Representative English Plays

Author : Frederick Tupper
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330318850
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (188 download)

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Download or read book Representative English Dramas From Dryden to Sheridan written by Frederick Tupper and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Representative English Dramas From Dryden to Sheridan This book is designed for students rather than for scholars or specialists. It makes little or no contribution to the present knowledge of authors and their plays. It grapples with no difficult problems of origins and solves no riddles of dramatic evolution. It enters into no competition with histories of the English drama. Its mission is the humble one of presenting in a single volume representative plays of the century and more between the Restoration of the Stuarts and the American Revolution. The introductions to the dozen dramas and the notes and bibliographies at the end of the book contain only such information as the editors deem necessary for an understanding of the circumstances of this literary output, only such interpretative comment as they consider stimulating to the reader's own critical sense. With regard to the necessity and stimulus of this editorial matter, others may well be of a different mind. After all, the plays are the thing. Admittedly it is very convenient to have in one volume a dozen plays of an important epoch. But why the dozen here selected? The editors have been guided in their choice not by their own likes and dislikes, which happen to be strong, but by the consensus of critical and popular opinion. The Conquest of Granada is acknowledged by all as typical of the short-lived heroic drama. All for Love is deemed Dryden's best tragedy and furnishes in addition the most striking example of the Restoration treatment of a Shakespearean theme. Otway's Venice Preserved is reckoned easily first among the tragedies of the later Stuart time; indeed it finds no peer until Shelley's Cenci, For the editors sins of omission - Wycherley and Vanbrugh - is pleaded only the enforced omission of sins. The ubiquitous Rehearsal of Buckingham has yielded - here the editors accept full responsibility - to the less accessible, equally representative, and more amusing burlesque, Fielding's Tom Thumb. No English comedy of manners vies, in the judgment of many others than Meredith, with The Way of the World by Congreve. No lighter drama of the Restoration tradition has had longer life on the stage and off than that "red leaf, the last of its clan," Farquhar's often-dancing Beaux' Stratagem. Dull beyond all conception Addison's Cato may seem to us now, yet it scored the most signal triumph of eighteenth-century classical tragedy. Sentimental comedy must be represented, and - almost as a matter of course - by The Conscious Lovers of Steele. The Beggar's Opera by Gay is the foremost of its musical genre in both time and merit. Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and Sheridan's chief comedies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.