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Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh
Stanley Wells
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Description for Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh
Paperback. Great Shakespeare Actors provides a series of well-informed, well-written, illuminating, and entertaining accounts of many of the most famous stage performers of Shakespeare in both England and America, offering a concise, actor-centred history of Shakespeare on the stage. Num Pages: 314 pages, Numerous black-and-white halftones. BIC Classification: 2AB; ANB; DSGS. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 216 x 138. .
Great Shakespeare Actors offers a series of essays on great Shakespeare actors from his time to ours, starting by asking whether Shakespeare himself was the first-the answer is No-and continuing with essays on the men and women who have given great stage performances in his plays from Elizabethan times to our own. They include both English and American performers such as David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Cushman, Ira Aldridge, Edwin Booth, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Janet Suzman, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, and Kenneth Branagh. Individual chapters tell the story ... Read moreof their subjects' careers, but together these overlapping tales combine to offer a succinct, actor-centred history of Shakespearian theatrical performance. Stanley Wells examines what it takes to be a great Shakespeare actor and then offers a concise sketch of each actor's career in Shakespeare, an assessment of their specific talents and claims to greatness, and an account, drawing on contemporary reviews, biographies, anecdotes, and, for some of the more recent actors, the author's personal memories of their most notable performances in Shakespeare roles. Show Less
Product Details
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Place of Publication
Oxford, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
About Stanley Wells
Stanley Wells, described by Roy Hattersley as 'Our greatest authority on Shakespeare's life and work', is honorary President of The Shakespeare Birthplace, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He was for nearly twenty years the editor of the annual Shakespeare Survey, and writes for the TLS and ... Read moremany other publications. He has edited The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies and is General Editor (with Gary Taylor) of The Complete Oxford Shakespeare and co-author of William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. His most recent books are Shakespeare For All Time, Looking for Sex in Shakespeare, and Shakespeare, Sex, and Love. Show Less
Reviews for Great Shakespeare Actors: Burbage to Branagh
As well as drawing effectively on significant written accounts by actors and critics, Wells is particularly persuasive in analyses of visual and aural evidence
Russell Jackson, The Year's Contribution to Shakespeare Studies
a highly enjoyable book, clearly and pungently written. ... it will be of great help to the general reader, to Shakespeare students and to theatre historians ... Read morealike as it allows us to reflect on the very essence of theatre
Sophie Chiari, Cercles
Stanley Wells's Great Shakespeare Actors is a companionable tour through the encyclopaedic knowledge of our greatest Shakespeare scholar, full of anecdote, erudition, and intimate firsthand observation. It's a tribute to a life of devotion to the theatre, on the page and on stage, informed by a living sense of what actors do, and who they are, and how they work. There are many classic lives here, but also, to me, some enjoyable surprises.
Margaret Drabble
In his own day, and ever since, Shakespeare's plays have been staged by some of the worlds most extraordinary actors. Stanley Wells, who knows these plays and their fascinating histories as well as anyone, offers here incisive portraits of exceptional actors who have performed Shakespeare over the past 400 years, from Burbage and Kemp up through Olivier, Dench, McKellen, and Beale. It's a thrilling and captivating account.
James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
This astonishing book fills a vital gap on the shelves. Stanley Wells combines the detailed knowledge of a Shakespeare scholar with the sharp eye of a dramatic critic in a book that makes great performances come resonantly alive. If future generations want to know what Olivier or Dench really were like in Shakespeare, it is to this book that they will turn.
Michael Billington
Stanley Wells - Shakespeare's brightest and best champion for decades - has produced an absolutely wonderful and wildly readable survey of Shakespearean acting. With tremendous flashes of insight, Wells illuminates not just the staging and the modes of acting that predominated over the centuries, but also the true nature of Shakespeare as a provider of play scripts for actors and audiences. Superbly researched, this is a book that I shall revisit time and time again.
Stephen Fry
There is deep research here, lightly worn Wells is judicious and restrained and has a dry, crisp style.
Times Higher Education, Lisa Hopkins
a brisk, fascinating theatrical voyage through more than four centuries
The Independent, Nicholas De Jongh
There is deep research here, lightly worn but nevertheless offering clear pointers for those who wish to study individual performers more closely, and for the great majority of the book there is also an engaging tone
Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University, Times Higher Education
Stanley Wells has written a book which is a total delight... unputdownable.
The Journal (Newcastle), Richard Edmonds
There's so much more in this fascinating book that I haven't been able to cover, so I can only urge you, if this kind of thing interests you, to go out and get a copy soon. You won't regret it.
Shiny New Books, Harriet Devine
What could easily have been a repetitive book, as a series of actors is connected to a limited number of distinguished roles, is so well written that this never becomes the case. The writing is assured and never flags in an unexpected volume that is well worth dipping into.
British Theatre Guide, Philip Fisher
This collection is not only a useful source in itself, but opens up many other routes into theatre commentary, both historical and contemporary.
Heather Neill, Around the Globe
... Wells' passion is infectious.
New Republic, Charles Shafaieh
Stanley Wells has his work cut out in Great Shakespeare Actors as he assesses around forty performers over the past four centuries, from Richard Burbage to Simon Russell Beale, offering brisk career summaries with a dash of scholarship and plenty of anecdote ... There's no shortage of excellent stories.
David Collard, The Times Literary Supplement
[A] fascinating book.
Benedict Nightingale, New Statesman
Great Shakespeare Actors is most impressive when quarrying the more remote past, and, although it is suitable for dipping into, reading it straight through conveys a sense of how acting styles and actors' careers have changed.
Henry Hitchings, Spectator
Aimed at a broad readership, the book offers short biographies of great Shakespeare actors from Shakespeare's time to our own ... the book will very likely prove a helpful and entertaining resource for many.
Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
Wells's book is a mentor and companion to the Shakespeare lover. It can be dipped into at leisure as each chapter is complete in itself, but the text is so diverting and compulsive, so utterly knowledgeable and incisive, that it is difficult to find an easy pause. It is a book to cherish, to laugh with and to wonder at.
Sandra Callard, On: Yorkshire Magazine
Wells's vignette reports will make you wish you had been there... Eye-witness accounts are good, and especially when they are by actors such as Helen Faucit in the 19th century and by such academics as Stanley Wells in the 20th century, are invaluable.
Robert Tanitch, Mature Times
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