Reviews for Nation, State, And Empire In English Renaissance Literature

The average rating for Nation, State, And Empire In English Renaissance Literature based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-30 00:00:00 Justin Henderson Jay Halio has seen a lot of performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the ones he hasn't, before 1970, he can describe through access to archives, promptbooks, and reviews. The book's focus on major productions in Britain and North America (with a chapter about China and some mention of Germany) gives a vivid idea of how stagings of the play have changed over the years, including ones for film and television. He finds more positive features than I remember in the 1981 BBC TV version and is also more complimentary than many critics of the 1992 National Theatre mud-wrestling one directed by Robert Lepage (I avoided that one). Peter Brook's landmark production in 1970 gets a whole chapter full of helpful details--every production after that is always compared to it. This edition concludes with a brief, favorable account of the 2002 Globe production. A useful, readable book.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-07-20 00:00:00 Erin Walker Sir John Gielgud's reflections on his career as an actor and director of Shakespeare's works will be of great interest to many, in particular those who work in the theatre. On the other hand, as a book, this is not what it could have been. The book appears to be a memoir dictated to its co-author, and the reflections and remembrances move in a jumbled stream of consciousness, reflecting very lazy organization. The chatty approach makes for a mixed bag, with interesting anecdotes and observations about the theatre, but without a throughline that would help the reader return to these subjects later. Even Gielgud's famously bitchy sense of humor is subdued here, as if he were doing his very best to behave himself. The photographs are also organized in no apparent order, although for some reason the Hamlet photographs are all together, as are most (but not all) of the Prospero photographs.