Following the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company over three decades, Representing Shakespeare traces the changing theatrical and cultural identity of the history plays in the context of post-war social and political conflict, war, crisis and change. In this new study, Shakespeare's plays in performance are seen as part of a wider cultural history. Traditional theatre history and performance criticism has largely excluded politics and social history, isolating the theatre production as an interpretive act without taking into account its social and ideological contexts. This book examines the enduring appeal and potency of the history plays, showing how these stories have been repeatedly reinvented by the RSC as narratives of individual self-definition and self-discovery. Since the inception of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, the company's commitment to relevance has fostered close relationships between Shakespearean criticism and performance, and between the theatre and its audiences. Through a detailed discussion of key productions, from The Wars of the Roses in 1963 to the Plantagenets in 1988, Robert Shaughnessy emphasises the political dimension of contemporary theatrical representations of Shakespeare. Using as his source the company's promptbooks and production records, he goes on to illustrate the 'Shakespearean' modes of history that these plays have been employed to promote - individualist, cyclical, male-dominated, driven by an essentialised, transcendent human nature.

Representing Shakespeare: England, History and the Rsc

Literature & Fiction

Shaughnessy, Robert

Dramas & Plays

Harvester/Wheatsheaf

Shakespeare in Performance (New Casebooks)

This collection of modern essays by leading figures in the field of Shakespeare scholarship reveals the rich interplay between contemporary theoretical approaches - psychoanalytic, new historicist, feminist and cultural materialist - and the study of the play in performance, both in Shakespeare's time and our own. Examining the representation of power, ideology, class, race and gender in a wide range of playtexts and theatrical contexts, the essays explore Shakespeare's performance possibilities in theory and in practice.

Shakespeare in Performance (New Casebooks, 7)

Reference

Red Globe Press

Shakespeare in Performance (New Casebooks, 91)

This edition of four Renaissance comedies represents the vitality, range and diversity of the English comic drama of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, reflecting both its capacity for escapist fantasy and its concern with the intrigues of everyday city life. Comprehensive textual notes establish the plays in their originating cultural and theatrical circumstances, as well as explaining obscure references and allusions. A general introduction provides a helpful overview of early modern comedy in the context of Renaissance comic theory and practice, together with an assessment of its continuing theatrical appeal.

Four Renaissance Comedies

Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans. In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy:     introduces Shakespeare’s life and works in context, providing crucial historical background looks at each of Shakespeare’s plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contemporary criticism and performance history  provides detailed discussion of twentieth-century Shakespearean criticism, exploring the theories, debates and discoveries that shape our understanding of Shakespeare today  looks at contemporary performances of Shakespeare on stage and screen  provides further critical reading by play outlines detailed chronologies of Shakespeare’s life and works and also of twentieth-century criticism The companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/shaughnessy contains student-focused materials and resources, including an interactive timeline and annotated weblinks.

The Routledge Guide to William Shakespeare

History & Criticism

Routledge

Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans. In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy: <ul>
<li>introduces Shakespeare’s life and works in context, providing crucial historical background</li> <li>looks at each of Shakespeare’s plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contemporary criticism and performance history </li> <li>provides detailed discussion of twentieth-century Shakespearean criticism, exploring the theories, debates and discoveries that shape our understanding of Shakespeare today </li> <li>looks at contemporary performances of Shakespeare on stage and screen </li> <li>provides further critical reading by play</li> <li>outlines detailed chronologies of Shakespeare’s life and works and also of twentieth-century criticism</li>
</ul>
The companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/shaughnessy contains student-focused materials and resources, including an interactive timeline and annotated weblinks.

The Routledge Guide to William Shakespeare (Routledge Guides to Literature)

As You Like It (Shakespeare in Performance)

This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage productions in Britain, France and Germany, which include Royal Shakespeare Company productions starring Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Juliet Stevenson, the ground-breaking all-male productions at the National Theatre in 1967 and by Cheek by Jowl in 1992, and the versions directed by Jacques Copeau in Paris in 1934, and by Peter Stein in Berlin in 1977. It also addresses the four major screen versions of the play, ranging from Paul Czinner's 1936 film to Kenneth Branagh's seventy years later.

Manchester University Press

Representing Shakespeare: England, History and the RSC

This text traces the changing theatrical and cultural identity of the History plays in the context of postwar social and political conflict, crisis and change. Since the company's inception in the early 1960s, the RSC's commitment to relevance has fostered close relationships between Shakespearean criticism and performance, and between the theatre and its audiences. Through a detailed discussion of key productions, from "The War of the Roses" in 1963 to "The Plantegenets" in 1988, Robert Shaughnessy emphasizes the political dimension of contemporary theatrical representations of Shakespeare, and of the "Shakespearean" modes of history that these plays have been employed to promote; individualist, cyclical, male-dominated, and driven by essentialised, transcendent human nature. 

Representing Shakespeare

Humor & Entertainment

The National Theatre's years at the Old Vic were the most Shakespearean period in its history, one which included Laurence Olivier's Othello and Shylock, a radical all-male As You Like It, the Berliner Ensemble's Coriolanus and Tom Stoppard's classic offshoot, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead. Drawing extensively upon the company archives, this book tells the interlinked stories of the National's relationship with Shakespeare through a series of production case studies. Between them these illuminate Olivier's significance as actor and director, the National's pioneering accommodation of European theatre practitioners, and its ways of engaging Shakespeare with the contemporary.

Shakespeare in the Theatre: The National Theatre, 1963–1975: Olivier and Hall

The Arden Shakespeare

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Books by Shaughnessy, Robert