Pivotal Lines in Shakespeare and Others

<p>Sidney Homan defines a pivotal line as “a moment in the script that serves as a pathway into the larger play … a magnet to which the rest of the play scenes before and after adheres.” He offers his personal choices of such lines in five plays by Shakespeare and works by Beckett Brecht Pinter Shepard and Stoppard. Drawing on his own experience in the theatre as actor and director and on campus as a teacher and scholar he pairs a Shakespearean play with one by a modern playwright as mirrors for each other. One reviewer calls his approach “ground-breaking.” Another observes that his “experience with the particular plays he has chosen is invaluable” since it allows us to find “a wedge into such iconic texts.” Academics and students alike will find this volume particularly useful in aiding their own discovery of a pivotal line or moment in the experience of reading about watching or performing in a play.</p>