Explore mindfulness, well-being, and the art of living a created life in this collection of thought-provoking and motivational stories. Discover the benefits of embracing the present moment and savoring the beauty in unplanned, non-specific moments that enrich our lives. Drawing from her 25-year career as a performing artist and educator, and her expertise as a life coach, Coach Lisa shares insights wholeheartedly and invites readers to reflect. Prompts at the end of each chapter encourage us to take a deeper exploration of the reasons behind our actions and inspire us to consider who we want to be in the world.

In a world saturated with self-help books, every now and again a little gem comes to light, and this is one such publication. The Places Where There Are Spaces by Lisa Hopkins is a delightful collection of musings, observations and thoughts portrayed in a very down-to-earth, realistic manner. Each musing can be read and re-read, allowing the reader to create their own journey of reflection. View this book as an investment because small changes can create a big impact to ourselves and the world we engage with.

- Dame Evelyn Glennie. (Solo percussionist and composer Dame Evelyn Glennie is a double GRAMMY winner, BAFTA nominee, recipient of the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize and the Companion of Honour.)

The guide to Renaissance Literature and Culture provides students with the ideal introduction to literature and its context from 1533-1642, including: - the historical, cultural and intellectual background including religion, politics, exploration and visual culture - major writers and genres including Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson - concise explanations of key terms needed to understand the literature and criticism - key critical approaches to modernism from contemporary critics to the present - a chronology mapping historical events and literary works and further reading including websites and electronic resources.

Introduces students to the study of Shakespeare and grounds their understandings of his work in theoretical discourses. By addressing what is primarily at stake in the major theoretical approaches to Shakespeare's works, the book breaks down both fears and preconceptions to offer students a map of the current critical practices of others.

Explore mindfulness, well-being, and the art of living a created life in this collection of thought-provoking and motivational stories. Discover the benefits of embracing the present moment and savoring the beauty in unplanned, non-specific moments that enrich our lives. Drawing from her 25-year career as a performing artist and educator, and her expertise as a life coach, Coach Lisa shares insights wholeheartedly and invites readers to reflect. Prompts at the end of each chapter encourage us to take a deeper exploration of the reasons behind our actions and inspire us to consider who we want to be in the world.

In a world saturated with self-help books, every now and again a little gem comes to light, and this is one such publication. The Places Where There Are Spaces by Lisa Hopkins is a delightful collection of musings, observations and thoughts portrayed in a very down-to-earth, realistic manner. Each musing can be read and re-read, allowing the reader to create their own journey of reflection. View this book as an investment because small changes can create a big impact to ourselves and the world we engage with.

- Dame Evelyn Glennie. (Solo percussionist and composer Dame Evelyn Glennie is a double GRAMMY winner, BAFTA nominee, recipient of the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize and the Companion of Honour.)

This book explores some of the many instances of poisoning in early modern plays. It considers the practical, legal and epistemological aspects of poison plays and analyses the cultural work they perform, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender and humans' relationship to the environment.

Explores how cultural conceptions of mobility and the road contribute to identity and culture in early modern Britain
Opens new windows on early modern culture, subjectivity and perceptions around the experience of the road and how that shapes the idea of the road itselfOffers insight into the ways both the bare boards of the stage and prose narratives were used to imagine road journeys and the intersections between public and private spaceEnhances historical understanding of the literal place of theatre in the road networks around early modern LondonProvides a crucial ligature in English literary and cultural history. The present plays and prose are prolegomena to the travel literature of Montagu, Swift, Boswell and Johnson in the Hebrides, Sterne's Sentimental Journey, Fielding's Tom Jones, and peripatetic Civil War narratives

This book brings together thirteen essays, by both established and emerging scholars, which examine the most influential meanings of roads in early modern literature and culture. Chapters develop our understanding of the place of the road in the early modern imagination and open various windows on a geography which may by its nature seem passing or trivial but is in fact central to all conceptions of movement. They also shed new light on perhaps the most astonishing achievement of early modern plays: their use of one small, bare space to suggest an amazing variety of physical and potentially metaphysical locations.

Filmmakers have long been drawn to the Gothic with its eerie settings and promise of horror lurking beneath the surface. Moreover, the Gothic allows filmmakers to hold a mirror up to their own age and reveal society's deepest fears. Franco Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet are just a few examples of film adaptations of literary Gothic texts. In this ground-breaking study, Lisa Hopkins explores how the Gothic has been deployed in these and other contemporary films and comes to some surprising conclusions. For instance, in a brilliant chapter on films geared to children, Hopkins finds that horror resides not in the trolls, wizards, and goblins that abound in Harry Potter, but in the heart of the family.

Screening the Gothic offers a radical new way of understanding the relationship between film and the Gothic as it surveys a wide range of films, many of which have received scant critical attention. Its central claim is that, paradoxically, those texts whose affiliations with the Gothic were the clearest became the least Gothic when filmed. Thus, Hopkins surprises readers by revealing Gothic elements in films such as Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park, as well as exploring more obviously Gothic films like The Mummy and The Fellowship of the Ring. Written in an accessible and engaging manner, Screening the Gothic will be of interest to film lovers as well as students and scholars.

Caesarian power was a crucial context in the Renaissance, as rulers in Europe, Russia and Turkey all sought to appropriate Caesarian imagery and authority, but it has been surprisingly little explored in scholarship. In this study Lisa Hopkins explores the way in which the stories of the Caesars, and of the Julio-Claudians in particular, can be used to figure the stories of English rulers on the Renaissance stage. Analyzing plays by Shakespeare and a number of other playwrights of the period, she demonstrates how early modern English dramatists, using Roman modes of literary representation as cover, commented on the issues of the day and critiqued contemporary monarchs.

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the edges of Europe were under pressure from the Ottoman Turks. This book explores how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represented places where Christians came up against Turks, including Malta, Tunis, Hungary, and Armenia. Some forms of Christianity itself might seem alien, so the book also considers the interface between traditional Catholicism, new forms of Protestantism, and Greek and Russian orthodoxy. But it also finds that the concept of Christendom was under threat in other places, some much nearer to home. Edges of Christendom could be found in areas that were or had been pagan, such as Rome itself and the Danelaw, which once covered northern England; they could even be found in English homes and gardens, where imported foreign flowers and exotic new ingredients challenged the concept of what was native and natural.

My innocence, gone at 10 years old. Rape, molestation, alcoholism, lies, abomination, confusion and insanity. Just to name a few circumstances that I had encountered. It all started when I was 10 years old. How does a person overcome this type of turmoil, what would I have to do to endure. Should I run and hide, bury my face in the sand with my hands on top of my head. Many have had challenges in life that they had to overcome. I am sharing very intricate portions of my life. This is an effort to prove that there is hope for a future of success.

The first scholarly edition of a little-known play by a major Renaissance playwright, which interestingly reworks Othello.

John Ford's tragedy 'Tis Pity She's A Whore was first performed between 1629 and 1633 and since then its themes of incest, love versus duty and forbidden passion have made it a widely studied and performed, if controversial, play.

This guide offers students an introduction to its critical and performance history, including TV and film adaptations. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research.

This collection of twelve new essays examines some of what Jane Austen has become in the two hundred years since her death. Some of the chapters explore adaptations or repurposings of her work while others trace her influence on a surprising variety of different kinds of writing, sometimes even when there is no announced or obvious debt to her. In so doing they also inevitably shed light on Austen herself. Austen is often considered romantic and not often considered political, but both those perceptions are challenged her, as is the idea that she is primarily a writer for and about women. Her books are comic and ironic, but they have been reworked and drawn upon in very different genres and styles. Collectively these essays testify to the extraordinary versatility and resonance of Austen's books.

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to all of the plays of Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe is a playwright whose work taps into the central concerns of his age, many of which are still important to us - religious uncertainty, the clash between Islam and Christianity, the discovery of America, ideas of sexuality and gender identity, and the rôle of the marginalised inidividual in society. The book contains six chapters, each on a specific aspect of Marlowe's work and its cultural contexts: Marlowe's life and death; the Marlowe canon; the theatrical contexts and stage history of the plays; Marlowe's distinctive interest in old and new branches of knowledge; the ways in which he transgresses against established norms and values; and the major issues which have been raised in critical discussions of his plays. Each chapter allows students to see the significance, scope and distinctive contribution made by Marlowe in all his plays, and his place in the development of Renaissance drama.Key Features*Covers all of Marlowe's plays, including Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, Edward II and The Jew of Malta*Emphasises how daring Marlowe's ideas were at the time as well as their relevance to readers today*Covers the theatrical contexts of Marlowe's plays and their performance history*Reassesses Marlowe's achievement as well as his relationship to Shakespeare

The succession to the throne, Lisa Hopkins argues here, was a burning topic not only in the final years of Elizabeth but well into the 1630s, with continuing questions about how James's two kingdoms might be ruled after his death. Because the issue, with its attendant constitutional questions, was so politically sensitive, Hopkins contends that drama, with its riddled identities, oblique relationship to reality, and inherent blurring of the extent to which the situation it dramatizes is indicative or particular, offered a crucial forum for the discussion. Hopkins analyzes some of the ways in which the dramatic works of the time - by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster and Ford among others - reflect, negotiate and dream the issue of the succession to the throne.

John Ford is best known as the author of the controversial *Tis Pity She's a Whore*, but his other plays are also full of interest. The Lady's Trial, his last play, encapsulates the final development of his own unique theatrical aesthetic whilst looking back to the drama of his youth, most notably Othello, whose story is here rewritten.

In Ford's version, the supposedly wronged husband, the victorious general Auria, does not simply take the word of his friend, the well-intentioned but overly suspicious Aurelio, that his wife, Spinella, is unfaithful: instead he does what Othello apparently never even thinks of doing, and conducts a rational, public sifting of the apparent evidence, at the end of which Spinella is triumphantly cleared. In combining this story of public vindication with his distinctive dramatic style of delicate reticence, Ford offers a powerful exploration of both the capabilities and the limitations of language and its role in human relationships.

The first scholarly edition of this undeservedly neglected play situates it in its dramatic and historical contexts and helps elucidate Ford's understated, allusive style.

The White Devil is one of the most violent and most fascinating plays in English theatrical history. It is also a notoriously challenging work; this volume offers a practical, accessible and thought-provoking guide to the play, surveying its major themes and critical reception. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's performance, beginning with its first staging in 1611 staging and ending with the RSC's 2014 revival. Moving through to four new critical essays, it opens up cutting-edge perspectives on the work, and finishes with a practical guide to pedagogical approaches and resources. Detailing web-based and production-related resources, and including an annotated bibliography of critical works, the guide will equip teachers and facilitate students' understanding of this complex play.

Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- 1. Wild Justice: Mercy, Revenge and the Detective.- 2. Who Owns the Wood? Appropriating A Midsummer Night's Dream.- 3. Border Patrol: Shakespearean Allusions and Social and National Identities.- 4. Stealing Shakespeare: Detective Fiction and Cultural Value.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.

Recurring to the governing idea of her 2005 study Shakespeare on the Edge, Lisa Hopkins expands the parameters of her investigation beyond England to include the Continent, and beyond Shakespeare to include a number of dramatists ranging from Christopher Marlowe to John Ford. Hopkins also expands her notion of liminality to explore not only geographical borders, but also the intersection of the material and the spiritual more generally, tracing the contours of the edge which each inhabits. Making a journey of its own by starting from the most literally liminal of physical structures, walls, and ending with the wholly invisible and intangible, the idea of the divine, this book plots the many and various ways in which, for the Renaissance imagination, metaphysical overtones accrued to the physically liminal.

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic contests and in its recurrent linkage to national defence; the extent to which magic can trope other concerns, and what these might be; and how magic is staged and what the representational strategies and techniques might mean. The essays range widely over both canonical plays-Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Doctor Faustus, Bartholomew Fair-and notably less canonical ones such as The Birth of Merlin, Fedele and Fortunio, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Devil is an Ass, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch of Edmonton, putting the two groups into dialogue with each other and also exploring ways in which they can be profitably related to contemporary cases or accusations of witchcraft. Attending to the representational strategies and self-conscious intertextuality of the plays as well as to their treatment of their subject matter, the essays reveal the plays they discuss as actively intervening in contemporary debates about witchcraft and magic in ways which themselves effect transformation rather than simply discussing it. At the heart of all the essays lies an interest in the transformative power of magic, but collectively they show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects or even to the subjects of magic, but that the plays themselves can be seen as working to bring about change in the ways that they challenge contemporary assumptions and stereotypes.