Lovesick brings together an international collection of plays, from Britain, the US, Germany, France and Russia, depicting types of homosexual or same-sex love. The majority of these six fin-de-siecle plays are previously unpublished in English or in any language, and each comes enhanced with an editorial introduction, author biography, contemporary review coverage and production history. The plays included are: * The Blackmailers, a society comedy by Oscar Wildes associates John Gray and Andre Raffalovich * At Saint Judass, a symbolist one-act play of unrequited love, by Henry Blake Fuller * Mistakes, a problem drama about social persecution by Herbert Hirschberg * The dangerous Precaution, a poetic fable of cross-dressing by Mikhail Kuzmin * The Gentlemen of Chrysanthemums, a comedy of manners about the homosexual as celebrity, by Amory * Ania and Esther, a lyrical drama of troubled adolescence by Klaus Mann The volume includes a substantial; introduction by Laurence Senelick, providing a valuable historical overview of the ancestry of gay theatre and queer perfomance. Making available a legacy of homosexual dramas of the past.
Lovesick is a must-have volume for researchers and students of theatre history and lesbian and gay studies. it will also be of compelling interest to those within comparative literature, cultural studies, and sexology, as well as actors, directors and theatre-lovers.