'A part we have played is like a person we once met, grew to know, became intimately enmeshed with and finally moved away from. Some of these characters remain friends, others are like ex-lovers with whom we no longer have anything in common. All of them bring something out in us that will never go back in the box.' In a varied and distinguished career, Harriet Walter has played almost all of Shakespeare's heroines, notably Ophelia, Helena, Portia, Viola, Imogen, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice and Cleopatra, mostly for the Royal Shakespeare Company. But where, she asks, does an actress go after playing Cleopatra's magnificent death? Why didn't Shakespeare write more - and more powerful - roles for mature women? For Walter, the solution was to ignore the dictates of centuries of tradition, and to begin playing the mature male characters. Her Brutus in an all-female Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse was widely acclaimed, and was soon followed by Henry IV. What, she asks, can an actress bring to these roles - and is there any fundamental difference in the way they must be played? In Brutus and Other Heroines, Walter discusses each of these roles - both male and female - from the inside, explaining the particular choices she made in preparing and performing each character. Her extraordinarily perceptive and intimate accounts illuminate each play as a whole, offering a treasure trove of valuable insights for theatregoers, scholars and anyone interested in how the plays work on stage. Aspiring actors, too, will discover the many possibilities open to them in playing these magnificent roles. The book is an exploration of the Shakespearean canon through the eyes of a self-identified 'feminist actor' - but, above all, a remarkable account of an acting career unconstrained by tradition or expectations. It concludes with an affectionate rebuke to her beloved Will: 'I cannot imagine a world without you. I just wish you had put more women at the centre of your world/stage... I would love you to come back and do some rewrites.' 'A glorious reminder that genuine diversity on stage offers astonishing creative benefits... Harriet Walter is mesmerising in one play after another, bringing her classical training to bear as a conflicted Brutus, then a Henry IV who wears his crown heavily, and finally a Prospero who knows that the steel bars of prison are resistant to all magic... this is genuinely art to enchant' The Guardian on the Donmar Warehouse's Shakespeare Trilogy

Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections explores the relationship between the plays of William Shakespeare and the writings of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673). Cavendish wrote 25 plays in the 1650s and 60s, making her one of the most prolific playwrights"man or woman"of the seventeenth century. The essays contained in this volume fit together as studies of various sorts of influence, both literary and historical, setting Cavendish's appropriation of Shakespearean characters and plot structures within the context of the English Civil Wars and the Fronde. The essays trace Shakespeare's influence on Cavendish, explore the political implications of Cavendish's contribution to Shakespeare's reputation, and investigate the politics of influence more generally. The collection covers topics ranging from Cavendish's strategic use of Shakespeare to establish her own reputation to her adaptation of Shakespeare's martial imagery, moral philosophy, and marriage plots, as well as the conventions of cross dressing on stage. Other topics include Shakespeare and Cavendish read aloud; Cavendish's formally hybrid appropriation of Shakespearean comedy and tragedy; her transformation of Shakespearean women on trial; and her re-imagining of Shakespearean models of sexuality and pleasure.

An investigation into modes of early modern English literary 'indirection, ' this study could also be considered a detective work on a pseudonym attached to some late sixteenth-century works. In the course of unmasking 'R.L.', McCarthy scrutinizes devices employed by writers in the Sidney coterie: punning, often across languages; repetition-insistence on a sound, or hiding two persons 'under one hood'; disingenuous juxtaposition; evocation of original context; differential spelling (intended and significant). Among McCarthy's stunning-but solidly underpinned-conclusions are: Shakespeare used the pseudonym 'R.L.' among other pseudonyms; one, 'William Smith', was also his 'alias' in life; Shakespeare was at the heart of the Sidney circle, whose literary programme was hostile to Elizabeth I; and his work, composed mainly from the late 1570s to the early 90s, occasionally 'embedded' in the work of others, was covertly alluded to more often than has been recognized

This book analyzes, through easy-to-follow play synopses, the strengths and weaknesses of the female protagonists as they impact not only the plot of Shakespeare's plays but the male protagonist. Selected, condensed one-act versions of the plays are provided in order to enrich the discussion of the play, to stimulate in reading the play in its entirety, and to provide a springboard for group discussion of the play and the impact of the women. Contents: William Shakespeare: His Art, Life and Times; The Women of Shakespeare's Plays: An Overview; The Comedy of Errors; Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Julius Caesar; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Macbeth; Much Ado About Nothing; Othello the Moor of Venice; The Taming of the Shrew; Antony and Cleopatra; Twelfth Night or What You Will; Romeo and Juliet; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Bibliography.

Shakespeare and the Gods examines Shakespeare's many allusions to six classical gods (Jupiter, Diana, Venus, Mars, Hercules and Ceres) that enhance his readers' and audiences' understanding and enjoyment of his work. Vaughan explains their historical context, from their origins in ancient Greece to their appropriation in Rome and their role in medieval and early modern mythography. The book also illuminates Shakespeare's classical allusions by comparison to the work of contemporaries like Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson and Thomas Heywood and explores allusive patterns that repeat throughout Shakespeare's canon. Each chapter concludes with a more focused reading of one or two plays in which the god appears or serves as an underlying motif. Shakespeare and the Gods highlights throughout the gods' participation in western constructions of gender as well as classical myth's role in changing attitudes toward human violence and sexuality.

Through expert guidance on understanding, interpreting, and writing about Shakespeare's language, this book makes The Winter's Tale accessible and exciting for students. It demonstrates that careful attention to Shakespeare's complex dramatic language can clarify the structure and concerns of the play, as well as provide deep and satisfying engagement with the social, political and ethical questions Shakespeare raises. Each chapter features a 'Writing Matters' section designed to connect analysis of Shakespeare's language to students' development of their own writing strategies. The book examines topics in the play such as tragicomic genre; women's assertion of social and political agency; obedience and resistance to rulers; the virtues and risks of following festivity, and disputes over the proper forms of religious devotion.

Shakespeare and the Middle Ages brings together a distinguished, multidisciplinary group of scholars to rethink the medieval origins of modernity. Shakespeare provides them with the perfect focus, since his works turn back to the Middle Ages as decisively as they anticipate the modern world: almost all of the histories depict events during the Hundred Years War, and King John glances even further back to the thirteenth-century Angevins; several of the comedies, tragedies, and romances rest on medieval sources; and there are important medieval antecedents for some of the poetic modes in which he worked as well.
Several of the essays reread Shakespeare by recovering aspects of his works that are derived from medieval traditions and whose significance has been obscured by the desire to read Shakespeare as the origin of the modern. These essays, taken cumulatively, challenge the idea of any decisive break between the medieval period and early modernity by demonstrating continuities of form and imagination that clearly bridge the gap. Other essays explore the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries constructed or imagined relationships between past and present. Attending to the way these writers thought about their relationship to the past makes it possible, in turn, to read against the grain of our own teleological investment in the idea of early modernity. A third group of essays reads texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries as documents participating in social-cultural transformation from within. This means attending to the way they themselves grapples with the problem of change, attempting to respond to new conditions and pressures while holding onto customary habits of thought and imagination. Taken together, the essays in this volume revisit the very idea of transition in a refreshingly non-teleological way.

Winner of the ASLE-UKI 2022 Book Prize From The Pastoral Players' 1884 performance of As You Like It to contemporary site-specific productions activist interventions, there is a rich history of open air performances of Shakespeare's plays beyond their early modern origins. Weathering Shakespeare reveals how new insights from the environmental humanities can transform our understanding of this popular performance practice. Drawing on audience accounts of outdoor productions of those plays most commonly chosen for open air performance - including A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest - the book examines how performers and audiences alike have reacted to unpredictable natural environments.

Focusing on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, these original essays by leading scholars explore how theatrical, aesthetic, and linguistic forms engage early modern experiences of temporality. Encompassing comedy, tragedy, history, and romance, some contributions consider how different models of pastness, presentness, sequentiality, memory, and historical meaning underwrite particular representational practices. Others, conversely, investigate how aesthetic forms afforded diverse ways for early-modern people to understand or experience time - and how this can impact us today.

This collection of essays offers a major reassessment of the meaning and significance of emotional experience in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Recent scholarship on early modern emotion has relied on a medical-historical approach, resulting in a picture of emotional experience that stresses the dominance of the material, humoral body. The Renaissance of emotion seeks to redress this balance by examining the ways in which early modern texts explore emotional experience from perspectives other than humoral medicine. The chapters in the book seek to demonstrate how open, creative and agency-ridden the experience and interpretation of emotion could be. Taken individually, the chapters offer much-needed investigations into previously overlooked areas of emotional experience and signification; taken together, they offer a thorough re-evaluation of the cultural priorities and phenomenological principles that shaped the understanding of the emotive self in this period. -- .

In Cymbeline: Constructions of Britain, Ros King argues that because of previous misunderstanding of the nature and history of tragi-comedy, critics have mistaken the tone of Shakespeare's play. Although it is often dismissed as a pedestrian 'romance', or at best a self-parodic reworking of previous Shakespearean themes, she proposes that Cymbeline's fantastical, black comedy and its facility for keeping multiple plots all in the air together are in fact a tour de force of dramaturgical construction. King's multi-faceted approach combines strikingly perceptive commentaries on the text's most notoriously difficult passages, with descriptions of performance, and analysis of the text's historical, cultural and literary contexts. In this wide-ranging study, the play becomes a focus for considering early modern England's encounters with its Scottish king, with religious struggle in Europe, and with the indigenous peoples of North America. King demonstrates that the play's dramaturgical structure enables it to raise daring questions about the nature of government, the rights of birth and of succession, and the concepts of 'empire', supplying a curiously bitter and indeed tragic undercurrent to the final 'happy' ending while attempting to neutralise contemporary religious conflict. Having explored the influences that went into the writing of Cymbeline, King devotes her final chapter to the play's later reception and shows how it has been made to respond to different cultural pressures over time. Using as a test case the outrageously ebullient production at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, 2000, for which she was dramaturg, she outlines an ethic for interpretation and considers the problems to be faced in both criticism and performance when realising the text as living theatre for a modern audience.

Theories stating that plays attributed to Shakespeare were in fact written by other authors have existed for more than 200 years; some theories have been ridiculed and reviled while some have gained growing popular and scholarly support. The history of the Shakespeare controversy is presented in this revised edition of the 1992 work, with much new information and three additional chapters. Part I documents and critically assesses the most important theories on the authorship question. Part II is an annotated bibliography, arranged chronologically, of the many works that deal with the controversy from its vague beginnings to the present.

Complementing other volumes in the Shakespeare Criticism Series, this collection of twenty original essays will expand the critical contexts in which Antony and Cleopatra can be enjoyed as both literature and theater. The essays will cover a wide spectrum of topics and utilize a diversity of scholarly methodologies, including textual and performance-oriented approaches, intertextual studies, as well as feminist, psychoanalytical, Marxist, and postcolonial inquiries. The volume will also feature an extensive introduction by the editor surveying the under-examined performance history and critical trends/legacy of this complex play. Contributors include prominent Shakespeare scholars David Bevington, Dympna Callaghan, Leeds Barroll, David Fuller, Dorothea Kehler, and Linda Woodbridge.

From Longman's Cultural Editions series, "The Merchant of Venice, "edited by Larry Danson, presents key texts that illuminate the lively intersections of literature, tradition, and culture. Handsomely produced and affordably priced, the "Longman Cultural Editions" series presents classic works in provocative and illuminating contexts-cultural, critical, and literary. Each Cultural Edition consists of the complete text of an important literary work, reliably edited, headed by an inviting introduction, and supplemented by helpful annotations; a table of dates to track its composition, publication, and public reception in relation to biographical, cultural and historical events; and a guide for further inquiry and study.

What do 'stage directions' do in early modern drama? Who or what are they directing: action on the stage, or imagination via the page? Is the label 'stage direction' helpful or misleading? Do these 'directions' provide evidence of Renaissance playhouse practice? What happens when we put them at the centre of literary close readings of early modern plays? Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre investigates these problems through innovative research by a range of international experts. This collection of essays examines the creative possibilities of stage directions and and their implications for actors and audiences, readers and editors, historians and contemporary critics. Looking at the different ways stage directions make meaning, this volume provides new insights into a range of Renaissance plays.

Demonstrating and defending a method of close reading and historical contextualisation of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, this collection of essays by Tom McAlindon combines a number of previously published pieces with original studies. The volume includes six interpretative studies, all but one of which involve challenges to radical readings of the plays involved, including Henry V, Coriolanus, The Tempest, and Doctor Faustus. The other three essays are critiques of the claims and methods of radical, postmodernist criticism (new historicism and cultural materialism especially); they illustrate the author's conviction that some leading scholars in the field of Renaissance literature and drama, who deserve credit for shifting attention to new areas of interest, must also be charged with responsibility for a marked decline in standards of analysis, interpretation, and argument. Likely to provoke considerable debate, this stimulating collection is an important contribution to Shakespeare studies.

This book investigates the origins, impact, and outcome of the Elizabethan obsession with fraudulent conveyancing, the part of debtor-creditor law that determines when a court can void a transfer of assets. Focusing on the years between the passage of a key statute in 1571 and the court case that clarified the statute in 1601, Charles Ross convincingly argues that what might seem a minor matter in the law was in fact part of a wide-spread cultural practice. The legal and literary responses to fraudulent conveyancing expose ethical, practical, and jurisprudential contradictions in sixteenth-century English, as well as modern, society. At least in English Common Law, debt was more pervasive than sex. Ross brings to this discussion a dazzling knowledge of early modern legal practice that takes the conversation out of the universities and Inns of Court and brings it into the early modern courtroom, the site where it had most relevance to Renaissance poets and playwrights. Ross here examines how during the thirty years in which the law developed, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare wrote works that reflect the moral ambiguity of fraudulent conveyancing, which was practiced by unscrupulous debtors but also by those unfairly oppressed by power. The book starts by showing that the language and plot of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor continually refers to this cultural practice that English society came to grips with during the period 1571-1601. The second chapter looks at the social, political, and economic climate in which Parliament in 1571 passed 13 Eliz. 5, and argues that the law, which may have been used to oppress Catholics, was probably passed to promote business. The Sidney chapter shows that Henry Sidney, as governor of Ireland (a site of religious oppression), and his son Philip were, surprisingly, on the side of the fraudulent conveyors, both in practice and imaginatively (Sidney's Arcadia is the first of several works to associate fraudulent conveyancing with the abduction of women). The fourth chapter shows that Edmund Spenser, who as an official in Ireland rails against fraudulent conveyors, nonetheless includes a balanced assessment of several forms of the practice in The Faerie Queene. Chapter five shows how Sir Edward Coke's use of narrative in Twyne's Case (1601) helped settle the issue of intentionality left open by the parliamentary statute. The final chapter reveals how the penalty clause of the Elizabethan law accounts for the punishment Portia imposes on Shylock at the end of The Merchant of Venice. The real strength of the book lies in Ross's provocative readings of individual cases, which will be of great use to literary critics wrestling with the applications of legal theory to the interpretation of individual texts. This study connects a major development in the law to the literature of the period, one that makes a contribution not only to the law but also to literary studies and political and social history.

At the intersections of early modern literature and history, Shakespeare and Women's Studies, Midwiving Subjects explores how Shakespearean drama and contemporary medical, religious and popular texts figured the midwife as a central producer of the body's cultural markers. In addition to attending most Englishwomen's births and testifying to their in extremis confessions about paternity, the midwife allegedly controlled the size of one's tongue and genitals at birth and was obligated to perform virginity exams, impotence tests and emergency baptisms. The signs of purity and masculinity, paternity and salvation were inherently open to interpretation, yet early modern culture authorized midwives to generate and announce them. Midwiving Subjects, then, challenges recent studies that read the midwife as a woman whose power was limited to a marginal and unruly birthroom community and instead uncovers the midwife's foundational role, not only in the rituals of reproduction, but in the process of cultural production itself. As a result of recent changes in managed healthcare and of increased attention to uncovering histories of women's experiences, midwives - past and present - are currently a subject of great interest. This book will appeal to readers interested in Shakespeare as well as the history of women and medicine.

This stimulating and accessible book is intended for instructors at the junior high school, high school, and undergraduate levels who present Shakespeare's most familiar tragedies to students who are largely unfamiliar with them. Acclaimed teacher of drama Victor L. Cahn begins with a general introduction, then examines six of Shakespeare's tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. With attention always directed towards inspiring student interest and response, Professor Cahn provides an overview or "spine" for each work, then proceeds scene by scene, focusing on salient characters, details of language, and major themes. The volume not only is entertaining and clear, but also raises provocative points of interpretation as well as numerous questions for discussion. Underlying the project is the conviction that although the plays are most effective in performance, they can nonetheless prove compelling in the classroom, where students can appreciate that although these works are set in a distant time and place, their issues and implications remain universal.

How do you pronounce words like zounds, Milan, housewife and hundreds of other words in Shakespeare's plays? In this ingenious book, Dale Coye provides a guide to each significant word, line-by-line, scene-by-scene, in eighteen of Shakespeare's most popular plays. More than a simple pronouncing dictionary, Pronouncing Shakespeare's Words pays attention to scansion, displays alternative pronunciations in different centuries and geographical areas, and provides a simple pronunciation guide requiring no knowledge of lexicographic symbols.
Now available in an affordable paperback edition, Pronouncing Shakespeare's Words will become a vade mecum^n (pronounced VAH-day MAY-cum) for actors, students, and general readers of Shakespeare.