Plautus’s Amphitruo is unique among his surviving comedies, in that it intertwines the world of the gods – traditionally a tragic realm – with the traditional urban world of comedy. The prologue Plautus wrote for the play negotiates the question with some uneasiness. He describes the generic amalgam he has produced as a tragicomedy. The [...]
From 1682 to 1695 only one acting company operated in London. In that one company were gathered all the finest performers of the age, and they presented an amazing line-up of talent and originality. It is unlikely that there has ever been a single ensemble in England which exceeded them in quality. Dryden knew the [...]
Heinrich von Kleist and John Banville (Copyright Michael Miller 2014) “‘Who if not I, then, is Amphitryon?’”: Banville, Kleist, and God’s Gift(1) Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) is an enduring influence on the Booker Prize-winning Irish writer John Banville (b.1945). Not only does Banville repeatedly nail his comedy to Kleist’s mast in novels such as Eclipse [...]
Post-1660 playhouses are often written about as if they were indistinguishable from modern proscenium arch theatres – i.e. that the actors were now enveloped within a scenic world, which altered as appropriate as the action moved from tavern to park, from brothel to law-court. Accordingly, late seventeenth-century acting is conventionally presumed to have been shaped, [...]
University of York Department of Theatre, Film and Television 