Julius Caesar / Andrew James Hartley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hartley, A. J. (Andrew James), author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Shakespeare in performance

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Stage history.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xi, 258 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

Julius Caesar presents a performance history of a vexed and controversial play, moving from its 1599 opening all the way into the new millennium, with particular emphasis on its twentieth-and twenty-first-century incarnations on stage and screen. The book tracks the play's evolution from being a play about the oratorical skill of noble Romans to its recent manifestations as a dark political thriller. Each chapter examines a production or cluster of related productions, including Orson Welles's groundbreaking study of European fascism, Joseph Mankeiwicz's Oscar-winning 1953 film, and landmark productions such as that by Edward Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The book scrutinises the play's place in theatrical history, examining its manifestation of modernism in the 1960s and 1970s, its uneasy echoes of the Thatcher administration in the 1980s and 1990s, and its interrogation of post-Soviet regimes and the reach of mass media. One chapter analyses two productions at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, and another considers stagings in Germany, Austria, Italy, India and South Africa, in each case wrestling with the play's place in those countries' cultural and educational environments. Throughout, the book treats production not as a vehicle by which Shakespeare's text is broadcast but as a constructive entity with its own semiotic apparatus, and focuses less on textual cruxes and more on how productions affected their audiences. The result blows the dust off a play sometimes considered old-fashioned, navigates its thorny theatrical qualities, and revels in those productions which have so excited audiences. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter I 'So are they all, all honourable men': Julius Caesar before the Second World War 7

Chapter II The rise of European Fascism: Welles at the Mercury Theatre 36

Chapter III (Un)American identities: Mankiewicz (1953) 56

Chapter IV Wise saws and Modern(ist) instances: Anderson, Barton and Nunn 83

Chapter V Glories past: the minor films 110

Chapter VI The Romans in Britain: Caesar under Thatcher 134

Chapter VII Accents yet unknown: global Caesars 163

Chapter VIII 'Growing on the South': Georgia Shakespeare 2001 and 2009 194

Chapter IX A strange disposed time: Caesar at the millennium 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-252) and index.

ISBN:

9780719079191

0719079195

OCLC:

872706073