Cross-gender performance was an integral part of Shakespearean theatre: from boys portraying his female characters, to those characters disguising themselves as men within the story. This book examines contemporary trends in staging cross-gender performances of Shakespeare in the UK and USA. Terri Power surveys the field of gender in performance through an intersectional feminist and queer theoretical lens. In depth discussions of key productions reveal processes adapted by companies for their performances. The book also looks at how contemporary performance responds to new cultural politics of gender and creates a critical language for understanding that within Shakespeare. This book features: - First-hand interviews with professional artists - Case studies of individual performances - A practical workshop section with innovative exercises

Charting the early dissemination of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries in the 19th century, this opens up an area of global Shakespeare studies that has received little attention to date. With case studies exploring the earliest translations of Hamlet into Danish; the first translation of Macbeth and the differing translations of Hamlet into Swedish; adaptations into Finnish; Kierkegaard's re-working of King Lear, and the reception of the African-American actor Ira Aldridge's performances in Stockholm as Othello and Shylock, it will appeal to all those interested in the reception of Shakespeare and its relationship to the political and social conditions. The volume intervenes in the current discussion of global Shakespeare and more recent concepts like 'rhizome', which challenge the notion of an Anglocentric model of 'centre' versus 'periphery'. It offers a new assessment of these notions, revealing how the dissemination of Shakespeare is determined by a series of local and frequently interlocking centres and peripheries, such as the Finnish relation to Russia or the Norwegian relation with Sweden, rather than a matter of influence from the English Cultural Sphere.

Although psychoanalytic criticism of Shakespeare is a prominent and prolific field of scholarship, the analytic methods and tools, theories, and critics who apply the theories have not been adequately assessed. This book fills that gap. It surveys the psychoanalytic theorists who have had the most impact on studies of Shakespeare, clearly explaining the fundamental developments and concepts of their theories, providing concise definitions of key terminology, describing the inception and evolution of different schools of psychoanalysis, and discussing the relationship of psychoanalytic theory (especially in Shakespeare) to other critical theories. It chronologically surveys the major critics who have applied psychoanalysis to their readings of Shakespeare, clarifying the theories they are enlisting; charting the inception, evolution, and interaction of their approaches; and highlighting new meanings that have resulted from such readings. It assesses the applicability of psychoanalytic theory to Shakespeare studies and the significance and value of the resulting readings.

This book offers the term "ecophobia" as a way of understanding and organizing representations of contempt for the natural world. Estok argues that this vocabulary is both necessary to the developing area of ecocritical studies and for understandings of the representations of "Nature" in Shakespeare. Engaging close readings with theoretical sophistication make this book a path-breaking contribution to both Shakespearean scholarship and the burgeoning field of ecocriticism.

A revealing examination of an under-explored area of Shakespeare studies, this work looks at the evidence for the author's deep and evolving response to the loss of his only son, Hamnet. Although many commentators have been intrigued by the possible effects of the death of Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, on the writer, Shakespeare and Son: A Journey in Writing and Grieving is the first full-length study examining the evidence that Shakespeare's later work was deeply involved with this loss. The book is also the first full-length study to explore Shakespeare's works in light of the psychology of grief, combining psychological insights with literary analysis. Specifically, the book explores 20 plays from all parts of Shakespeare's career, concentrating on works known to definitely have been written after Hamnet's death, especially Much ado About Nothing, Henry the Fourth Part 2, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. Examining various manifestations of grief in the plays, such as anger, depression, guilt, and hope, author Keverne Smith argues that the evidence of Shakespeare's grief is cumulative and evident in repeated structures and patterns in plays written over a period of 14 to 15 years. Discussion of 20 of Shakespeare's works, concentrating on 16 works completed after his son Hamnet's death in 1596 Chronological organization so readers can follow the development of Shakespeare's response to the death of Hamnet as reflected in the plays and poetry written following this tragedy A cross-disciplinary bibliography, drawing especially on literary, theatrical, historical, thanatological, and psychological commentaries

"Shakespeare and Character "brings together leading scholars in theory, literary criticism, and performance studies in order to redress a serious gap in Shakespeare studies and to put character back at the centre of our understanding of Shakespeare's achievement as an artist and thinker.

A study of distinct forms of mass violence, the narratives each kind demands, and the collective identities constructed from and upon these, this book focuses around readings of popular and influential novels such as Toni Morrisons "Beloved," Amy Tans "The Joy Luck Club" and Isabel Allendes "The House of Spirits."

David Hillman's new book focuses on a vital area of contemporary Renaissance scholarship - that of Early Modern notions of embodiment and selfhood. The book imagines the Shakespearean corpus from the inside out: it explores the preoccupation with the body's interior spaces in several of Shakespeare's plays, focussing on how these plays address questions of knowledge and acknowledgement: on the ways characters imagine being within the body of the other, or having one's own body inhabited or possessed by another.

In this beautifully illustrated book, one of the foremost Shakespeareans of our time explores the ways in which Shakespeare has been imagined from his time to ours. In a penetrating series of interpretations, Stephen Orgel explores the ironies and paradoxes that have characterized the reconstruction of Shakespeare's texts, his image, the staging and illustration of his plays over the past four centuries, as he is perennially reinvented for new cultural ends. Drawing on performance history, textual history, and the visual arts (including a fascinating chapter on portraiture), Imagining Shakespeare displays throughout the cultural versatility, elegance, lucidity, and wit which have become the hallmarks of Orgel's style.

Shakespeare in China provides English language readers with a comprehensive sense of China's past and on-going encounter with Shakespeare. It offers a detailed history of twentieth-century Sino-Shakespeare from the beginnings to 1949, followed by more recent accounts of the playwright in the People's Republic, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The study pays particular attention to translation, criticism and theatrical productions and highlights Shakespeare's fate during the turbulent political times of modern China. Chapters on Shakespeare and Confucius and The Paradox of Shakespeare in the New China consider the playwright in the context of 'old' and 'new' Chinese ideologies. Bringing together hard to find materials in both English and Chinese, it builds upon and extends past research on its subject.

Shakespeare / Nature sets new agendas for the study of nature in Shakespeare's work. Offering an expansive exploration of the intersections between the human and non-human worlds, chapters by 19 experts focus on the rich and persuasive language of nature, both as organic matter and cultural conditioning. Each chapter is grounded in a close reading of Shakespeare's plays and poems and among the many themes considered are natural theology in Macbeth; the influence of the stars in Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth; monstrous bodies in Richard III and The Tempest; kinship in King Henry V; places and spaces in Love's Labour's Lost, and acting sex scenes in a range of plays including Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Approaching ‘Nature’ in all its diversity, this collection explores the multifaceted and complex ways in which the human and non-human worlds intersect and the development of a language of symbiosis that attempts to both control as well as create the terms of human authority. It offers an entirely new approach to the subject of nature, bringing together divergent approaches that have previously been pursued independently so as to explore their shared investment in the intersections between the human and non-human worlds and how these discourses shape and condition the emotional, organic, cultural, and psychological landscapes of Shakespeare’s play world. Contributors approach Shakespeare’s nature through the various lenses of philosophy, historicism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, cosmography, geography, sexuality, linguistics, environmentalism, feminism and robotics to provide new and nuanced readings of the intersectional terms of both meaning and matter.

In the thirty years since the
publication of Stephen Greenblatt's "Renaissance Self-Fashioning"
overthrew traditional modes of Shakespeare criticism, New Historicism and Cultural
Materialism have rapidly become the dominant modes for studying and writing
about the Bard. This comprehensive guide introduces students to the key
writers, texts and ideas of contemporary Shakespeare criticism and alternatives
to new historicist and cultural materialist approaches suggested by a range of
dissenters including evolutionary critics, historical formalists and advocates
of 'the new aestheticism', and the more politically active presentists.
"Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory" covers such topics as:
The key theoretical
influences on new historicism including Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser.
The major critics, from Stephen Greenblatt to Jonathan Dollimore and Alan
Sinfield.
Dissenting views from traditional critics and contemporary theorists.
Chapter summaries and questions for discussion throughout encourage students to
critically engage with contemporary Shakespeare theory for themselves. The book
includes a 'Who's Who' of major critics, a timeline of key publications and a
glossary of essential critical terms to give students and teachers easy access
to essential information.

Shakespeare lived his professional life amid the London streets and died a prominent figure in the town of Stratford. The language of his plays is shot through with the concerns of London "freemen" and their wives, the diverse commercial class that nevertheless excluded adult immigrants from country towns and northern Europe alike. This book combines London historiography, close reading, and recent theories of citizen subjectivity to demonstrate for the first time that Shakespeare's plays embody citizen and alien identities despite their aristocratic settings. The book points out where the city shadows the country scenes of the major comedies, shows how London's trades animate the "civil butchery" of the history plays, and explains why England's metropolis becomes the fractured Rome of tragedy.

This collection offers an overview of the ways in which space has become relevant to the study of Shakespearean drama and theatre. It distinguishes various facets of space, such as structural aspects of dramatic composition, performance space and the evocation of place, linguistic, social and gendered spaces, early modern geographies, and the impact of theatrical mobility on cultural exchange and the material world. These facets of space are exemplified in individual essays. Throughout, the Shakespearean stage is conceived as a topological 'node', or interface between different times, places and people - an approach which also invokes Edward Soja's notion of 'Thirdspace' to describe the blend between the real and the imaginary characteristic of Shakespeare's multifaceted theatrical world. Part Two of the volume emphasises the theatrical mobility of Hamlet - conceptually from an anthropological perspective, and historically in the tragedy's migrations to Germany, Russia and North America.

This book is based on an edition first published in 1908 and contains not only the play written by William Shakespeare, but a wealth of other information. There is an extensive introduction by Henry Hudson, explaining, amongst other things: the sources that Shakespeare drew on, the date of composition, early editions of the play, analysis by act and scene, the versification and diction, the characters and a chronological chart of Shakespeare's life. The text itself is presented with copious numbers of footnotes, some show text variants and others are editors notes. This edition also contains two indexes, the first referencing words and phrases in the text, and the second referencing quotations from Plutarch, who was thought to be the main source that Shakespeare used for this play. This book is a great resource for the reader intent on gaining a detailed understanding of this great work by Shakespeare.

Matt Simpson adopts a thematic approach to the analysis and appreciation of one of Shakespeare's best comedies, which draws out the reality of the characters of the play, even though their setting is fantastical. The issues of wit, madness, gender, love, and deception are handled with insight.

After Robert Armin joined the Chamberlain's Men, singing in Shakespeare's dramas catapulted from 1.25 songs and 9.95 lines of singing per play to 3.44 songs and 29.75 lines of singing, a virtually unnoticed phenomenon. In addition, many of the songs became seemingly improvisatory-similar to Armin's personal style as an author and solo comedian. In order to study Armin's collaborative impact, this interdisciplinary book investigates the songs that have Renaissance music that could have been heard on Shakespeare's stage. They occur in some of Shakespeare's most famous plays, including Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and The Tempest. In fact, Shakespeare's plays, as we have them, are not complete. They are missing the music that could have accompanied the plays' songs. Significantly, Renaissance vocal music, far beyond just providing entertainment, was believed to alter the bodies and souls of both performers and auditors to agree with its characteristics, directly inciting passions from love to melancholy. By collaborating with early modern music editor and performing artist Lawrence Lipnik, Catherine Henze is able to provide new performance editions of seventeen songs, including spoken interruptions and cuts and rearrangement of the music to accommodate the dramatist's words. Next, Henze analyzes the complete songs, words and music, according to Renaissance literary and music primary sources, and applies the new information to interpretations of characters and scenes, frequently challenging commonly held literary assessments. The book is organized according to Armin's involvement with the plays, before, during, and after the comic actor joined Shakespeare's company. It offers readers the tools to interpret not only these songs, but also vocal music in dramas by other Renaissance playwrights. Moreover, Robert Armin and Shakespeare's Performed Songs, written with non-specialized terminology, provides a gateway to new areas of research and interpretation in an increasingly significant interdisciplinary field for all interested in Shakespeare and early modern drama.

This major new interdisciplinary study argues that Shakespeare exploited long-established connections between vision, space and language in order to construct rhetorical equivalents for visual perspective. Through a detailed comparison of art and poetic theory in Italy and England, Thorne shows how perspective was appropriated by English writers, who reinterpreted it to suit their own literary concerns and cultural context. Focusing on five Shakespearean plays, she situates their preoccupation with issues of viewpoint in relation to a range of artistic forms and topics from miniatures to masques.

"Shakespeare's Culture in Modern Performance" is an original study at the interface of a historicizing literary criticism and the study of modern performance. In a critical climate that views the cultural object of performance as authentic in itself, is there any point in exploring a script's original history? The writer argues for a dialogic understanding of Shakespeare's plays in performance relative to unresolved issues of modernity, in a study of modern productions on stage and screen.

A former Associate Director for London's National Theatre invites readers to behold the fuller meaning of Shakespearean text as played, inviting them to seek their insights in Shakespeare's natural habitat: the stage. Includes considerations of recent productions at the Hartford Stage, Theatre for a New Audience, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.

This book explores how Shakespeare uses images of dreams and sleep to define his dramatic worlds. Surveying Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, histories, and late plays, it argues that Shakespeare systematically exploits early modern physiological, religious, and political understandings of dreams and sleep in order to reshape conventions of dramatic genre, and to experiment with dream-inspired plots. The book discusses the significance of dreams and sleep in early modern culture, and explores the dramatic opportunities that this offered to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It also offers new insights into how Shakespeare adapted earlier literary models of dreams and sleep - including those found in classical drama, in medieval dream visions, and in native English dramatic traditions. The book appeals to academics, students, teachers, and practitioners in the fields of literature, drama, and cultural history, as well as to general readers interested in Shakespeare's works and their cultural context.

This book shows that Shakespeare continues to influence contemporary Irish literature, through postcolonial, dramaturgical, epistemological and narratological means. International critics examine a range of contemporary writers including Eavan Boland, Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, John McGahern, Frank McGuinness, Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon, and explore Shakespeare's tragedies, histories and comedies, as well as his sonnets. Together, the chapters demonstrate that Shakespeare continues to exert a pressure on Irish writing into the twenty-first century, sometimes because of and sometimes in spite of the fact that his writing is inextricably tied to the Elizabethan and Jacobean colonization of Ireland. Contemporary Irish writers appropriate, adopt, adapt and strategize through their engagements with Shakespeare, and indeed through his own engagement with the world around him four hundred years ago.

Writers, playwrights and philosophers have alike been fascinated by Shakespeare's Cleopatra. The contradictions in her character, said the writer Anna Jameson, fuse "into one brilliant impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy sorcery". When Henry James sought to suggest the charm cast over an impressionable but repressed American by a glamorous Parisian countess, it was Cleopatra's "infinite variety" to which he had recourse. There are two obvious reasons, says Adrian Poole, why the play has enjoyed a great leap in popularity and interest since the early 20th century. One is changing attitudes to gender and sexuality, and the relaxing of some of the taboos impeding the liberation of women from the confinements and distinctions in force at least since the Restoration. The other is changing conceptions of theatre. The advent of cinema encouraged lighter, swifter and more flexible forms of staging. One can scarcely think of a Shakespeare play that benefits more from such a liberation. But there are other less obvious reasons. One is the opposition between love and romance on the one hand and politics and war on the other - the play's complex re-working of some age-old myths about Venus and Mars. As our own media daily insist, at least in the anglophone world, the love-affairs of the top dogs are matters of public interest. The fate of all those men and women sacrificed "to solder up the rift" between Antony and Caesar does hang on what happens, or fails to happen, behind the scenes. No play conveys this better than Antony and Cleopatra.

This book shows that William Shakespeare was a more personal writer than any of his innumerable commentators have realised. It asserts that numerous characters and events were drawn from the author's life, and puts faces to the names of Jaques, Touchstone, Feste, Jessica, the 'Dark Lady' and others. Steven Sohmer explores aspects of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets that have been hitherto overlooked or misinterpreted in an effort to better understand the man and his work. If you've ever wondered who Pigrogromitus was, or why Jaques spies on Touchstone and Audrey - or what the famous riddle M.O.A.I. stands for - this is the book for you. -- .