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The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
 
 
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The Oxford Dictionary of Plays [Hardcover]

Michael Patterson (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Book Description

June 2, 2005
Anyone with an academic, professional, amateur, or recreational interest in the theater is likely to want to look up details of particular plays sometimes--perhaps to check on the author, or on when they were first performed, or perhaps to see how many characters they have, and whether or not they would be suitable for their theater company or drama group to perform.
The Oxford Dictionary of Plays provides essential information on the 1000 best-known, best-loved, and most important plays in world theater. Each entry includes details of title, author, date of composition, date of first performance, genre, setting, and the composition of the cast, and more. A synopsis of the plot and a brief commentary, perhaps on the context of the play, or the reasons for its enduring popularity, follow. Around 80 of the most significant plays-- from The Oresteia to Waiting for Godot--are dealt with in more detail. Genres covered include: burlesque, comedy, farce, historical drama, kabuki, masque, melodrama, morality play, mystery play, No, romantic comedy, tragicomedy, satire, and tragedy.
An index of characters enables the reader to locate favorite characters, and trace the trajectory of major historical and legendary characters--such as Iphigenia--through world drama, including in plays that do not have entries in the Dictionary. An index of playwrights, with dates, allows the reader to find all the plays included by a particular author.

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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up–Filled with plot descriptions and brief analyses and jam-packed with delightfully obscure plays, this concise collection of 1000 important works of the world stage is a wonderful ready-reference tool. The writing is clear, the summaries are easy to follow, and the information on performance dates, genre, setting, etc., is presented in a lucid manner at the head of each article. The works covered range from ancient Greek dramas (Aeschyluss Seven Against Thebes, Sophocless Electra) to worldwide treasures (Leo Tolstoys The Power of Darkness, Jean-Claude Carrières Le Mahabharata) to contemporary social commentaries such as Marsha Normans Night, Mother and Paula Vogels How I Learned to Drive. The volume includes helpful indexes of characters and playwrights, and a list of plays by country of origin and period. Frank N. Magills Masterplots II: Drama Series (1990) and Critical Survey of Drama series (both Salem), or the Drama for Students series (Gale), are multivolume sets that offer more in-depth analyses. Pattersons resource offers the advantages of succinct description and easy access in a single volume. However, readers may question why some plays were included and others were omitted. For example, John Guares legendary House of Blue Leaves and Athol Fugards Boesman and Lena arent here, but Maria Fornéss Fefu and Her Friends and John Daly Burks Bunker-Hill each earn an entry. Still, when readers can find descriptions of works by Dario Fo, Caryl Churchill, and Aeschylus in the same book–well, to paraphrase John Guare, I may not know much about signs…but this looks like a good one.–Herman Sutter, Saint Agnes Academy, Houston, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

When the play's the thing, this work takes top billing. One thousand of "the most significant plays of world theatre" are presented in compact entries crammed with details including title, alternative title, author, date of writing, date and place of first performance, date of first publication, date of first published English translation, genre, setting and time of action, and composition of cast followed by a brief synopsis and commentary. Here you will find not only the plays of Aeschylus, Brecht, Mol, and Shakespeare but recent hit dramas like David Auburn's Proof, Margaret Edson's Wit, and Patrick Marber's Closer. In addition to the fact-packed entries, a number of special features are included: an index of characters allows the reader to track the use of characters in all the plays indexed; for example, using it we find that the character of Antigone is in 25 plays, while Helen of Troy appears in 16, and Medea in 19. An index of playwrights gathers together references to entries on plays not only by the playwright but also to mentions of the playwright in entries on plays by others. There are also a select bibliography, a family tree of main characters in Shakespeare's history plays, and a list of plays ordered according to country of origin and period.

Coverage of both time and place is broad and inclusive, spanning the centuries from the Greek and Roman classics to Shakespeare and his contemporaries right on through the Romantic period and realism, symbolism, and other isms, ending with post-1944 America and post-1956 Britain. Works from Eastern and Western Europe as well as Africa, India, Japan, and more are represented. Although there are a number of theater handbooks and dictionaries available, most usually include only brief references to actual works of drama. The details provided here and the special features that enhance their presentation make this an exceptional reference work, and its reasonable price makes it affordable for almost any reference collection. Carolyn Mulac
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 2, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0198604173
  • ISBN-13: 978-0198604174
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,112,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Great review of important plays for academics, December 20, 2005
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This review is from: The Oxford Dictionary of Plays (Hardcover)
This books is great for people with an academic interest in plays, or produce artful plays at theatres with an audience of 10-15 cognoscenti. It seems less useful for community theatres or colleges which produce plays that people like to see. If you want to find the first play in which a turnip was used to represent pluralism in a worker's collective, this would be a good book for you.

One problem I have with this book is that it includes all of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare is so well documented it is hard to make a case to include his plays here. Is "Merry Wives of Windsor" really among the top 1,000 plays ever written?

Also, this book does not include all (or even many?) Pulitzer-prize or Tony award winning plays, such as William Inge's Picnic. Of the 1,000 most important plays, the 50 or so Pulitzers should be among them. Also, it doesn't seem to include a lot of the more popular plays. Another problem is that it includes a great many non-English plays.

Overall, this is great resource for people with an interest in theatrical literature from around the world.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Summary, May 21, 2010
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This review is from: The Oxford Dictionary of Plays (Hardcover)
It is a pretty good book, but not worth the full asking price. It contains plot summaries of about 500 plays, but lacks a few key plays.
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