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Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big Topics Shakespeare is the world's greatest writer. In this lively and authoritative introduction, Paul Edmondson presents Shakespeare afresh as a dramatist and poet, and encourages us to take ownership of the works for ourselves as words to be spoken as well as discussed. We get a wide sense of what his life was like, his rich language, and astonishing cultural legacy. We catch glimpses of Shakespeare himself, how he wrote and see what his works mean...

In the first full-length study of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Coppelia Kahn brings to these texts a startling, critical perspective which interrogates the gender ideologies lurking behind 'Roman virtue'. Plays featured include: * Titus Andronicus * Julius Caesar * Antony and Cleopatra * Coriolanus * Cymbeline Setting the Roman works in the dual context of the popular theatre and Renaissance humanism, the author identifies new sources which she analyzes from a historicised feminist perspec...

Heiner Muller's re-imaginings of William Shakespeare have puzzled and fascinated readers and spectators alike for the past forty-five years. For the first time, this study addresses all of Muller's re-workings of Shakespeare, including dramatic adaptations, translations, poems, references in interviews and in his autobiography, as well as fragments of unfinished projects, not forgetting the strong Shakespearean echoes in Muller's last play, Germania 3. An analysis of Muller's diverse positions r...

A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance provides a state-of-the-art engagement with the rapidly developing field of Shakespeare performance studies. Essays by major scholars, teachers, and professional theatre makers consider the many sites at which Shakespearean drama is performed: in print, in the classroom, in the theatre, in film, on television and video, in multimedia and digital forms, and as part of a globalized and intercultural performance economy. This companion stands at the cutti...

In this study of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", James Calderwood calls on psychoanalysis, feminism, anthropology and metadrama, to demonstrate the profound complexity of the play. He shows how Shakespeare explores the nature of human desire by exploiting the seriousness of high (and low) comedy. The power of representation to oppress, perplex, amuse and enlighten, is shown to be active everywhere in the play: in the patriarchies of Theseus and Oberon, in the imaginations of the lovers, in the bodi...

This is a fascinating study revealing Shakespeare's career-long engagement with the sea and his frequent use of maritime imagery. We need a poetic history of the ocean, and Shakespeare can help us find one. There's more real salt in the plays than we first expect. Shakespeare's dramatic ocean spans the God-sea of the ancient world and the immense blue vistas that early modern mariners navigated. Throughout his career, from the opening shipwrecks of "The Comedy of Errors" through "The Tempest", S...

Shakespeare in the Spanish Theatre offers an account of Shakespeare's presence on the Spanish stage, from a production of the first Spanish rendering of Jean-Francois Ducis's Hamlet in 1772 to the creative and controversial work of directors like Calixto Bieito and Alex Rigola in the early 21st century. Despite a largely indirect entrance into the culture, Shakespeare has gone on to become the best and known and most widely performed of all foreign playwrights. What is more, by the end of the 20...

The "Shakespearean Originals" series aims to provide readers of modern drama with 16th- and 17th-century playtexts which have been treated as historical documents, and are reproduced as closely to their original printed forms as the conditions of modern publication will permit. Each volume in the series comprises a general series introduction, an introduction to the play, the original text, a select bibliography, full annotations and some sample facsimile pages from the text itself.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of William Empson, G. Wilson Knight, C.L. Barber and Jan Kott to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered...

Drawing on recent developments in critical and psychoanalytic theory, this feminist study offers a radical reading of gender in Renaissance tragedy by looking at constructions of the category "woman" through language, ideology and subjectivity, thereby challenging the notion that key heroines of 16th- and 17th-century drama can be seen as representations of Renaissance womankind.

This volume addresses the economy of the spectacular in and around Shakespeare's plays, both in early modern England and in late-twentieth/twenty-first-century adaptations and appropriations. Apart from addressing issues such as (im)plausibility, tours de force arousing amazement, and excess for the sake of entertainment, it raises the question of intentionality-what is behind the spectacular? Is there always a manipulative purpose? How far-reaching are the political and ideological stakes?The c...

This study simultaneously supports and challenges Shakespeare's "universality". It does this by showing that Shakespeare is not universal insofar as his poetry speaks to all people of all classes, beyond class distinctions, but by demonstrating just how deeply entrenched Shakespeare is across a spectrum of socioeconomic structures and class, gender and ethnic struggles. The subjects of these essays range from Shakespeare's own appropriation of the sonnet form from Elizabethan couriers to reinter...

The impetus for this Approaches to Teaching volume on The Taming of the Shrew grew from the editors' desire to discover why a play notorious for its controversial exploration of conflicts between men and women and the challenges of marriage is enduringly popular in the classroom, in the performing arts, and in scholarship. The result is a volume that offers practical advice to teachers on editions and teaching resources in part 1, "Materials," while illuminating how the play's subtle and complex...

The Taming of the Shrew has puzzled, entertained and angered audiences, and it has been reinvented many times throughout its controversial history. Offering a focused overview of key emerging ideas and discourses surrounding Shakespeare’s problematic comedy, the volume reveals and debates how contemporary readings and adaptions of the play have sought to reconsider and resolve the play’s contentious portrayal of gender, power and identity. Each chapter has been carefully selected for its origina...

Featuring case studies, essays, and conversation pieces by scholars and practitioners, this volume explores how Indian cinematic adaptations outside the geopolitical and cultural boundaries of India are revitalizing the broader landscape of Shakespeare research, performance, and pedagogy. Essays in this volume address practical and thematic concerns and opportunities that are specific to studying Indian cinematic Shakespeares in the West. For instance, how have intercultural encounters betwe...

Textual Transvestism analyzes the flourishing of imitative versions of Heloise's and Abelard's love correspondence in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Current theoretical approaches on epistolarity, narratology, cultural, feminist and gender studies have been used to focus on the various transformations (rewriting, adapting, veiling, fragmenting) of Heloise's epistles, mainly in the hands of male writers. I employ close textual analysis to investigate how the multiple (re)visions of her epistol...

It has been 400 years since William Shakespeare, the man heralded as the greatest writer in the English language and England's national poet, died. Shakespeare has made a profound mark on our culture and heritage. Yet many aspects of his life remain in the shadows, and many places throughout England have forgotten their association with him. This fascinating book takes the reader from the place of his birth at Stratford-upon-Avon all the way to London, the beating heart of Early Modern theatre-...

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Henry V on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare contains: The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday language A complete list of characters with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary.