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Adultery In Literature
The theme of adultery has been used in a wide range of literature through the ages, and has served as a theme for some notable works such as ''Anna Karenina'' and ''Madame Bovary''. As a theme it brings intense emotions into the foreground, and has consequences for all concerned. It also automatically brings its own conflict, between the people concerned and between sexual desires and a sense of loyalty. As marriage and family are often regarded as basis of society, a story of adultery often shows the conflict between social pressure and individual struggle for happiness. According to the American author Tom Perrotta, the novel of adultery is one of the leading 19th century literary tradition in Europe and in the United States. He states that these novels often feature women whose unhappy marriages push them into seeking romance and illicit sex. The main topic of these novels is the rebel-woman who seeks salvation for her unhappy public love-life. In the Bible, incidents of adulte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adultery
Adultery (from Latin ''adulterium'') is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and legal consequences, the concept exists in many cultures and is similar in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Adultery is viewed by many jurisdictions as offensive to public morals, undermining the marriage relationship. Historically, many cultures considered adultery a very serious crime, some subject to severe punishment, usually for the woman and sometimes for the man, with penalties including capital punishment, mutilation, or torture. Such punishments have gradually fallen into disfavor, especially in Western countries from the 19th century. In countries where adultery is still a criminal offense, punishments range from fines to caning and even capital punishment. Since the 20th century, criminal laws against adultery have become controversi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Gray
Simon James Holliday Gray (21 October 1936 – 7 August 2008) was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Queen Mary, Gray began his writing career as a novelist in 1963 and, during the next 45 years, in addition to five published novels, wrote 40 original stage plays, screenplays, and screen adaptations of his own and others' works for stage, film, and television and became well known for the self-deprecating wit characteristic of several volumes of memoirs or diaries. (Gardner and other sources cite the date of Gray's death as 6 August 2008; some sources, including the obituary by Billington and the book review by Scurr, give the day of Gray's death as 7 August 2008.) Biography Simon James Holliday Gray was born on 21 October 1936 on Hayling Island, in Hampshire, England to James Gray and his wife Barbara (née Holliday). His father, who later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phèdre
''Phèdre'' (; originally ''Phèdre et Hippolyte'') is a French dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677 at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. Composition and premiere With ''Phèdre'', Racine chose once more a subject from Greek mythology, already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets, notably by Euripides in '' Hippolytus'' and Seneca in ''Phaedra''. As a result of an intrigue by the Duchess of Bouillon and other friends of the aging Pierre Corneille, the play was not a success at its première on 1 January 1677 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, home of the royal troupe of actors in Paris. Indeed, a rival group staged a play by the now forgotten playwright Nicolas Pradon on an almost identical theme. After ''Phèdre'', Racine ceased writing plays on secular themes and devoted himself to the service of religion and the king until 1689, when he was commissioned to write ''Esther'' by Madame de Maintenon, the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western tradition and world literature. Racine was primarily a tragedian, producing such "examples of neoclassical perfection" as ''Phèdre'', ''Andromaque'', and ''Athalie''. He did write one comedy, '' Les Plaideurs'', and a muted tragedy, ''Esther'' for the young. Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine. His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as a "diamond-edge", and the "glory of its hard, electric rage". Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage. Biography Racine was born on 21 December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon ( Aisne) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Homecoming
''The Homecoming'' is a two-act play written in 1964 by Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. Its premières in London (1965) and New York (1967) were both directed by Sir Peter Hall. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play. Its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival of a Play". Set in North London, the play has six characters. Five of these are men who are related to each other: Max, a retired butcher; his brother Sam, a chauffeur; and Max's three sons: Teddy, a philosophy professor in the United States; Lenny, a pimp who only makes discreet references to his "occupation" and his clientele and flats in the city (London); and Joey, a brute training to become a professional boxer and who works in demolition. There is one woman, Ruth, Teddy's wife. The play concerns Teddy's and Ruth's "homecoming," which has distinctly different symbolic and thematic implications. In t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include '' The Birthday Party'' (1957), ''The Homecoming'' (1964) and ''Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between'' (1971), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), ''The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passion Play (play) , and at the Duke of York's Theatre in 2013.
''Passion Play'' is a 1981 play by British playwright Peter Nichols dealing with adultery and betrayal, unusual in that the two leading characters are each portrayed by two actors for public speech and private thoughts. It was originally intended to open the Royal Shakespeare Company's new Barbican Theatre but was produced by them at the London's Aldwych Theatre in 1981. It was revived at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre in 1984 before transferring to Wyndham's Theatre, at the Donmar Warehouse in 2000 before transferring to the Comedy Theatre The Harold Pinter Theatre, known as the Comedy Theatre until 2011, Dramatis Personae and Casts London Stagings Broadway ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Nichols (playwright)
Peter Richard Nichols (31 July 1927 – 7 September 2019) was an English playwright, screenwriter, director and journalist. Life and career Born in Bristol, England, he was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and served his compulsory National Service as a clerk in Calcutta and later in the British Army's Combined Services Entertainment Unit in Singapore where he entertained the troops alongside John Schlesinger, Stanley Baxter, Peter Vaughan and Kenneth Williams, before going on to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He later claimed to have studied acting because there were no dedicated courses for playwrights. While working as a teacher, he began to write television plays that achieved notice. His first play for the stage was ''The Hooded Terror'', part of a season of new plays at the Little Theatre in Bristol. He later wrote ''A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'' for the stage. ''A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'' is a one-set drama in music hall style. '' The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Crucible
''The Crucible'' is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended. The play was first performed at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E. G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight and Madeleine Sherwood. Miller felt that this production was too stylized and cold, and the reviews for it were largely hostile (although ''The New York Times'' noted "a powerful play n adriving performance"). The production won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play. A year later a new production suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broken Glass (play)
''Broken Glass'' is a 1994 play by Arthur Miller, focusing on a couple in New York City in 1938, the same time of ''Kristallnacht'', in Nazi Germany. The play's title is derived from Kristallnacht, which is also known as the ''Night of Broken Glass''. Characters *Sylvia Gellburg *Phillip Gellburg, Sylvia's Husband *Dr. Harry Hyman, Doctor of Sylvia Gellburg *Margaret Hyman, Wife of Dr. Hyman *Harriet, Sylvia's sister *Stanton Case, Phillip Gellburg's employer Plot Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg are a Jewish married couple living in Brooklyn, New York City, in the last days of November 1938. Phillip works on foreclosures, at a Brooklyn mortgage bank. When Sylvia suddenly becomes partially paralyzed from the waist down, after reading about the events of ''Kristallnacht'' in the newspaper, Phillip contacts Dr. Harry Hyman. Dr. Hyman believes Sylvia's paralysis is psychosomatic A somatic symptom disorder, formerly known as a somatoform disorder,(2013) [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' (1949), ''The Crucible'' (1953), and '' A View from the Bridge'' (1955). He wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on '' The Misfits'' (1961). The drama ''Death of a Salesman'' is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century. Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, '50s and early '60s. During this time, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and married Marilyn Monroe. In 1980, he received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. He received the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2001, the Prince of Asturias Award in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003, and the Dorothy and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Constant Wife
''The Constant Wife'', a play written in 1926 by W. Somerset Maugham, is a comedy whose modern and amusing take on marriage and infidelity gives a quick-witted, alternative view on how to deal with an extramarital affair. A “sparkling comedy of ill manners”, ''The Constant Wife'' features the resourceful and charming Constance Middleton, who has long known that her husband had been having an affair with her best friend, Marie-Louise. When the affair is publicly acknowledged, rather than reprimanding or divorcing him, she embraces the opportunity to create an independent life, starting a new job, paying her husband for room and board, and taking on her own lover. ''The Constant Wife'' was later published for general sale in April 1927. ''The Constant Wife'' was most recently on Broadway in 2005, where ''Variety'' described it as "an antecedent to the women of ''Sex and the City''”. The production's Kate Burton (Constance) and Lynn Redgrave (her mother) were nominated for T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
