Going to Shakespeare
Will be published approx. on 1. December 2030
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-4482-0889-0 (ISBN)
Description
An increasing number of playgoers want to know what to look for when they go to the theatre: the people of the plays, notable passages, new and traditional business, cuts, debateable points. How will Macbeth say 'Hang out our banners on the outward walls'? Will Beatrice and Benedick avoid the laugh on 'Kill Claudio'? Who is Euphronius? J. C. Trewin, who saw some 1,500 performances of Shakespeare, talks of these things and many others in what he calls a discursive notebook. He treats the plays one by one in a delightfully readable style which belies the underlying learning and experience on which he draws. Here is an ideal introduction to the staging of Shakespeare not only for the student, but for all those who enjoy going to Shakespeare.
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Person
J.C.Trewin was a British journalist, drama critic and theatrical historian. His parents were Cornish, but he was born in Plymouth in 1908 and brought up in Cornwall. Educated at Plymouth College, his first job was as a cub reporter on the city's Sunday newspaper, the Western Independent, in 1926. After six years he left for London and joined the Morning Post as a reporter and drama critic. On the paper's closure in 1937 he moved to The Observer, doubling as a drama critic and later as literary editor. From the early 1950s he concentrated on the theatre, working for a number of publications including Punch, the Listener, the Birmingham Post, the Illustrated London News and The Lady. He wrote some forty books of theatre history and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1981. He died in 1990. He is memorialised by the British Critics' Circle in an award that bears his name (and that of his wife, Wendy) for the best Shakespearean performance of the year.