Gain a better understanding of human behavior by exploring thought experiments in Shakespearean plays and the historical roots of experimental psychology within early modern literature. This book combines scientific psychology with English literature to discuss thought experiments in selected Shakespeare plays and examine the central role of thought experiments in the natural sciences. Thought experiments are essential for progress in scientific research. Indeed, Albert Einstein and a number of other leading scientists relied almost exclusively on thought experiments. Thought experiments also play a pivotal role in English literature, particularly in Shakespeare plays. By focussing on thought experiments and experimental psychology's place within early modern English literature, the volume establishes a more wholistic approach to understanding human behavior.

"Sources" helps readers navigate King Lear's rich history and includes the nine essential primary sources from which Shakespeare borrowed significantly in creating his play, along with two additional likely sources. "Criticism"provides thirteen major critical interpretations and three provocative adaptations and responses to King Lear. Critical interpretation is provided by Samuel Johnson, Charles Lamb, Peter Brook, Michael Warren, Lynda E. Boose, Janet Adelman, and R. A. Foakes, among others. The adaptations and responses are by Nahum Tate, John Keats, and Edward Bond. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Set amid the gloomy castles and lonely heaths of medieval Scotland, "Macbeth" is a dark and bloody drama of ambition, murder, guilt and revenge. Goaded by his ambitious wife, Macbeth murders Duncan, King of Scotland, in order to succeed to the throne. Tortured by his conscience and fearful of discovery, the Scottish nobleman becomes tangled in a web of treachery and deceit that ultimately spells his doom. Note. Explanatory footnotes.

Brings a fresh and contemporary approach to study of classic texts and plays so will appeal to students Easy to adapt to courses as looks at canonical plays which are frequently studied (Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice) Written in a personal and accessible style so easy for readers of all levels to understand The author has a high media profile and is well-known and well-connected in the area, as well as being an award-winning academic

The Shakespearean World takes a global view of Shakespeare and his works, especially their afterlives. Constantly changing, the Shakespeare central to this volume has acquired an array of meanings over the past four centuries. "Shakespeare" signifies the historical person, as well as the plays and verse attributed to him. It also signifies the attitudes towards both author and works determined by their receptions. Throughout the book, specialists aim to situate Shakespeare's world and what the world is because of him. In adopting a global perspective, the volume arranges thirty-six chapters in five parts: Shakespeare on stage internationally since the late seventeenth century; Shakespeare on film throughout the world; Shakespeare in the arts beyond drama and performance; Shakespeare in everyday life; Shakespeare and critical practice. Through its coverage, The Shakespearean World offers a comprehensive transhistorical and international view of the ways this Shakespeare has not only influenced but has also been influenced by diverse cultures during 400 years of performance, adaptation, criticism, and citation. While each chapter is a freshly conceived introduction to a significant topic, all of the chapters move beyond the level of survey, suggesting new directions in Shakespeare studies - such as ecology, tourism, and new media - and making substantial contributions to the field. This volume is an essential resource for all those studying Shakespeare, from beginners to advanced specialists.

Bringing together current intermedial discourses on Shakespeare, music, and dance with the affective turn in the humanities, Dramaturgies of Love in Romeo and Juliet offers a unique and highly innovative transdisciplinary discussion of "unspeakable" love in one of the most famous love stories in literary history: the tragic romance of Romeo and Juliet. Through in-depth case studies and historical contextualisation, this book showcases how the "woes that no words can sound" of Shakespeare's iconic lovers nevertheless have found expression not only in his verbal poetry, but also in non-verbal adaptations of the play in 19th-century symphonic music and 20th- and 21st-century theatre dance. Combining methodological approaches from diverse disciplines, including affect theory, musicology, and dance studies, this study opens up a new perspective onto the artistic representation of love, defining amorous emotion as a generically transformative constellation of dialogic performativity. To explore how this constellation has become manifest across the arts, this book analyses and compares dramatic, musical, and choreographic dramatisations of love in William Shakespeare's early modern tragedy, French composer Hector Berlioz's dramatic symphony Romeo et Juliette (1839), and the staging of Berlioz's symphony by German contemporary choreographer Sasha Waltz for the Paris Opera Ballet (2007).

FIRST CITIZEN. Before we proceed any further, hear me speak. ALL. Speak, speak. FIRST CITIZEN. YOU are all resolv'd rather to die than to famish? ALL. Resolv'd, resolv'd. FIRST CITIZEN. First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people. ALL. We know't, we know't. FIRST CITIZEN. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is't a verdict?

The book fills a niche in early modern scholarship, no such comprehensive treatment of hobby-horse allusions was published before. Relevant dictionaries and glossaries in critical editions will be much helped by the book, because it contextualizes and often corrects traditional explanations for the word 'hobby-horse.' The comprehensive treatment of hobby-horse allusions, ranging from cultural history to theatrical, print productions and images allows for a fuller understanding of how popular culture worked in early modern England. Comparative close readings of little known and canonical plays highlight differences between types of dramaturgical composition, and such conclusions may be useful for theatre practitioners even today. The book caters for the interests of people coming from various fields: theatre, cultural history, literature, art history, folklore studies. The book is written in an accessible language, guiding the reader informatively through a lot of early modern texts and concepts.

Shakespeare and Civil Unrest in Britain and the United States extends the growing body of scholarship on Shakespeare's appropriation by examining how the plays have been invoked during periods of extreme social, political, and racial turmoil. How do the ways that Shakespeare is adapted, studied, and discussed during periods of civil conflict differ from wars between nations? And how have these conflicts, in turn, affected how Shakespeare has been understood in these two countries that, more than any others, continue to be deeply shaped by Shakespeare's complex, enduring, and multivalent legacy? The essays in this volume collectively disclose a fascinating genealogy of how Shakespeare became a dynamic presence in factional discourse and explore the "war of words" that has accompanied civil wars and other instances of domestic disturbance. Whether as part of violent confrontations, mutinies, rebellions, or within the universal struggle for civil rights, Shakespeare's repeated appearance during such turbulent moments is more than mere historical coincidence. Rather, its inflections on the contested meanings of citizenship, community, and political legitimacy demonstrate the generative influence of the plays on our understanding of internecine strife in both countries.

A modern-day Taming of the Shrew that concludes at a high school prom. An agoraphobic Olivia from Twelfth Night sending video dispatches from her bedroom. A time-traveling teenager finding romance in the house of Capulet. Shakespeare and Girls' Studies posits that Shakespeare in popular culture is increasingly becoming the domain of the adolescent girl, and engages the interdisciplinary field of Girls' Studies to analyze adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare's plays in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Through chapters on film, television, young adult fiction, and web series aimed at girl readers and audiences, this volume explores the impact of girl cultures and concerns on Shakespeare's afterlife in popular culture and the classroom. Shakespeare and Girls' Studies argues that girls hold a central place in Shakespearean adaptation, and that studying Shakespeare through the lens of contemporary girlhoods can generate new approaches to Renaissance literature as well as popular culture aimed at girls and young people of marginalized genders. Drawing on contemporary cultural discourses ranging from Abstinence-Only Sex Education and Shakespeare in the US Common Core to rape culture and coming out, this book addresses the overlap between Shakespeare's timeless girl heroines and modern popular cultures that embrace figures like Juliet and Ophelia to understand and validate the experiences of girls. Shakespeare and Girls' Studies theorizes Shakespeare's past and present cultural authority as part of an intersectional approach to adaptation in popular culture.

Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos: Person, Audience, Language breaks new ground in providing a sustained, demystifying treatment of its subject and looking for answers to basic questions regarding the creation, experience, aesthetics and philosophy of Shakespearean sublimity. More specifically, it explores how Shakespeare generates experiences of sublime pathos, for which audiences have been prepared by the sublime ethos described in the companion volume, Shakespeare's Sublime Ethos. To do so, it examines Shakespeare's model of mutualistic character, in which "entangled" language brokers a psychic communion between fictive persons and real-life audiences and readers. In the process, Sublime Critical platitudes regarding Shakespeare's liberating ambiguity and invention of the human are challenged, while the sympathetic imagination is reinstated as the linchpin of the playwright's sublime effects. As the argument develops, the Shakespearean sublime emerges as an emotional state of vulnerable exhilaration leading to an ethically uplifting openness towards others and an epistemologically bracing awareness of human unknowability. Taken together, Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos and Shakespeare's Sublime Ethos show how Shakespearean drama integrates matter and spirit on hierarchical planes of cognition and argue that, ultimately, his is an immanent sublimity of the here-and-now enfolding a transcendence which may be imagined, simulated or evoked, but never achieved.

Shakespearean Drama, Disability, and the Filmic Stare synthesizes Laura Mulvey's male gaze and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's stare into a new critical lens, the filmic stare, in order to understand and analyze the visual construction of disability in adaptations of Shakespearean drama. The book explores the intersections of adaptation studies, film studies, Shakespeare studies, and disability studies to analyze twentieth and twenty-first century representations of both physical disability and 'madness' in global cinematic film, television film, and digital broadcast cinema in Shakespeare's works. Shakespearean Drama, Disability, and the Filmic Stare argues that the filmic stare does not differentiate between male and female characters with disabilities, or between powerful and powerless figures in disability representation. This multi-disciplinary volume is ideal for disability studies scholars, Shakespeare scholars, and those interested in adaptations of Shakespeare's famous works.

This innovative work challenges normative binaries in contemporary translation studies and applies frameworks from queer historiography to the discipline in order to explore shifting perceptions of same-sex love and desire in translations and retranslations of William Shakespeare's Sonnets. The book brings together perspectives from poststructuralism, queer theory, and translation history to set the stage for an in-depth exploration of a series of retranslations of the Sonnets from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The complex and poetic language of the Sonnets, frequently built around era-specific idioms and allusions, has produced a number of different interpretations of the work over the centuries, but questions remain as to how the translation process may omit, retain, or enhance elements of same-sex love in retranslated works across time and geographical borders. In focusing on target cultures which experienced dramatic sociopolitical changes over the course of the twentieth century and comparing retranslations originating from these contexts, Spisiakova finds the ideal backdrop in which to draw parallels between changing developments in power and social structures and shifting translation strategies related to the representation of gender identities and sexual orientations beyond what is perceived to be normative. In so doing, the book advocates for a queer perspective on the study of translation history and encourages questioning traditional boundaries prevalent in the discipline, making this key reading for students and researchers in translation studies, queer theory, and gender studies, as well as those interested in historical developments in Central and Eastern Europe.

Starting from the early modern presumption of the incorporation of role with authority, Jean Lambert explores male teachers as representing and engaging with types of authority in English plays and dramatic entertainments by Shakespeare and his contemporaries from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century. This book examines these theatricalized portraits in terms of how they inflect aspects of humanist educational culture and analyzes those ideas and practices of humanist pedagogy that carry implications for the traditional foundations of authority. Teachers in Early Modern English Drama is a fascinating study through two centuries of teaching Shakespeare and his contemporaries and will be a valuable resource for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama, writing, and culture.

Written by an international group of highly regarded scholars and rooted in the field of intermedial approaches to literary studies, this volume explores the complex aesthetic process of "picturing" in early modern English literature. The essays in this volume offer a comprehensive and varied picture of the relationship between visual and verbal in the early modern period, while also contributing to the understanding of the literary context in which Shakespeare wrote. Using different methodological approaches and taking into account a great variety of texts, including Elizabethan sonnet sequences, metaphysical poetry, famous as well as anonymous plays, and court masques, the book opens new perspectives on the literary modes of "picturing" and on the relationship between this creative act and the tense artistic, religious and political background of early modern Europe. The first section explores different modes of looking at works of art and their relation with technological innovations and religious controversies, while the chapters in the second part highlight the multifaceted connections between European visual arts and English literary production. The third section explores the functions performed by portraits on the page and the stage, delving into the complex question of the relationship between visual and verbal representation. Finally, the chapters in the fourth section re-appraise early modern reflections on the relationship between word and image and on their respective power in light of early-seventeenth-century visual culture, with particular reference to the masque genre.

Since young male players were the norm during the English Renaissance, were all cross-dressed performances of female characters played with the same degree of seriousness? Probably not. Spectrums of Representation in Shakespearean Crossdressing examines these varied types of female characters in English Renaissance drama, drawing from a range of play texts themselves in order to investigate if evidence exists for varying performance practices for male-to-female crossdressing. This book argues for a reading of the representation of female characters on the English Renaissance stage that not only suggests categorizing crossdressing along a spectrum of theatrical artifice, but also explores how this range of artifice enriches our understanding of the plays. The scholarship surrounding cross-dressing rarely makes this distinction, since in our study of early modern plays we tend to accept as a matter of course that all crossdressing was essentially the same. The basis of Spectrums of Representation in Shakespearean Crossdressing is that it was not.

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic contests and in its recurrent linkage to national defence; the extent to which magic can trope other concerns, and what these might be; and how magic is staged and what the representational strategies and techniques might mean. The essays range widely over both canonical plays-Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Doctor Faustus, Bartholomew Fair-and notably less canonical ones such as The Birth of Merlin, Fedele and Fortunio, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Devil is an Ass, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch of Edmonton, putting the two groups into dialogue with each other and also exploring ways in which they can be profitably related to contemporary cases or accusations of witchcraft. Attending to the representational strategies and self-conscious intertextuality of the plays as well as to their treatment of their subject matter, the essays reveal the plays they discuss as actively intervening in contemporary debates about witchcraft and magic in ways which themselves effect transformation rather than simply discussing it. At the heart of all the essays lies an interest in the transformative power of magic, but collectively they show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects or even to the subjects of magic, but that the plays themselves can be seen as working to bring about change in the ways that they challenge contemporary assumptions and stereotypes.

Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism examines Shakespeare in relation to ongoing conversations that interrogate the vulnerability of Black and brown people amid oppressive structures that aim to devalue their worth. By focusing on the way these individuals are racialized, politicized, policed, and often violated in our contemporary world, it casts light on dimensions of Shakespeare's work that afford us a better understanding of our ethical responsibilities in the face of such brutal racism. Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism is divided into seven short chapters that cast light on contemporary issues regarding racism in our day. Some salient topics that these chapters address include the murder of unarmed Black men and women, the militarization of the U.S. Mexico border, anti-immigrant laws, exclusionary measures aimed at Syrian refugees, inequities in healthcare and safety for women of color, international trends that promote white nationalism, and the dangers of complicity when it comes to racist paradigms. By bringing these contemporary issues into conversation with a wide range of plays that span the many genres in which Shakespeare wrote throughout his career, these chapters demonstrate how the widespread racism and discord within our present moment stands to infuse with urgent meaning Shakespeare's attention to the (in)humanity of strangers, the ethics of hospitality, the perils of insularity, abuses of power, and the vulnerability of the political state and its subjects. The book puts into conversation Shakespeare with present-day events and cultural products surrounding topics of race, ethnicity, xenophobia, immigration, asylum, assimilation, and nationalism as a means of illuminating Shakespeare's cultural and literary significance in relation to these issues. It should be an essential read for all students of literary studies and Shakespeare.

"Each edition includes: "
- Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
- Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
- Scene-by-scene plot summaries
- A key to famous lines and phrases
- An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
- An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
- Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books
"Essay by" Michael Neill
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Shakespeare's skillful manipulation of events and people makes Richard III a chilling incarnation of the lure of evil and the temptation of power. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated throughout by Sir John Gilbert, and includes an introduction by Ned Halley. Richard, Duke of Gloucester - the bitter, deformed brother of the King - is secretly plotting to seize the throne of England. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal.

In late November 1623, Edward Blount finally took delivery at his bookshop at the sign of the Black Bear near St Paul's of a book that had been long in the making. Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies was the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, appearing some seven years after their author's death in 1616. Its 950 folio pages included thirty-six plays, half of which had not previously been printed, divided under the three generic headings of the title. There was no fanfare at the book's arrival. There was nothing of the marketing overdrive that marks an important new publication in our own period: no advertising campaign, no reviews, interviews, endorsements or literary prizes, no queues in St Paul's Churchyard, no sales figures, price war, copycat publications or bestseller lists - in short, no sensation. Nevertheless, it is hard to overstate the importance of this literary, cultural and commercial moment. This book, generously illustrated with key pages from the publication and comparative works tells the human, artistic, economic and technical stories of the birth of the First Folio - and the emergence of Shakespeare's towering reputation.

For this updated edition of one of Shakespeare's most problematic plays, Tom Lockwood has added a new introductory section on the latest scholarly trends, performance and adaptation practices which have occurred over the last two decades. Investigating the latest critical frames through which the play has been interpreted, the updated introduction also focuses on recent international performances on stage and screen (including Al Pacino's performances on film and in Daniel Sullivan's production in New York, the Habima National Theatre's production for the Globe to Globe Festival, Jonathan Munby's touring production for the Globe performed in London, New York and Venice, and Rupert Goold's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company). Finally, new forms of adaptation are considered: a performance transposed to the different generic mode of a New York auction room, and the remaking of the play in Howard Jacobson's 2016 novel, Shylock Is my Name.

Shakespeare wrote for a theater in which the audience was understood to be, and at times invited to be, active and participatory. How have Shakespeare's audiences, from the sixteenth century to the present, responded to that invitation? In what ways have consumers across different cultural contexts, periods, and platforms engaged with the performance of Shakespeare's plays? What are some of the different approaches taken by scholars today in thinking about the role of Shakespeare's audiences and their relationship to performance? The chapters in this collection use a variety of methods and approaches to explore the global history of audience experience of Shakespearean performance in theater, film, radio, and digital media. The approaches that these contributors take look at Shakespeare's audiences through a variety of lenses, including theater history, dramaturgy, film studies, fan studies, popular culture, and performance. Together, they provide both close studies of particular moments in the history of Shakespeare's audiences and a broader understanding of the various, often complex, connections between and among those audiences across the long history of Shakespearean performance.

Samurai warriors have reclaimed a future post-nuclear world of mutants in the original manga version of Shakespeare's tale of skulduggery. The series keeps true to Shakespeare's original text, but is specially abridged for use in the manga, which makes it ideal for students to use as a primer and a way of getting to grips with the themes in Shakespeare's plays. A fusion of classic Shakespeare with manga visuals, these are cutting-edge books that will intrigue and grip readers.