criticism theater

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion/Miramax, 1st, 1997, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 191 pages, b&w illustrations. Light waviness to some pages, otherwise clean copy. In an expert guide to the history of American film, enhanced by many wonderful full-color and black-and-white photographs and film stills, the acclaimed director takes a look at many American movies while exploring them from a both a professional and personal perspective. An academically trained filmmaker (NYU film school) who is among today's most innovative directors, Scorsese presents an engrossing, idiosyncratic memoir of his experiences with motion pictures, including recollections of his first boyhood journeys to movie theaters and the impressions the films made on him. In analyzing American film since the silent era, he especially highlights Westerns, musicals, and gangster movies, genres that originated in America. No markings.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 327 pages, clean copy. Few diseases have exercised the Western imagination as chronically as hysteria--from the wandering womb of ancient Greek medicine, to the demonically possessed witch of the Renaissance; from the "vaporous" salon women of Enlightenment Paris, through to the celebrated patients of Sigmund Freud, with their extravagant, erotically charged symptoms. In this fascinating and authoritative book, Mark Micale surveys the range of past and present readings of hysteria by intellectual historians; historians of science and medicine; scholars in gender studies, art history, and literature; and psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and neurologists. In so doing, he explores numerous questions raised by this ever-growing body of literature: Why, in recent years, has the history of hysterical disorders carried such resonance for commentators in the sciences and humanities? What can we learn from the textual traditions of hysteria about writing the history of disease in general? What is the broader cultural meaning of the new hysteria studies? In the second half of the book, Micale discusses the many historical "cultures of hysteria." He reconstructs in detail the past usages of the hysteria concept as a powerful, descriptive trope in various nonmedical domains, including poetry, fiction, theater, social thought, political criticism, and the arts. His book is a pioneering attempt to write the historical phenomenology of disease in an age preoccupied with health, and a prescriptive remedy for writing histories of disease in the future.

Hardcover. Detroit MI, Wayne State University Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 263 pages, b&w illustrations. The author traces the origins of humor to primitive drama, folk ritual, and carnival play. from antiquity to the era of Laurel and Hardy. Light making to about 16 pages.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday Page & Co., 1st, 1927, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket with chunks gone from spine. A witty drama critic from the New York Herald-Tribune offers opinions and gossip on the celebrities of the day. 186 pages. Name on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Time Life, reprint, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 274 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Dark blue leather bound with gilt titles to front cover and spine. Embossed decoration on front cover. Gilt text block edges, red ribbon marker. Clean, tight copy. This memoir by Confederate General Richard Taylor is usually considered one of the best and least biased by a general officer. The work is full of considered analysis on both the strategy of the war and the personalities of his fellow officers. Taylor is always fair in his criticism and seems to have no real scores to settle. While he makes little mention of his own talents, his tactical brilliance and strategic insight does shine through. Many contemporaries said Richard Taylor was one of the best soldiers of the war, but he is comparatively little known due to his posting to peripheral theaters. While he was a man of his time, the work (with the exception of some of his Reconstruction writings) is much less tainted by Lost Cause polemics than most Confederate memoirs.

Hardcover. New York, Liberty Street, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 176 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. B&W and color photographs throughout. Fifty years ago, the dashing Scottish actor Sean Connery kicked off the Bond franchise, a cinematic series unlike any other. In November 2012, Skyfall, the 23rd movie in what is seen as the authorized line of Bond films, will be released, with Daniel Craig (the sixth Bond) again in the lead role. The world will once more stream to the theaters for another dose of Bond. LIFE was on the scene in the swinging '60s when James Bond became a cultural icon (in fact, when we put the gold-painted actress Shirley Eaton on the cover in 1964, we helped him along), and now LIFE tells the whole story in this commemorative book.

Hardcover. NY, Association Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 312 pages, very good in an edgeworn, chipped dust jacket. 82 Broadway plays reviewed by Atkinson and all illustrated with Hirschfeld's caricatures.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. This is Brigit Brophy's original 1964 edition (she later revisited it in 1988) of her profoundly original and controversial psychoanalytic study of Mozart's five most famous operas. 328 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. light blue cloth stamped in dark blue. SIGNED BY ATKINSON on front fly leaf along with previous owner's inscription. Illustrated with 12 woodcuts by Don Freeman. One year in the life of the New York journalist and drama critic. Written in a diary format, by month and day. No dust jacket, very good copy.

Hardcover. NY, Zone Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An examination of the ultimate power opera grants to singing: the reversal of death. In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera's founding myth-the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus's attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Grover-Friedlander examines instances in which opera portrays an existence beyond death, a revival of the dead, or a simultaneous presence of life and death. These portrayals-in operas by Puccini and other composers and performances by Maria Callas-are made possible, she argues, by the unique treatment of voice in the operas in question: the occurrence of a breach in which singing itself takes on an afterlife in the face of the singer's death. Clean copy, 252 pages.

Hardcover. New York, Pantheon, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 1330 pages. Hardcover. Small red remainder mark on bottom edge. Light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This book is a collection of reviews, essays, and personal opinions that Mr. Brustein wrote during 1959-1965. It is an excellent resource for directors wanting to tackle shows that premiered during this time period. It also demonstrates his uncanny ability to "critique" a dramatic work in the way that it should be, rather than merely stating a "review". Mr. Brusteins specificity for the English language and his committment to excellence in theatre, starting with the drama itself, is an intellectual oasis for those of us wanting to read scholarly criticism from a educated source. 322 pages. Clean copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 42 pages. Facsimile reprint of the 1732 pamphlet with introduction by Robert Hume. Published anonymously but thought to have been written by Aaron Hill (1685-1750). The pamphlet turns out to be a fascinatingly particular review of the cultural affairs in London during the winter and spring of 1732. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, A sociological look at the influence of Shakespeare's Shylock on world mythology describes the character's creation and his evolution on the stage, and presents writing about him by Proust, James, T. S. Eliot, and others. Amazingly, Shylock is in only five scenes in the Merchant of Venice. Yet, as pointed out by Gross, the theater critic for the London Sunday Telegraph , his impact and significance transcend his physical presence, so much so that his name and "pound of flesh" idea are almost universally known. In the first part of this character/cultural study, Gross examines the antecedents of Shylock and the play, and his development within the play. The second part considers "interpretations" both theatrical and literary in England and America until World War II; the third part considers Shylock more broadly as a touchstone (e.g., how his "type" is used by the Victorians--Trollope's Lopez, Dickens's Riah, Ruskin's use of him in Munera Pulveris ). Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, red cloth in a worn and chipped dust jacket with closed tears, 191 pages with index. Dr. Worcester presents a theory of satire, surveying the whole field since Dryden's Discourse of the Origin of Satire and drawing illustrations not only from English but from classical, French, German, and American literature. At the same time he makes a penetrating study of irony and its uses. Name on inside front cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Bloomsbury, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A brilliant and feared critic, Kenneth Tynan was a nabob of the National Theatre alongside Laurence Olivier, and he was also the daring impresario who created "Oh Calcutta". He was a notorious eccentric, a louche sophisticate: connoisseur of cuisine, wine, literature and women. Where else could you find such a judicious blend of aesthetics, theatre lore, love, marriage, sex and politics? These sizzling diaries will remind older readers of a man whose reputation as the greatest critic of the twentieth century is still unchallenged and introduce younger readers to an electrifying writer who simply could not be boring. B&w photos, 439 pages. Clean copy.

Softcover. Los Angeles, Augustan Reprint Society, reprint, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 80 pages. The Augustan Reprint Society Number 251-252. Introduction by Janet E. Aikins. Orig. tan card wrappers, stapled binding. An 18th century theatre critic's remarks regarding Otway's play. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 178 pages. The drama is the most social of the arts, depending upon physical space, audience, and social factors for its existence. It is no surprise, therefore, that the most successful criticism approaches theater the way Barber and Mullaney do: as historical artifact. Barber is the better known, having authored the classic Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959); the present volume is based on his papers and examines three early Elizabethan tragedies"Tamburlaine" and "Dr. Faustus" by Marlowe and "The Spanish Tragedy" by Kyd. Particularly interested in locating these plays in the unstable religious atmosphere of the late 16th century, Barber ably demonstrates his understanding of the social, historical, and economic factors that defined the era. Mullaney takes the novel approach of examining the theater in light of London topography; the title thus refers to the physical location of the playhouses as well as the social importance of the theater. Mullaney points out that the prejudice that forced the great theaters of the age to operate outside the city walls encouraged a drama that was radical and iconoclastichence its greatness. Mullaney's argument is fascinating and thought-provoking, convincingly presented. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, unclipped. A collection of essays and articles relating to the "new theatre," the Third Theatre off-off Broadway, and the Living Theatre as it displayed itself on its recent American tour. Also includes non-theatre essays - on the Madison Avenue Villain; on horror movies; a memoir, and an assortment of literary reviews and speculations. 294 pages, clean copy.