MTU Library Catalogue

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The drama handbook : a guide to reading plays / John Lennard and Mary Luckhurst.

By: Lennard, John, 1964-.
Contributor(s): Luckhurst, Mary.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2002Description: xii, 416 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.ISBN: 0198700709; 9780198700708.Subject(s): Drama | Theater | Literature | Theatre studies | Literary studies: plays & playwrights | Designed / suitable for A & AS LevelDDC classification: 792 | 809.2 LEN Summary: How do we learn to read a playscript? Of what should a student of dramatic texts be aware? This text aims to provide students and the general reader with a guide to drama, its craft and its technique.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Cork School of Music Library Lending 792 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00175297
General lending MTU Kerry North Campus Library First Floor Main 809.2 LEN (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 38888000410187
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book is a compact guide to reading plays, and to the art and techniques of drama. Ranging from classical Greece to modern Drama and performance, but with particular emphasis on the playwrights (including Shakespeare) who are most widely taught and performed, the Handbook covers the whole range of literary, aesthetic, and political questions attending drama, from theatre designs and acting styles to audience composition and editing printed texts. Looking closely at both text and performance, successive sections give clear and detailed information about the conventions of playtexts, the histories of genre, performance spaces, and theatre personnel, as well as current theatre practices. Each chapter also provides an appropriate technical and critical vocabulary, conveniently gathered in a full, indexed glossary. A final section, dealing with drama essays and exams, includes sample student essays, and the bibliography includes targeted further reading as well as extensive guides to playwrights in print and plays on film. Lucid, practical, and thorough, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone who reads plays.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

How do we learn to read a playscript? Of what should a student of dramatic texts be aware? This text aims to provide students and the general reader with a guide to drama, its craft and its technique.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Figures and display boxes (p. ix)
  • Acknowledgements (p. x)
  • Abbreviations (p. xi)
  • Introduction (p. 1)
  • I Performance, Notation, Text (p. 7)
  • 1. Performance: process and the ephemeral (p. 9)
  • 2. Notation: documentation, layout, and the preserved (p. 15)
  • 3. Text I: editing and reception (p. 22)
  • 4. Text II: the process of reading (p. 37)
  • II Reading Structures (p. 47)
  • 5. What is genre? (p. 49)
  • 6. Classical genres: tragedy, comedy, satyr-plays, and epic (p. 56)
  • 7. Religious genres: the liturgy, Mysteries, and Moralities (p. 68)
  • 8. Renaissance genres: Commedia dell'arte, tragicomedy, masque, and opera (p. 76)
  • 9. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century genres: burlesque, sentimental and gothic drama, pantomime, melodrama, music-hall, farce, and well-made plays (p. 89)
  • 10. Social genres: political theatre, agit-prop, documentary drama, and epic drama (p. 97)
  • 11. The impact of technology: light, sound, radio- and TV-plays, and film-genres (p. 105)
  • III Defining Architectures (p. 117)
  • 12. The study (p. 119)
  • 13. Rehearsal and administrative spaces (p. 123)
  • 14. The stage and auditorium (p. 129)
  • 15. The spaces of the book trade: the scriptorium, printshop, publishing house, bookshop, and library (p. 147)
  • IV Personnel in Process (p. 155)
  • 16. Playwrights (p. 157)
  • 17. Directors (p. 166)
  • 18. Actors (p. 173)
  • 19. Dramaturgs and literary managers (p. 186)
  • 20. Designers (p. 193)
  • 21. Production staff, stage-crew, and front-of-house (p. 202)
  • 22. Censors (p. 207)
  • 23. Audiences (p. 213)
  • 24. Critics (p. 222)
  • 25. Editors (p. 231)
  • 26. Teachers and readers (p. 238)
  • V Theatre Today (p. 243)
  • 27. The play-text since the 1950s (p. 245)
  • 28. Challenges to the play-text (p. 261)
  • 29. Alternatives to the play-text (p. 269)
  • VI Exam Conditions (p. 275)
  • 30. Practical criticism (p. 277)
  • 31. Period and special papers (p. 283)
  • 32. Sample answers (p. 293)
  • Glossary (p. 317)
  • Select bibliography and further reading (p. 373)
  • Index of persons (p. 403)
  • Index of plays (p. 411)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

John Lennard teaches at the Universities of Cambridge and Notre Dame, and for the British-American Drama Academy in London
Mary Luckhurst is Lecturer in Modern Drama at the University of York