King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz

Dr Richard Ashby obtained his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London and is now a Visiting Research Fellow at Senate House Library and an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research concentrates on the afterlives of Shakespeare and other early modern writers and dramatists, particularly in periods of crisis and catastrophe. He has published articles in Shakespeare, Textual Practice, Adaptation, Contemporary Theatre Review, Cahiers Élisabéthains and Comparative Drama and has spoken at various national and international conferences. He is currently working on the presence and meanings of Shakespeare in Holocaust testimony.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. ‘After’ Auschwitz2. Why King Lear? 3. ‘Strange Mutations’: The History of King Lear ‘After’ Auschwitz4. ‘The Man Without Pity is Mad’: Edward Bond’s King Lears and the Dialectic of Engagement5. ‘Rudkin I Nothing Am’: Edgar, Exile and Self Re-Authorship in David Rudkin’s Will’s Way6. ‘WHAT IS THIS GOOD?’: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the ‘Good Life’ in Howard Barker’s Seven Lears7. ‘Thought you were dead’: Dover Cliff, Death and ‘Ephemeral Life’ in Sarah Kane’s Blasted7.1 Postscript, Writing and Performing from the Rubble: Forced Entertainment, Five Day Lear and Table Top Shakespeare: The Complete Works8. ‘And I was struck still…’: Nature, The Sublime and Subjectivity in Dennis Kelly’s The Gods WeepConclusion, ‘Storm Still’Bibliography Index

Ashby’s brilliant book shares with its foundational text a radical desire to extend the scale of what can be achieved. Vast in scope, powerful in execution, deeply scholarly [and] thoroughly theorized […] "King Lear" ‘After’ Auschwitz is an exceptional achievement, permanently changing and revitalizing our assumptions about the landscape of responses to Shakespeare’s inexhaustible play […] [a] breathtaking accomplishment