By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The diarist Samuel Pepys wasn’t a fan of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Seeing a performance of the play in 1662, he wrote in his diary that it was ‘the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life’ (though he adds that he liked the dancing, as well as the ‘handsome women’ he saw, ‘which was all my pleasure’).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Much Ado about Nothing is one of Shakespeare’s finest and best-loved comedies. With the battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedick and the plot involving young lovers Claudio and Hero, the play touches upon sexual jealousy, trust, and the importance of separating illusion from reality, among other prominent themes. Before we offer some words of analysis of Much Ado about Nothing, it might be worth briefly recapping the plot of the play.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Lysistrata is the first female lead in a Western comedy, and this alone arguably makes Aristophanes’ play worthy of study and analysis. Lysistrata is the only one of Aristophanes’ plays to be named after one of its characters. First performed in 411 BC, the play is set during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, a war that had been raging for two decades by this point.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Venice Preserv’d has been called a ‘masterpiece’ by the theatre critic Michael Billington and ‘the last great verse play in the English language’ by the fascinating critic and provocateur Kenneth Tynan. Yet it’s rarely read, studied, analysed, or staged nowadays. But this brief introduction to Thomas Otway’s Restoration tragedy about sex, politics, betrayal, and – for want of a better word – ‘bromance’ hopes to bring this underrated classic to a few more people’s attention. So it’s our job to try to explain why Venice Preserv’d is so good.
The Restoration period (following the restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660, and lasting until nearly the end of the seventeenth century) is known for its comedies: the ‘Restoration comedy’ used to be a popular ‘theatre style’ in its own right, sent up on the popular TV improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? But the tragedies have not lasted so well as, say, Aphra Behn’s The Rover or William Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Who now reads John Dryden’s tragic dramas, save scholars? We read and watch Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra rather than Dryden’s Restoration rewriting of it. But there is one play which is, or should be, the exception to this, and that play is Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Helen is not the most famous of Euripides’ plays, but it is one of the most curious – and it deserves close analysis and study. The play was first performed in 412 BC at that year’s City Dionysia.