The following thesis is a brief view of production of UNO's Spring 2009 production of Shakespeare's classic comedy Much Ado About Nothing. This thesis will include analysis, research, production book, documentation from the production, and an evaluation of the process of bringing the production to life. The play was performed in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the University of New Orleans Performing Arts Center Robert E. Nims Theatre on April 23, 24, 25, and 30 as well as May 1, 2, and 3.

No description available.

This thesis serves as documentation of my efforts to explore and define my creative process as an actor in creating the role of Beatrice in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. This includes research, character analysis, rehearsal journal and an evaluation of my performance. Much Ado About Nothing was produced by the University of New Orleans Department of Film, Theatre and Communication Arts. The play was performed in the Robert E. Nims Thrust Theatre of the Performing Arts Center at 7:30 pm on the evenings of April 23 through 25 and April 30 through May 2. There was a student matinee the morning of Friday, May 1 at 9:30 am as well as one public matinee at 2:30 pm on Sunday, May 3, 2009.

No description available.

This dissertation is concerned with the paradox of revelatory deception a form of 'lying' which reveals truth instead of concealing it in four Shakespearean plays: Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Hamlet, and King Lear. Through close analysis, I show that revelatory deceptions in these plays are metatheatrical, and read them as responding to contemporary writers who attacked the theatre for being inherently deceitful. This reading leads to the identification of parallels in the description of theatre in antitheatrical texts and the descriptions of revelatory deceptions in the plays. I suggest that correlations in phrasing and imagery might undermine antitheatrical rhetoric: for example, the plays portray certain theatrical, revelatory deceptions as traps which free their victims instead of killing them. Such 'lies' are differentiated from actual deceits by their potentially relational characteristics: deceptions which reveal the truth require audiences to put aside their self-interest and certainty to consider alternative realities which might reflect, reconfigure, and expand their understanding of the world and of themselves. The resulting truths lead either to the creation or renewal of relationships, as in Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, or offer glimpses at the possibility of renewal, which is ultimately denied, as in Hamlet and King Lear. In both cases the imperatives for truth and right action are underscored not obscured, as antitheatricalists would have argued through the audience's vicarious experience of either the gains or losses of characters within the plays. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / English / MA / Unrestricted

A popular perception persists that the Franciscan friars of Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing bear heavy blame for the results of the play, adversely for Friar Lawrence and positively for Friar Francis. The friars do formulate similar plans, but their roles vary significantly. I contrast their approaches using Michel Foucault's definition of pastoral power, with Friar Lawrence as an overly manipulative friar controlling the lovers in spiritual matters, and Friar Francis as a humble military friar returning from the Wars of Religion to share his authority with others. This distinction--especially with Friar Lawrence appearing chronologically first--demonstrates Shakespeare as more fluid in religious themes, contrary to a significant body of scholarship that asserts Shakespeare's pro-Catholic sympathies.

No description available.

This dissertation explores the relevance of recent studies of Aristotle’s comic theory to the central dramatists of early modern England, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Applications of the Poetics to Renaissance English drama tend to treat Aristotle’s theory historically, as a set of concepts mediated to England by continental redactions. But these often conflated the Poetics’ focus on literary form with the Renaissance’s predominant interest in literature’s rhetorical effect, reducing Aristotle’s genuinely speculative theory to a series of often pedantic literary prescriptions. Recent scholarship has both undone these misinterpretations and developed the comic theory latent in the Poetics. Ironically, these studies make Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s comedy look much more Aristotelian than do Renaissance ones. So rather than taking the Poetics simply as a possible source for each dramatist, I read it primarily as a literary theory that, when reinvigorated by modern scholarship, can explain structures and effects arrived at practically by these dramatists. Three recent hypotheses are especially pertinent to Jonson and Shakespeare: that comic hoaxes aim to expose comic error, which is for Aristotle a deviation from the mean of virtue; that “righteous indignation” is the comic emotion equivalent to the “pity and fear” of tragedy; and that catharsis is a clarification, rather than purgation, of reason and emotion. In light of these, I offer detailed readings of four plays that demonstrate these authors’ comic range: from Jonson’s satirical Every Man Out of His Humour to the almost farcical Epicoene, and from Shakespeare’s romantic Much Ado About Nothing to the tragicomic Measure for Measure. These plays demonstrate a variety of ways in which catharsis, the end of drama, results directly from the comic hoax and involves both the audience’s and characters’ experience of indignation and their comprehension of its relationship to the emotions of envy and pity. In each case, Aristotle’s incisive but flexible theoretical framework enables an explanation of the emotional pain present in the these “comedies of affliction” and reveals remarkable similarities between dramatists usually described as direct opposites.

Since Shakespeare was introduced to China at the beginning of the 20th Century, the Chinese have translated the English playwright's plays and performed them on the Chinese stage either in the form of spoken drama or the traditional Chinese opera. No matter which approach is chosen to perform the dramatist, it is an intercultural form in introducing him to the Chinese.

Since Shakespeare was introduced to China at the beginning of the 20th Century, the Chinese have translated the English playwright's plays and performed them on the Chinese stage either in the form of spoken drama or the traditional Chinese opera. No matter which approach is chosen to perform the dramatist, it is an intercultural form in introducing him to the Chinese.