 116. It was suppressed by another of Trajan's leading commanders, Lusius Quietus, who was awarded with an appointment as the first consular legate of Judea. Quietus also took steps to suppress unrest among the Palestinian Jewish population. This unrest probably in turn contributed to the outbreak of the third and final major Jewish anti-Roman rebellion, the war of Bar Kokhba. This uprising centered in southern Judea, the...
Enlightenment Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...their university education in Scotland. An Irishman, Francis Hutcheson , ( 1694–1746 ), for example, played a major role in the development of Scottish moral philosophy. In England the *Dissenting academy at Warrington similarly set new educational standards by incorporating science and history into its curriculum; some of its pupils then completed their education in Scotland, particularly at the Edinburgh medical faculty. London, too, played its part in disseminating Enlightenment: Scottish, Welsh, and Irish thinkers moved there to pursue careers, to...
4 Maccabees Reference library
David J. Elliott
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...The word is exceptionally rare, and appears in neither the LXX nor the NT, though it does appear twice in 4 Maccabees ( 6:29; 7:21 ). It is not unlikely that the Ignatian letters and 4 Maccabees are related. Both are concerned with the idea of martyrdom, use the rare word anti-psychon, and display a direct and vivid style. Due to the rifts in Antioch between Jews and Christians, and the fact that none of Ignatius' letters remained in Antioch, a common source may be the best solution. This may also explain the abundance of sea imagery found in 7:1;...
