Canadians have enjoyed a long history of encounters with Shakespeare, from the visual arts to creative new adaptations, from traditional and nontraditional interpretations to distinguished critical scholarship. We have in over two centuries remade Shakespeare in ways that are distinctly Canadian. The Oxford Shakespeare Made in Canada series offers a unique vantage on these histories of production and encounter with attention to accessibility and presentation. These editions explore how a given country can inform the interpretation and pedagogy associated with individual plays. Canadians, or more properly British North Americans from both Upper and Lower Canada, have been interacting with Shakespeare since no less than the 1760s in a tradition that is at once rich and robust, indigenous and international. The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare project at the University of Guelph has created a multimedia database of hundreds of adaptations, developed from Guelph's world-class theatre archives and a host of independent sources that reflect on a long tradition - from pre-Confederation times and heading vibrantly into the future - of playing Shakespeare in Canada.These are the first editions of the plays of William Shakespeare to place key insights from the world's best scholarship alongside the specific contexts associated with a dynamic Canadian tradition of productions and adaptations. Specially research images, never printed before, from a range of Canadian productions of Shakespeare will be featured in every play In additional to a scholarly edition of the playtext complete with original new annotation, these books will include both short introductions by noted scholars and prefaces by well-known Canadians who have experience with Shakespeare. In addition, each play will include act and scene summaries, dramatis personal, and recommended reading/resources.

This volume is the only publication available of the fully annotated playscripts of Wells' W.P.A Federal Theatre Project and Mercury Theatre adaptations, including the "Voodoo" Macbeth, the modern-dress Julius Caesar and Welles' compilation of history plays, Five Kings.

The plays of Shakespeare are filled with ghosts - and ghost writing. Shakespeare's Ghost Writers is an examination of the authorship controversy surrounding Shakespeare: the claim made repeatedly that the plays were ghost written. Ghosts take the form of absences, erasures, even forgeries and signatures - metaphors extended to include Shakespeare himself and his haunting of us, and in particular theorists such Derrida, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud - the figure of Shakespeare constantly made and remade by contemporary culture. Marjorie Garber, one of the most eminent Shakespearean theorists writing today, asks what is at stake in the imputation that "Shakespeare" did not write the plays, and shows that the plays themselves both thematize and theorize that controversy. This Routledge Classics edition contains a new preface and new chapter by the author.

This third edition of Othello offers a completely new introduction by Christina Luckyj, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of early modern theatre and culture, and demonstrating how careful attention to Shakespeare's language, staging and dramaturgy can open up fresh interpretations of the play. Tracing critical and performance trends up to the present day, Luckyj shows how the drama taps into contemporary cultural paradoxes surrounding blackness, marriage, and politics to create a powerful double perspective, illuminating the creative and destructive power of stories and of human love itself. Supplemented by an updated reading list and extensive illustrations, this edition also features revised commentary notes, offering the very best in contemporary criticism of this great tragedy.

The 'riotous, insanely readable' (Observer) retelling of The Tempest from the 2019 Booker Prize-winning author of THE TESTAMENTS. 'Riotous, insanely readable and just the best fun...'Observer Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other. It will boost his reputation. It will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. Also brewing revenge. After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall? **LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017**

Throughout his plays, Shakespeare placed an extraordinary emphasis on the power of the face to reveal or conceal moral character and emotion, repeatedly inviting the audience to attend carefully to facial features and expressions. The essays collected here disclose that an attention to the power of the face in Shakespeare's England helps explain moments when Shakespeare's language of the self becomes intertwined with his language of the face. As the range of these essays demonstrates, an attention to Shakespeare's treatment of faces has implications for our understanding of the historical and cultural context in which he wrote, as well as the significance of the face for the ongoing interpretation and production of the plays. Engaging with a variety of critical strands that have emerged from the so-called turn to the body, the contributors to this volume argue that Shakespeare's invitation to look to the face for clues to inner character is not an invitation to seek a static text beneath an external image, but rather to experience the power of the face to initiate reflection, judgment, and action. The evidence of the plays suggests that Shakespeare understood that this experience was extremely complex and mysterious. By turning attention to the face, the collection offers important new analyses of a key feature of Shakespeare's dramatic attention to the part of the body that garnered the most commentary in early modern England. By bringing together critics interested in material culture studies with those focused on philosophies of self and other and historians and theorists of performance, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face constitutes a significant contribution to our growing understanding of attitudes towards embodiment in Shakespeare's England.

"Shakespeare, Spencer and the Matter of Britain" examines the work of two of the most important English Renaissance authors in terms of the cultural, social and political contexts of early modern Britain. Andrew Hadfield demonstrates that the poetry of Edmund Spenser and the plays of William Shakespeare demand to be read in terms of an expanding Elizabethan and Jacobean culture in which a dominant English identity had to come to terms with the Irish, Scots and Welsh who were now also subjects of the crown.

In their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that very few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeareas strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as akingmakera. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of both performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.

First published in 1978.
In this study, Shakespeare's own life story and the development of English theatrical history are placed in the wider context of Elizabethan and Jacobean times, but the works themselves are the final objective of this 'applied biography'. The main contention of the book is that Shakespeare's life was the lure of the stage itself which inspired him to transform what everyday life provided into the worlds of Hamlet, King Lear and Prospero.

Witchcraft: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introduction to the scholarly study of witchcraft, exploring the phenomenon of witchcraft from its earliest definitions in the Middle Ages through to its resonances in the modern world. Through the use of two case studies, this book delves into the emergence of the witch as a harmful figure within western thought and traces the representation of witchcraft throughout history, analysing the roles of culture, religion, politics, gender and more in the evolution and enduring role of witchcraft.

Key topics discussed within the book include:　

The role of language in creating and shaping the concept of witchcraft

The laws and treatises written against witchcraft

The representation of witchcraft in early modern literature

The representation of witchcraft in recent literature, TV and film

Scholarly approaches to witchcraft through time

The relationship between witchcraft and paganism

With an extensive further reading list, summaries and questions to consider at the end of each chapter, Witchcraft: The Basics is an ideal introduction for anyone wishing to learn more about this controversial issue in human culture, which is still very much alive today.　

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One The early modern context: a case study of early modern Britain

Chapter Two The seventeenth and early eighteenth century context: America as the major case study

Chapter Three Witchcraft in early modern literature: "the witchcraft renaissance"

Chapter Four Witchcraft Studies

Chapter Five Witchcraft Today: Religious Redefinitions

Chapter Six Reinventing the good witch

Further Study Reading List

Index

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This joyous play, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up his stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill. Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, living on an enchanted island, has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore--as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda, with an eminently suitable young prince, and, more important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.

Professor Mahood's book has established itself as a classic in the field, not so much because of the ingenuity with which she reads Shakespeare's quibbles, but because her elucidation of pun and wordplay is intelligently related both to textual readings and dramatic significance.' - Revue des Langues Vivantes

Should we assume that people who lived some time ago were quite similar to us or should we assume that they need to be thought of as alien beings with whom we have little in common? This specially commissioned collection explores this important issue through an analysis of the lives and work of a number of significant early modern writers. Shakespeare is analysed in a number of essays as authors ask whether we can learn anything about his life from reading the Sonnets and Hamlet. Other essays explore the first substantial autobiography in English, that of the musician and poet, Thomas Wythorne (1528-96); the representation of the self in Holbein's great painting, The Ambassadors; whether we have a window into men's and women's souls when we read their intimate personal correspondence; and whether modern studies that wish to recapture the intentions and inner thoughts of early modern people who left writings behind are valuable aids to interpreting the past. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

First Published in 1999. This is Volume II of a collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean Journals from 1595 to 1598 and records 'those things most talked about during those years'.

Titus Andronicus is one of Shakespeare's earliest and bloodiest tragedies and was hugely successful in his lifetime. Subsequent generations have struggled with its bold confrontation of violence but in the 20th and 21st centuries the play has chimed with audiences again, perhaps because of its simultaneously shocking and playful approach to violent revenge and bodily mutilation. Jonathan Bate's original Arden edition was first published in 1995 and has had a significant influence on how the play has been performed and studied in the past 20 years. This revised edition includes a new 10,000 word introductory essay in which Bate reassess his views on the play's co-authorship with George Peele in the light of contemporary textual scholarship and updates his lively account of the play's performance history, on the international stage and screen. With detailed on-page commentary notes this will continue to be the edition of choice for students, scholars and theatre-makers.

The guild buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford represent a rare instance of a largely unchanged set of buildings which draw together the threads of the town's civic life. With its multi-disciplinary perspectives on this remarkable group of buildings, this volume provides a comprehensive account of the religious, educational, legal, social and theatrical history of Stratford, focusing on the sixteenth century and Tudor Reformation. The essays interweave with one another to provide a map of the complex relationships between the buildings and their history. Opening with an investigation of the Guildhall, which served as the headquarters of the Guild of the Holy Cross until the Tudor Reformation, the book explores the building's function as a centre of local government and community law and as a place of entertainment and education. It is beyond serious doubt that Shakespeare was a school boy here, and the many visits to the Guildhall by professional touring players during the latter half of the sixteenth-century may have prompted his acting and playwriting career. The Guildhall continues to this day to house a school for the education of secondary-level boys. The book considers educational provision during the mid sixteenth century as well as examining the interaction between touring players and the everyday politics and social life of Stratford. At the heart of the volume is archaeological and documentary research which uses up-to-date analysis and new dendrochronological investigations to interpret the buildings and their medieval wall paintings as well as proposing a possible location of the school before it transferred to the Guildhall. Together with extensive archival research into the town's Court of Record which throws light on the commercial and social activities of the period, this rich body of research brings us closer to life as it was lived in Shakespeare's Stratford.

This book explores the life experiences of children who are born with a variety of medical or physical disorders. It provides an integration of scientific and personal perspectives on such conditions. In accounting for both outcomes, it suggests how the social responses of others (family, friends, and professionals) may foster resilience as well as risk. It also describes the results of an intervention that facilitates the more positive experiences of such children early in life.

These popular editions allow the reader and student to look beyond the scholarly reading text to the more sensuous, more collaborative, more malleable performance text which emerges in conjunction with the commentary and notes. Each note, each gloss, each commentary reflects the stage life of the play with constant reference to the challenge of the text in performance. Readers will not only discover an enlivened Shakespeare, they will be empowered to rehearse and direct their own productions of the imagination in the process. Shakespeare's shortest play tells the story of Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus, who, fearing the possibility of a dictator-led empire, betrays Caesar to protect Rome. Little does he know that Cassius has been holding the strings, manipulating Brutus into exploiting Caesar's weakness and removing him from power with the help of fellow conspirers. Contemplating motives for murder, national allegiance, and divine right, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is a unique look at the true events surrounding Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!' Epic and tragic in its scope, King Lear explores a king's demise into madness and insanity when he is betrayed by two of his manipulative and scheming daughters. It is Cordelia, the third and only daughter who refuses to flatter her father to deceive, who is banished from the kingdom, leading to dramatic and tumultuous events.

With an Introduction by Tim Cook. Shakespeare's sonnets have an intensity of both feeling and meaning unmatched in English sonnet form. They divide into two parts; the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a fair youth for whom the poet has an obsessive love and the second chronicles his love for the notorious 'Dark Lady'. In addition to the sonnets, this volume includes Shakespeare's two lengthy narrative poems on classical themes, The Rape of Lucrece which looks forward to the dark imagery of Macbeth, and Venus and Adonis which mixes ribaldry and tragedy in unique Shakespearean manner. The Phoenix and the Turtle is a beautiful metaphysical and allegorical short elegy, and takes its place with Shakespeare's better-known poetry.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Bianca is beautiful and demure, with a plethora of wood-be suitors, but marriage is forbidden until her older sister Katherina finds a suitable match. The hitch? Fiery Katherina has sworn to deny the hand or demands of any would-be suitor. That is, until she meets her match in the wily Petrucio. As Katherina's own sharp tongue is met by Petrucio's feigned cruelty, the 'shrew' apparently capitulates. Or does she? This controversial comic tale, famously adapted into Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate and 10 Things I Hate About You, has divided and amused audiences for over 400 years in an unforgettable battle of wits.

While Robert Greene was the most prolific and perhaps the most notorious professional writer in Elizabethan England, he continues to be best known for his 1592 quip comparing Shakespeare to "an upstart crow." In his short twelve-year career, Greene wrote dozens of popular pamphlets in a variety of genres and numerous professional plays. At his premature death in 1592, he was a bonafide London celebrity, simultaneously maligned as Grub-Street profligate and celebrated as literary prodigy. The present volume constitutes the first collection of Greene's reception both in the early modern period and in our present era, offering in its poems, prose passages, essays, and chapters that which is most singular among what has been written about Greene and his work. It also includes a complete list of Greene's contemporary reception until 1640. Kirk Melnikoff's wide-ranging and revisionist introduction organizes this reception generically while at the same time situating it in the context of recent critical methodologies.

The current surge of interest in the Elizabethan poet, dramatist, prose-writer and critic, Thomas Nashe, follows years of neglect or undisguised hostility. Yet, as early allusions testify, Nashe was a name which imposed itself on contemporary culture. Nashe annoyed and even disturbed his contemporaries, but they certainly paid attention to him because he pioneered new approaches to writing, and indeed to living, and because he was an astute critic. The essays in this volume have been chosen for the skill with which they present diverse approaches to key issues in Nashe. All Nashe's texts are covered, as are his relationships with contemporaries, like Shakespeare. The introduction analyses different approaches, locating them in the history of Nashe criticism, and suggests areas for future research. It argues that Nashe's importance to Renaissance studies lies in his anomalousness, as he forces us to rethink the Renaissance. He makes the Renaissance unfamiliar again, and pushes criticism out of its comfort zone.

First published in 1961. This study analyses Shakespeare's treatment of the universal themes of Beauty, Love and Time. He compares Shakespeare with other great poets and sonnet writers - Pindar, Horace and Ovid, with Petrarch, Tasso and Ronsart, with Shakespeare's own English predecessors and contemporaries, notably Spenser, Daniel and Drayton and with John Donne. By discussing their resemblances and differences, a not altogether orthodox picture of Shakespeare's attitude to life is presented, which suggests that he was not as phlegmatic and equable a person as critics have often supposed.

First published in 1987. Often the best known and most memorable passages in Shakespeare's plays, the soliloquies, also tend to be the focal points in the drama. Twenty-seven soliloquies are examined in this work, illustrating how the spectator or reader is led to the soliloquy and how the drama is continued afterwards. The detailed structure of each soliloquy is discussed, as well as examining them within the structure of the entire play - thereby extending the interpretation of the work as a whole.