Shakespeare in the Light

Shakespeare in the Light convenes an accomplished group of scholars, actors, and teachers to celebrate the legacy of American Shakespeare Center's founder, Ralph Alan Cohen. Each essay pivots off a production at the ASC's Blackfriars Playhouse to explore the performance of Shakespeare's plays under their original theatrical conditions.

Introductions:
Being Ralph Cohen
Paul Menzer
A Runaway American Dream: The Birth of the American Shakespeare Center
Jim Warren

Part 1: In the Library
Actors as Evidence
Alan Armstrong
The Pressures of Immediacy: The Alchemist and Theatrical Magic
Evelyn Tribble
Text as performance as text: the King's disease in All's Well that Ends Well
Jeremy Lopez
Reading Lady Macbeth's Line, 3. 4. 117
George Walton Williams
Blackfriars Then and Now
Tiffany Stern
Taking Our Hats Off to Ralph
Andrew Gurr
Facts Don't Always Do What We Want Them To
Farah Karim-Cooper
Macbeth and the Power of Poetry
Russ McDonald

Part 2: In the Classroom
Othello: Three Notes for Dr Ralph to Query
Patrick Spottiswoode
"What wouldst thou do now": The Visionary Impact of Shakespeare on a Small College Town
Mary Hill Cole and Marlena Hobson
Ralph Alan Cohen's Fearless Teaching: The Language of Shakespeare
Sally Southall

Part 3: On the Stage
Dionysus at Play with Antony and Cleopatra
Amy Cohen
"Change Places": Playing King Lear with the Blackfriars Audience
James Keegan
The State of the Art
John Harrell
Living With the Lights On
Patrick Dooley
"And practice rhetoric in your common talk": How Ralph Made Rhetors of us all
Matthew Davies

Index
About the Contributors
About the Editors