In this transformative study, Simon Smith explores how playwrights like Shakespeare crafted their plays for demanding and varied commercial audiences. Rediscovering the many forms of judgement practised in the early modern playhouse, he investigates influences ranging from the classical tradition and grammar-school classroom to ballad and jest culture. Where many prior studies have treated 'the judicious' as a self-contained subset of playgoers, Smith reveals the variety of careful assessments made in the theatre by a wide range of playgoers, showing that judgement and pleasure were often simultaneous elements of the same response. Chapters examine specific parts of plays that were especially subject to evaluation and generative of enjoyment: spectacle, words, plot, and actorly technique. Close readings shed fresh light on much-studied plays such as Hamlet and Volpone, as well as exploring several unfairly overlooked plays. This is a Flip it Open title and may be available open access on Cambridge Core.
A notable aspect of the stage history of A Midsummer Night's Dream is the frequent emphasis on dance in various productions and adaptations. At the same time, such emphasis has tended to obscure the darker and more suggestive elements of Shakespeare's play. This article offers a close reading of some passages of dance...
Vanessa Lim· Borrowers and Lenders The Jo...· 0 citations
This stimulating and accessible book is intended for instructors at the junior high school, high school, and undergraduate levels who present Shakespeare’s most familiar tragedies to students who are largely unfamiliar with them. Acclaimed teacher of drama Victor L. Cahn begins with a general introduction, then examine...
This study investigates the interpretive capacities of OpenAI's ChatGPT in engaging with Radha-centric poetry across Sanskrit, Braj, and Maithili traditions and argues that Radha's evolving voice offers a unique proving ground for assessing AI's engagement with affect-rich, theologically inflected texts.
As the twentieth century drew to a close, festivals began to take many different forms, each reflecting shifts in society and changes in the management of culture. Some gatherings initially focused narrowly on one type of performance or audience, gradually developing a more defined structure and purpose. One type of fe...
Celebrated as a critical and commercial success, Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying opus Sinners has also been considered as one of the most culturally significant films of 2025. It also promises to be one of the most theologically resonant films of the year. This is evinced not only in its thematic and literary bases but, i...
Antonio D. Sison· Journal of Religion & Fi...· 0 citations
This study looks at how literary depictions of nature have changed over time, from emotionally intense reflections of human dread in gothic literature to descriptions of nature as self-sustaining forces in modernist writing. The study examines Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Virginia Woolf’s Kew Ga...
Asma Muqbil al Shammari, Banan Aljahdali· International Journal of Lit...· 0 citations
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