New Titles Tuesday, August 3

Here is a selection of titles added to the catalogue this past week.

 A father’s reward /Phil Downer with Chip MacGregor.

A servant of the Queen: reminiscences /by Maud Gonne MacBride ; edited by A. Norman Jeffares and Anna MacBride White. This is no orthodox autobiography: it selects episodes – many of them highly dramatic – in her life rather than providing a more pedestrian progress through all its events. The book conveys her romanticism and suggests how wide a range of activities she pursued as a fervent Irish nationalist, persuasive propagandist, and successful journalist. Her sheer courage emerges clearly but though she held mere convention in contempt she had to exercise some discretion in writing these memoirs. The editors have identified some hitherto unnamed characters and established the identity of persons given other names in earlier editions. A Servant of the Queen is written in a characteristically dashing conversational style and reveals the complexity of Maud Gonne’s character: it is a most readable account of aspects of a vital, exciting life which has maintained its interest to historians and students.

 Actors on acting: the theories, techniques, and practices of the world’s great actors, told in their own words /edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. The theories, techniques, and practices of great actors throughout history are reflected in these selected writings.

 All the world’s a stage /Ronald Harwood. An extremely attractive, well-illustrated volume, it sets forth in dazzlingly rapid fashion the highlights of theater history from tribal rite to A Chorus Line , making the argument that theater grew and changed by answering the immediate needs of its audience. It can certainly be recommended as an introduction to theater history.

Beaumarchais: the man who was Figaro /Frédéric Grendel ; translated from the French by Roger Greaves.

Claudel’s immortal heroes: a choice of deaths. Harold Watson. 

 Collected plays /Peter Barnes. This collection plays by Peter Barnes includes: The Ruling Class, Leonardo’s Last Supper, Noonday Demons, The Bewitched, Laughter! and Barnes’ People: Seven Monologues.

Design for the stage: first steps. With 117 drawings by the author and 16 photos. D.R Payne. This is the first textbook of its kind to focus on the designer’s art rather than on the technical aspects of stage design. Payne has emphasized conceptual prob­lems and research, and has drawn exam­ples from the writings of E. Gordon Craig, Sean Kenny, Bertolt Brecht, and John Hatch.

 Eight modern plays: authoritative texts … backgrounds, and criticism /edited by Anthony Caputi.  Included here are the complete texts of eight major plays by eight major playwrights: Ibsen’s The Wild Duck,  Chekhov’s Three Sisters,  Shaw’s Candida, Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata,  Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author,  O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night,  Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, and Beckett’s Happy Days. The most accurate and readable translations have been chosen for plays originally in foreign languages. Each play has been carefully annotated for the student reader–foreign words and phrases are translated, allusions beyond the range of general knowledge are explained, and historical material is included as needed. A comprehensive “Backgrounds and Criticism” section provides supporting materials by each playwright represented–letters, essays, authors’ notes–as well as a broad sampling of critical reviews and interpretations for each play..

Feydeau, first to last: eight one-act comedies /translated and with an introduction by Norman R. Shapiro.

 Four farces. Translated and with an introd. by Norman R. Shapiro. Wild plots and quicksilver wit characterize the plays of Georges Feydeau. Called the greatest master of French comedy since Moliere by admirers such as Kenneth Tynan, Feydeau reflects the lusty tradition of the French bedroom farce as well as the tough exorbitant humor later to find full expression in the theater of the absurd.

French theatre since 1830 /Harold Hobson.

 Friedrich Schiller /Charles E. Passage.

 Goethe and the Weimar theatre /Marvin Carlson.

Götz von Berlichingen: a play /Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Charles E. Passage. A successful 1773 drama by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, based on the memoirs of the historical adventurer-poet Gottfried or Götz von Berlichingen (c. 1480-1562). It first appeared in English in 1799 as Goetz of Berlichingen of the Iron Hand in a rather free version by Walter Scott. Goethe’s hero is a free spirit, a maverick, intended to be a pillar of national integrity against a deceitful and over-refined society, and the way in which he tragically succumbs to the abstract concepts of law and justice shows the submission of the individual in that society.

 L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor and the rise of Vancouver /Daniel Francis.  Tthe colourful biography of Louis Taylor, the longest-serving mayor in Vancouver’s history; he was first elected mayor in 1910, and served off and on until 1934, for a total of eleven years. Taylor’s story is also the story of Vancouver in the early decades of the 20th century, a young city experiencing a turbulent adolescence.  In his early political life he was considered “the workers’ friend” and was opposed by the city’s business elite, who portrayed him as corrupt. He also had a reputation for being soft on crime, and was implicated in a 1928 police investigation that lost him an election. But his achievements included the establishment of the airport, a town planning commission, and the water board. His private life, however, was another story, a virtual soap opera that mirrored the ups and downs of his political career; his wife was addicted to opium, and he found himself mired in bigamy and divorce scandals. LD: Mayor Louis Taylor and The Rise of Vancouver vividly documents the life of a man who dominated the city for years, and the integral role he played in shaping the Vancouver of today. Winner of the City of Vancouver Book Prize

Psalms /by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Referendum round-table: perspectives on the Charlottetown Accord /[edited by] Kate Sutherland.

 Selected plays of Dion Boucicault /chosen and with an introduction by Andrew Parkin. Boucicault was a prominent playwright and prolific translator and adapter of foreign plays and novels for the Victorian commercial theatre for over forty years.  His work frankly catered to contemporary taste and fell rapidly into neglect after his death in 1890. His lively observation of humanity in many moods and his unerring sense of what works on the stage have saved his plays from oblivion: there have been successful revivals by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Belfast’s Lyric, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The selection of his work in this volume stresses Boucicault’s consummate craft as a writer for the theatre in the age of actor-managers and melodrama. It also reminds us of that Irish verve, charm and adroitness which made him the best playwright of his generation in England and America as well as Ireland. Arguably the father of both the Irish and American drama, his characteristic plotting and taste for sensation suggest that another of his heirs was the early movie industry. This selection contains the great success of his youth, London Assurance, together with his Preface; his durable version of the melodrama, The Corsican Brothers; his exciting American plantationplay, The Octoroon, with both its endings; and his fine Irish plays, The Colleen Bawn, The Shaughraun, and Robert Emmet. Dates of first performances and cast lists are given, as are the songs, music and a glossary for the Irish plays.

 Selected works of Alfred Jarry /edited by Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor ; [illustrated with photographs, and drawings by Jarry, Siné, and others]. 

 Seven Dada manifestos and Lampisteries /Tristan Tzara ; translated by Barbara Wright ; illustrations by Francis Picabia. Tristan Tzara–poet, literary iconoclast, and catalyst–was the founder of the Dada movement that began in Zurich during World War I. This volume contains the famous manifestos that first appeared between 1916 and 1921 that would become the basic texts upon which Dada was based.  Also included are Tzara’s Lampisteries, a series of articles that throw light on the various art forms contemporary to his own work.

Shakespeare’s contemporaries /edited by Max Bluestone and Norman Rabkin. With an introductory essay by Alfred Harbage.

Shakespeare’s women: a playscript for performance and analysis /[compiled by] Libby Appel and Michael Flachmann. This book combines literary and theat­rical techniques in examining Shake­speare’s women. Its promptbook format provides clear, helpful stage directions on pages facing each of the scenes. Also help­ful are concise glosses and footnotes to define difficult words and phrases plus a commentary to explain each scene in its dramatic context. Other features include sheet music for each song in the play, a bibliography on the topic of women in Shakespeare’s plays, and suggestions for directors who wish to stage the play.

 The age of Shakespeare /François Laroque. Examines the works of Shakespeare in relation to the times he lived in and their influence upon the age.

 The Archbishop’s ceiling ;The American clock : two plays /Arthur Miller, with an introduction by the author. These two plays, first produced in the United States in the 1970s, have been revived to great critical and popular acclaim. Both had triumphant runs on London’s West End, in Boston . “The Archibishop’s Ceiling” played to packed houses in a landmark production in Budepest.

The church in an age of revolution, 1789-1870 /by H. Daniel-Rops ; translated from the French by John Warrington. 

 The fabulous Lunts: a biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne /Jared Brown ; foreword by Helen Hayes. For 40 years, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the most acclaimed stage actors in America. From 1928 until their retirement in 1960, they appeared only together most notably in drawing-room comedies perfecting the subtle team playing that became their hallmark. Describing the perishable art of stage performance (the Lunts made few film or TV appearances) is difficult, but Brown succeeds in explicating the couple’s nuanced technique. Though generally adulatory, the author criticizes the Lunts’ increasingly “”unadventurous” taste in their later years, when they appeared in plays that were little more than star vehicles. Dedicated to their craft, the team rehearsed long hours even after performing a play hundreds of times; their perfectionism continues to inspire theater people.

 The fiery trial: Abraham Lincoln and American slavery /Eric Foner. This landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln’s lifelong engagement with the nation’s critical issue: American slavery. Historian, Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln’s greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.

 The good book: a humanist Bible /conceived, selected, redacted, arranged, worked, and in part written by A.C. Grayling. Grayling has distilled the work of hundreds of authors and more than one thousand texts using the same techniques that produced the holy books of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions. Their wit and advice, human stories, tragedies and yearnings, love and consolations are shaped into fourteen constituent parts that recall the Bible in structure.

The Greek tragic theatre[by] H. C. Baldry.

 The little clay cart /: an English translation of the Mṛcchakaṭika of Śūdraka, as adapted for the stage / by A.L. Basham ; edited by Arvind Sharma ; introduced by Robert E. Goodwin. The Little Clay Cart is a Sanskrit play revolving around a romantic theme of the love of a high-born man for a courtesan. It contains dramatic developments involving a dynastic overthrow and contains realistic portrayals of a wide range of characters.

 The medieval theatre /Glynne Wickham. This is a thoroughly revised edition of  Wickham’s important history of the development of dramatic art in Christian Europe. He surveys the foundations on which this dramatic art was built: the architecture, costumes and ceremonial of the imperial court at Byzantium, the liturgies of countries in the Eastern and Western Empires and the triumph of the Roman rite and the Romanesque style in Western art. Within this context he describes three major influences upon the drama: religion, recreation and commerce. For this third edition the author has added a substantial section on monastic reform and its effect on Biblical translation and the use of allegory; a final chapter charts the transition in different European countries from this medieval Gothic theatre to the neoclassical methods of play construction and representation which flourished for the next two hundred years.

 The plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim /translated by Larissa Bonfante, with the collaboration of Alexandra Bonfante-Warren.  Hrotswitha (ca. 935 — 1000) was a prolific author who wrote eight legends in verse, two historical epics, and six plays in rhymed prose. This corrected reprint of the 1979 New York University Press edition contains translations of Gallicanus, Dulcitius, Callimachus, Abraham, Paphnutius, and Sapientia.

The rover /edited by Frederick M. Link. Tha author was a British writer during the Restoration era and The Rover, also known as the Banish’d Cavaliers, was one of her most famous plays. Written in two parts it is a revision of Thomas Killigrew’s play The Wandered. It tells of the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival.

The theatre of the French Revolution, by Marvin Carlson.

 The treasury of David: containing an original exposition of the book of Psalms : a collection of illustrative extracts from the whole range of literature : a series of homiletical hints upon almost every verse : and lists of writers upon each Psalm /C.H. Spurgeon. Spurgeon’s magnum opus on the Psalms. The editor, David Otis Fuller, describes it as ‘the whole realm of Christian truth.’ All of the great doctrines are dealt with by the masterminds of nearly every age since the first coming of Christ. Some of the nearly 700 expositors Spurgeon cites are Augustine, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Calvin, Luther, Bunyan, Matthew Henry and of course, Mr. Spurgeon himself. Here is a great source of golden insight into the Psalms that will endure through the ages.

Theatre of the ridiculous /[edited by Bonnie Marranca, Gautam Dasgupta]. This book contains Ronald Tavel’s play The Life of Lady Godiva, Charles Ludlam’s play Stage Blood, and Kenneth Bernard’s play The Magic Show of Dr. Ma-Gico as well as an introduction from Bonnie Marranca

 Triptych: three scenic panels /Max Frisch ; translated from the German by Geoffrey Skelton.

 While rivers flow; stories of early Alberta. Drawings by Margaret Manuel Elwell.