Background
Bentley, Eric was born on September 14, 1916 in England. Son of Fred and Laura (Evelyn) Bentley.
( Introduction by Donald Lyons What Is Theatre?, origina...)
Introduction by Donald Lyons What Is Theatre?, originally published in 1968, collects all of Eric Bentley's theater criticism. Bentley's most productive years as a reviewer coincided with some of the greatest years of twentieth-century drama. His essays cover the premieres of works by T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Jean Anouilh, and Arthur Miller, among others, as well as subjects as far-ranging as Charlie Chaplin and the Peking Opera--and each contains insights that are still relevant. What Is Theatre? is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what our American theater has been, is now, and could become.
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(A study of the idea of heroism in Carlyle and Nietzsche, ...)
A study of the idea of heroism in Carlyle and Nietzsche, with notes on Wagner, Spengler, Stefan George and D. H. Lawrence. New edition, thoroughly revised and with added new material.
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(Translated and adapted by Eric Bentley Music by Arnold Bl...)
Translated and adapted by Eric Bentley Music by Arnold Black, William Bolcom, Lucas Mason, and Peter Winkler Flexible casting, 1m., 1f. or expanded to more actors as needed /Musical Revue A first draft of this entertainment was produced at The Ballroom in New York City in 1994, starring Alvin Epstein and directed by Isaiah Sheffer. Howard Kissel, Daily News, commented: "Bentley's pungent translations of Wedekind's lyrics have been set deftly by three composers, Arnold Black, William Bolcom and Peter Winkler... Tingle Tangle as the work was then called is well performed and invariably fascinating." For the Wedekind renaissance of the 21st century Eric Bentley has re-arranged the material and added to it. The piece now consists of two cabaret programs which could be performed together in one long evening or separately. The first program is framed by two Bentley ballads telling the stories of Spring's Awakening and The First Lulu, respectively. Within that frame is a varied series of Wedekind songs and spoken poems. The second program is framed by two Wedekind short stories, neither of them ever before presented on an American (or any other) stage. Within this second frame come poems and songs in which we meet another Wedekind, a wild poet who also had a tender, even elegiac side. The two-part show ends with a song by Eric Bentley and Arnold Black which celebrates, not Wedekind the rebel, but Wedekind the artist.
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(Harcourt Brace, 1967, Harvest, Very good., 328 pages. Ver...)
Harcourt Brace, 1967, Harvest, Very good., 328 pages. Very good. Light wear. Harvest paperback edition. Literary Criticism Out-of-print and antiquarian booksellers since 1933. We pack and ship with care.
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( Winner of 2006 International Association of Theatre Cri...)
Winner of 2006 International Association of Theatre Critics Thalia Prize Recipient of 2007 The Robert Chesley Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in Playwriting Winner of 2006 Village Voice OBIE Awards Lifetime Achievement Award "The road will be red with monstrous martyrdoms, but we shall win." Oscar Wilde wrote these words at the end of the nineteenth century after serving two years at hard labor for the crime of being homosexual. This modern martyrdom is the subject of Lord Alfred's Lover, Eric Bentley's Brechtian dramatization of Wilde's last days. H for Hamlet is another variation on the modern martyr play, this time in homage to Pirandello. The protagonist thinks, or once thought, he was Hamlet. Fantasy? Perhaps. But, to paraphrase Marianne Moore, there was a real toad in the imaginary garden--a real martyr in the toy theatre. In German Requiem, Bentley takes inspiration from Heinrich von Kleist's play The Schroffenstein Family, which in turn is a version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The young star-crossed lovers in his play are martyrs of an internecine conflict much like those seen in recent history in Ireland and the Middle East.
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(In the mid-1950s, the House Un-American Activities Commit...)
In the mid-1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating the communist influence in the entertainment industry. This searing docudrama from actual transcripts of the hearings reveals how decent people were persuaded to name names, and the steep price paid by those who refused. A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Rene Auberjonois, Edward Asner, Bonnie Bedelia, Jack Coleman, Bud Cort, Richard Dreyfuss, Hector Elizondo, Robert Foxworth, Harry Hamlin, James Earl Jones, Richard Masur, Franklyn Seales, Joe Spano, James Whitmore, Michael York and Harris Yulin.
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(In "The Theory of the Modern Stage", leading drama critic...)
In "The Theory of the Modern Stage", leading drama critic, Eric Bentley, brings together landmark writings by dramatists, directors and thinkers who have had a profound effect on the theatre since the mid nineteenth century, from Adolphe Appia to Emile Zola. Here, Antonin Artaud sets out a manifesto for a Theatre of Cruelty, Bertolt Brecht discusses the tension between entertainment and instruction in experimental drama and Bernard Shaw defends himself as a realist, while W. B. Yeats describes the creation of a People's Theatre. The ideas of theatre's great makers are revealed by their best expositors, as Eric Bentley writes about Stanislavsky belief in the importance of emotional memory when creating a dramatic role and Arthur Symons considers Richard Wagner and the relationship between genius, art and nature.
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( Here is Bentley's definitive original text, including h...)
Here is Bentley's definitive original text, including his long-suppressed foreword. A major study by one of the leading modern dramatic critics. Introduction by Richard Gilman; new Afterword by the Author. Index.
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( A New York newspaper column from 1924 proclaimed: "Ever...)
A New York newspaper column from 1924 proclaimed: "Everybody's caught in the mazes of Pirandellism. . . . He is the great convention-smasher, and he just naturally leaves you face to face with the eternal query, What is truth?" "Everybody" is still caught in the mazes of Pirandellism. But since the 1940s Eric Bentley has threaded his way through those mazes. The Pirandello Commentaries is the result.
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( The plays are Concord, a comedy based on Kleist’s The B...)
The plays are Concord, a comedy based on Kleist’s The Broken Jug; The Fall of the Amazons, a tragedy from the Kleist Penthesilea; and Wannsee, a tragicomedy, Bentley’s rendering of Das Katchen von Heilbronn. Concord is set in a courthouse during the early days of the Republic. Convened to discover who broke an irreplaceable jug symbolic of the chivalric age of Sir Walter Raleigh, Judge Adam’s madcap court flounders in hilarious chaos induced by comic lust. The Fall of the Amazons is the story of Achilles and the Amazon queen Penthesilea. In this pagan play, Bentley explores improbable love, a theme shared by Wannsee. Wannsee is a play of pageantry: emperors, counts, dueling knights, a young beauty of seemingly low birth, cherubs, and witches masked in loveliness.
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(Grove Press, 1987, 2nd, Good., Top corner bumped, otherwi...)
Grove Press, 1987, 2nd, Good., Top corner bumped, otherwise very good. Text clean. Second Evergreen edition, revised 1987. Literary Criticism, Bertolt Brecht Out-of-print and antiquarian booksellers since 1933. We pack and ship with care.
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( First published in 1946, The Playwright as Thinker is a...)
First published in 1946, The Playwright as Thinker is a classic work of drama criticism that helped create the intellectual environment in which serious American theater would thrive in the second half of the twentieth century. At the time of publishing, most drama critics believed dramatic art deserved no intellectual status; Eric Bentley set out to prove them wrong. Focusing on the canonic playwrights Strindberg, Ibsen, Pirandello, Sartre, and Brecht, Bentley viewed the playwright as thinker, and his survey of over 150 years of dramatic art provided, in essence, an intellectual history of Europe. This edition not only contains the original, long-suppressed foreword, in which Bentley lambastes the climate of Broadway at the time, but also the author's 1987 afterword. Â
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( Called "the theater conscience of our times," Eric Bent...)
Called "the theater conscience of our times," Eric Bentley has been both a leading critic and a playwright. Rallying Cries presents three of his best known works: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, successfully staged around the world and on television; The Recantation of Galileo Galilei; and the controversial From the Memoirs of Pontius Pilate, a work initially rejected as insufficiently Christian by its commissioning theater but then successfully produced in New York at the Actors Studio and American Jewish Theater.
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((Applause Books). "Eric Bentley's radical new look at the...)
(Applause Books). "Eric Bentley's radical new look at the grammar of theatre...is a work of exceptional virtue... The book justifies its title by being precisely about the ways in which life manifests itself in the theatre...This is a book to be read again and again." Frank Kermode, The New York Review of Books
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( Winner of 2006 International Association of Theatre Cri...)
Winner of 2006 International Association of Theatre Critics Thalia Prize Winner of 2006 Village Voice OBIE Awards Lifetime Achievement Award In this collection, Eric Bentley presents Concord, a comedy adapted from Kleist's The Broken Jug; The Fall of the Amazons, a tragedy written in response to Kleist's Penthesilea; and Wannsee, a tragic-comedy which is Bentley's rendering of Kleist's Cathy of Heilbronn. Bentley sets Concord in a courthouse during the early days of the Republic. Convened to discover who broke an irreplaceable jug symbolic of the chivalric age of Sir Walter Raleigh, Judge Adam's madcap court flounders in hilarious chaos induced by huge lies to cover comic lust. Fall of the Amazons is the story of Achilles and the Amazon queen, Penthesilea. Through this pagan play, Bentley explores improbably love, which he exemplifies in the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac: "In seeming to be cruel to both father and son, God has enabled them to find, in total vulnerability, total love," a theme that also pervades Wannsee. Bentley's Wannsee is a play of pageantry: emperors, counts, dueling knights, a young beauty of seemingly low birth, cherubs, and witches masked in loveliness. A fabulous love story ostensibly designed to dissuade Kleist from self-destruction, Wannsee demonstrates with a flourish that, though devils roam the earth, there are also angels.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0810121158/?tag=2022091-20
literature educator playwright author
Bentley, Eric was born on September 14, 1916 in England. Son of Fred and Laura (Evelyn) Bentley.
Bachelor of Arts, University of Oxford, England, 1938; Bachelor of Letters, University of Oxford, 1939; Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1941; Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Wisconsin, 1975; Doctor of Letters (honorary), University East Anglia, 1979; Doctor of Humane Letters, New School Social Research, 1992.
Brander Matthews professor dramatic literature Columbia University, 1953-1969. Dramatic critic The New Republic, 1952-1956. Norton professor poetry Harvard University, 1960-1961.
Artist in residence Ford Foundation, Berlin, 1964-1965. Katharine Cornell professor theatre State University of New York-Buffalo, 1974-1982. Professor comparative literature University Maryland, College Park, 1982-1989.
( Winner of 2006 International Association of Theatre Cri...)
( Winner of 2006 International Association of Theatre Cri...)
(In "The Theory of the Modern Stage", leading drama critic...)
( First published in 1946, The Playwright as Thinker is a...)
( The plays are Concord, a comedy based on Kleist’s The B...)
(In the mid-1950s, the House Un-American Activities Commit...)
(Translated and adapted by Eric Bentley Music by Arnold Bl...)
( Introduction by Donald Lyons What Is Theatre?, origina...)
(A study of the idea of heroism in Carlyle and Nietzsche, ...)
( Called "the theater conscience of our times," Eric Bent...)
( A New York newspaper column from 1924 proclaimed: "Ever...)
( Here is Bentley's definitive original text, including h...)
(A definitive work by one of the greatest drama critics.)
(Harcourt Brace, 1967, Harvest, Very good., 328 pages. Ver...)
(Grove Press, 1987, 2nd, Good., Top corner bumped, otherwi...)
(Literary Studies, Philosophy)
(Play, Literary Studies)
(Book by Bentley, Eric)
(Book by Bentley, Eric)
((Applause Books). "Eric Bentley's radical new look at the...)
(Reprint)
(4)
Member American Academy Arts and Sciences, American Academy Arts and Letters.