Pivotal Lines in Shakespeare and Others: Finding the Heart of the Play

Pivotal Lines in Shakespeare and Others: Finding the Heart of the Play
ISBN-10
1000893030
ISBN-13
9781000893038
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
260
Language
English
Published
2023-06-29
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Author
Sidney Homan

Description

Sidney Homan defines a pivotal line as “a moment in the script that serves as a pathway into the larger play ... a magnet to which the rest of the play, scenes before and after, adheres.” He offers his personal choices of such lines in five plays by Shakespeare and works by Beckett, Brecht, Pinter, Shepard, and Stoppard. Drawing on his own experience in the theatre as actor and director and on campus as a teacher and scholar, he pairs a Shakespearean play with one by a modern playwright as mirrors for each other. One reviewer calls his approach “ground-breaking.” Another observes that his “experience with the particular plays he has chosen is invaluable” since it allows us to find “a wedge into such iconic texts.” Academics and students alike will find this volume particularly useful in aiding their own discovery of a pivotal line or moment in the experience of reading about, watching, or performing in a play.

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