{"title":"Simon Palfrey","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the thought-provoking works of Simon Palfrey, where literary criticism meets insightful analysis. Explore his unique perspectives on Shakespeare and classic literature. A rewarding journey for keen readers.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"connell-guide-to-shakespeare-s-romeo-and-juliet-book-simon-palfrey-9781907776083","title":"The Connell Guide To Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet","description":"Romeo and Juliet is routinely called the world's greatest love story, as though it is all about romance. The play features some of the most lyrical passages in all of drama, and the lovers are young, beautiful, and ardent. But when we look at the play, the lyricism and the romance are not really what drive things along. It is true that Romeo, especially early on in the play, acts like a young man determined to take his place in an immortal tale of love. Everything he says is romantic - but rather like an anniversary card is romantic. His words propel nothing, or nothing but sarcastic admonitions from his friends to forget about love and to treat women as they should be treated, with careless physical appetite. The world we have entered is rapacious more than romantic. Everyone knows something of this, from the film versions of the story if nothing else. Romeo and Juliet must fight for their love inside a culture of stupid hatreds. But it is not a simple case of love versus war, or the city against the couple. If it were, it would nicely reinforce cliches about true love, fighting against the odds. In this book Simon Palfrey suggests that the play Shakespeare actually wrote is more troubling than this. Juliet's passion - for all her youth, for all its truth - is at the very cusp of murderousness. Juliet is the world's scourge, in the sense that she will whip and punish and haunt it; she is also its triumph, in the sense of its best and truest thing. The deaths her love leads to are in no way avoidable, and in no way accidental. They are her inheritance, the thing she was born to. Of course she takes Romeo with her. 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This was not the full play-text; it was not the public performance. It was the actor's part, consisting of the bare cues and speeches of each individual role. With group rehearsals rare or non-existent, the cued part alone had to furnish the actor with his character. But each such part-text was riddled with gaps and uncertainties. The actor knew what he was going to say, but not necessarily when, or why, or to whom; he may have known next to nothing of any other part. It demanded the most sensitive attention to the opportunities inscribed in the script, and to the ongoing dramatic moment. Here is where the young actor Shakespeare learnt his trade; here is where his imagination, verbal and technical, learnt to roam.   This is the story of Shakespeare in Parts. As Shakespeare developed his playwriting, the apparent limitations of the medium get transformed into expressive opportunities. Both cue and speech become promise-crammed repositories of meaning and movement, and of individually discoverable space and time. Writing always for the same core group of players, Shakespeare could take - and insist upon - unprecedented risks. The result is onstage drama of astonishing immediacy.   Starting with a comprehensive history of the part in early modern theatre, Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern's mould-altering work of historical and imaginative recovery provides a unique keyhole onto hitherto forgotten practices and techniques. It not only discovers a newly active, choice-ridden actor, but a new Shakespeare.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49968090611985,"sku":"GOR005485434","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52149238563089,"sku":"NLS9780199272051","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52701483860241,"sku":"CIN0199272050G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199272050.jpg?v=1751005681"},{"product_id":"doing-shakespeare-book-simon-palfrey-9781904271543","title":"Doing Shakespeare","description":"Doing Shakespeare offers a fresh insight into the difficulties and excesses of Shakespeare's drama and language. Written primarily for students making the transition from school to university, it aims both to demystify and illuminate the study of Shakespeare, tackling many of the challenges students face as they move towards a more complex critical engagement with Shakespeare's work. Equally, it shows how recovering the layered energies within and between Shakespeare's words, and the role of such dense language in constructing character, is indispensable if we are to rediscover the plays' ethical, political and emotional punch.\"...brilliant, intelligent, engaging...\"Bernard Richards, The English Review, September 2006\"Simon Palfrey's Doing Shakespeare is far more than a primer. Readers and watchers of Shakespeare, however experienced, will find a host of new insights here. Indeed, I cannot think of another critic since Empson who has teased out so much so lucidly and (usually) so persuasively from the intricacies of Shakespearean language. Sometimes wayward, frequently vertiginous, always provocative of serious thought\" Jonathan Bate, International Books of the Year 2004, The Times Literary Supplement, October 2004.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50467429318929,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50467434201361,"sku":"GOR001947144","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51498692182289,"sku":"GOR011612919","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1904271545.jpg?v=1751426339"},{"product_id":"late-shakespeare-book-simon-palfrey-9780198186892","title":"Late Shakespeare","description":"Shakespeare's late plays are usually seen in terms of courtliness and escapism. But the critical tradition has been too decorous. 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Palfrey terms these particles 'formactions' - theatre-specific forms that move with their own action and passion. Palfrey's book is critically daring in both substance and format. Its unique mix of imaginative gusto, thought experiments, and virtuosic technique generates piercing close readings of the plays. There is far more to playlife than meets the eye. 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