Playing Out the Empire

Ben-Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films, 1883-1908. A Critical Anthology

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Sous la direction de David Mayer

Type: Studies
Sujet: Genre > Historical films
Mots Clés: historical films, early cinema, peplum, ancien epic
Année d'édition: 1994
Editeur: Oxford University Press
Langue: anglais

Taille du livre

Format

Hardcover • 336 pages
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches (14 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN-10 ISBN-13

0-19-811990-9
978-0-19-811990-6

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Description de l'ouvrage:
Mayer doesn't want his book to be catagorized in the United States section of any history catalogues. This is the first collection of the most important playscripts and film scenarios of the `toga play' a genre of theatrical melodrama which flourished in the late nineteenth century and which re-emerged in silent cinema and later `epics'.

Set in the post-Republican Roman Empire, toga plays and films presented Roman and Jewish heroes, Christian virgins, seductive `adventuresses', insane Emperors, savage lions, and racing chariots. But, as David Mayer shows, the plays also ventured clandestinely into issues of class, gender, religion, immigration, and imperialism and hence shed new light on British and American social and cultural history. Among the restored scripts and scenarios included here - all of which are previously unpublished and generously illustrated - are those of Claudian (1883), the most popular of all Victorian melodramas The Sign of The Cross (1895), and the stage spectacular Ben Hur (1899) and its earliest cinematic version (1907). D.W. Griffith's first toga film The Barbarian Ingomar (1908) is represented by a lengthy selection of film stills.

At a time of growing interest in the relationship between Victorian popular theatre and early cinema, this ground-breaking publication brings to light a highly significant - but critically neglected - theatrical and cinematic genre.

À propos de l'auteur :
Edited by David Mayer, Professor of Drama, University of Manchester

Revue de Presse:
`an illuminating study of the theatrical treatment of this theme in a number of "toga dramas", which shows how Quo Vadis? belonged very much to a genre' Allan Massie, Times Literary Supplement -

'This collection is invaluable for anyone seeking to understand and interpret popular drama in the late-Victorian and Edwardian perids as also the links between theatre and drama.'' New Theatre Quarterly -

'... handsome volume ... In a scholarly and critical thesis Mayer makes a cognent and convincing case for the economic importance of the toga play ... an unexpectedly rewarding volume, a useful resource for students and a valuable record of an overlooked phenomenon.' Adrienne Scullion, University of Glasgow. Theatre Research International. Vol. 19 No 3 '94 -

it is, to begin with, an anthology - and an exemplary one...In addition to providing this sheaf of virtually unobtainable texts, Mayer offers a brilliant, wide-ranging introductory essay, in which he argues for the integrity of his subject and its relevance to both Victorian and contemporary convcerns... wondrous, necessary book - Theatre Notebook

an anthology - and an exemplary one ... Mayer offers a brilliant, wide-ranging introductory essay, in which he argues to both Victorian and contemporary concerns ... wondrous, necessary book - Joel Kaplan, Theatre Notebook, Volume L, Number 2, 1996

Voir le site internet de l'éditeur Oxford University Press

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