Edward III comes to life in a new version by playwright Octavio Solis. Written after England's victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, Edward III follows the exploits of King Edward III and his son Edward, the Black Prince of Wales. England dominates on the battlefield as the play explores questions of kinghood and chivalry through the actions of King Edward and his son. Octavio Solis's translation of the play provides all of the complexity and richness of the original while renewing the allusions and metaphors lost through time. This translation of Edward III was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare's verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print-a new First Folio for a new era.

Farce

Characters: 3 male, 9 female

Interior Set

In an insane asylum we find a number of schoolteachers who have lost their mental balance trying to educate their pupils. The play starts hilariously when the ladies talk and act like their former charges. A love story is introduced with the visit of the niece of the superintendent and a young staff doctor, but each thinks the other is an inmate. This young girl thinks she would like to be a teacher, but after witnessing the antics of schoolteachers she decides to marry the doctor. We recommend it for churches, schools and parent teachers associations.

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's most loved comedy. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of A Midsummer Night's Dream in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are three interviews with leading directors Michael Boyd, Gregory Doran and Tim Supple, providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare's career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

Described as one of Shakespeare's most intriguing plays, All's Well That Ends Well has only recently begun to receive the critical attention it deserves. Noted as a crucial point of development in Shakespeare's career, this collection of new essays reflects the growing interest in the play and presents a broad range of approaches to it, including historical, feminist, performative and psychoanalytical criticisms. In addition to fourteen essays written by leading scholars, the editor's introduction provides a substantial overview of the play's critical history, with a strong focus on performance analysis and the impact that this has had on its reception and reputation. Demonstrating a variety of approaches to the play and furthering recent debates, this book makes a valuable contribution to Shakespeare criticism.

'With the publication of Woudhuysen's Arden 3 edition, the magisterial study of the play that will energise a new generation of readers and directors has now arrived.' Eric Rasmussen, University of Nevada at Reno, Shakespeare Survey

"The text of any Shakespeare play is a living negotiable entity: scholarship and theatre practice work together to keep the plays alive and vividly present." - Greg Doran, RSC Artistic Director Emeritus Developed in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, this Complete Works of William Shakespeare combines exemplary textual scholarship with beautiful design. Curated by expert editors Sir Jonathan Bate and Professor Eric Rasmussen, the text in this collection is based on the iconic 1623 First Folio: the first and original Complete Works lovingly assembled by Shakespeare's fellow actors, and the version of Shakespeare's text preferred by many actors and directors today. This stunning revised edition goes further to present Shakespeare's plays as they were originally intended - as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed on stage. Along with new colour photographs from a vibrant range of RSC productions, a new Stage Notes feature documenting the staging choices in 100 RSC productions showcases the myriad ways in which Shakespeare's plays can be brought to life. Now featuring the entire range of Shakespeare's plays, poems and sonnets, this edition is expanded to include both The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover's Complaint. Along with Bate's excellent general introduction and short essays, this collection includes a range of aids to the reader such as on-page notes explaining unfamiliar terms and key facts boxes providing plot summaries and additional helpful context. A Complete Works for the 21st century, this versatile and highly collectable edition will inspire students, theatre practitioners and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.

This fascinating title, first published in 1922, presents a detailed overview of the life and works of Shakespeare. Alden first considers Shakespeare's Elizabethan context, alongside exploring the Classical and Italian foundations, political theories, concepts and theatrical trends that influenced his works. Next, a comprehensive biography provides insight into Shakespeare's probable education, relationships and contemporaries. The final sections are devoted to the genres into which Shakespeare's works have been categorised, with full analyses of and backgrounds to the poems, histories, comedies and tragedies. An important study, this title will be of particular value to students in need of a comprehensive overview of Shakespeare's life and works, as well as the more general inquisitive reader.

Region, Religion and English Renaissance Literature brings together leading scholars of early modern literature and culture to explicate the ways in which both regional and religious contexts inform the production, circulation and interpretation of Renaissance literary texts. Examining texts by a wide variety of early modern writers - including Edmund Spenser, Lodowick Lloyd, Richard Nugent, Thomas Middleton and John Webster, Richard Montagu, and John Milton - the contributors to this volume enhance our understanding of the complex cultural contexts of early modern Anglophone writing.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Referencing early modern English play texts alongside contemporary records, accounts and statutes, this study offers an overdue assessment of the relationship between the dramatic efforts of the universities and early modern male identity. Taking into account the near single-sex constitution of early modern universities, the book argues that performances of university plays, and student responses to them, were key ways of exploring and shaping early modern masculinity. Christopher Marlow shows how the plays dealt with their academic and social contexts, and analyses their responses to competing versions of masculinity. He also considers the implications of university authority and royal patronage for scholarly performances of masculinity; the effect of the literary traditions of classical friendship and platonic love on academic representations of male behaviour; and the relationship between university drama and masculine initiation rituals. Including discussion of the Parnassus trilogy, Club Law and works by Thomas Randolph, William Cartwright, John Milton and others, this study shines new light on long neglected aspects of the golden age of English drama.

In the first book-length study explicitly to connect the postcolonial trope of hybridity to Renaissance literature, Gary Schmidt examines how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English authors, artists, explorers and statesmen exercised a concerted effort to frame questions of cultural and artistic heterogeneity. This book is unique in its exploration of how 'hybrid' literary genres emerge at particular historical moments as vehicles for negotiating other kinds of hybridity, including but not limited to cultural and political hybridity. In particular, Schmidt addresses three distinct manifestations of 'hybridity' in English literature and iconography during this period. The first category comprises literal hybrid creatures such as satyrs, centaurs, giants, and changelings; the second is cultural hybrids reflecting the mixed status of the nation; and the third is generic hybrids such as the Shakespearean 'problem play,' the volatile verse satires of Nashe, Hall and Marston, and the tragicomedies of Beaumont and Fletcher. In Renaissance Hybrids, Schmidt demonstrates 'postmodern' considerations not to be unique to our own critical milieu. Rather, they can fruitfully elucidate cultural and literary developments in the English Renaissance, forging a valuable link in the history of ideas and practices, and revealing a new dimension in the relation of early modern studies to the concerns of the present.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reading God's will and a man's Last Will as ideas that reinforce one another, this study shows the relevance of England's early modern crisis, regarding faith in the will of God, to current debates by legal academics on the theory of property and its succession. The increasing power of the dead under law in the US, the UK, and beyond--a concern of recent volumes in law and social sciences--is here addressed through a distinctive approach based on law and humanities. Vividly treating literary and biblical battles of will, the book suggests approaches to legal constitution informed by these dramas and by English legal history. This study investigates correlations between the will of God in Judeo-Christian traditions and the Last Wills of humans, especially dominant males, in cultures where these traditions have developed. It is interdisciplinary, in the sense that it engages with the limits of several fields: it is informed by humanities critical theory, especially Benjaminian historical materialism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, but refrains from detailed theoretical considerations. Dramatic narratives from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton are read as suggesting real possibilities for alternative inheritance (i.e., constitutional) regimes. As Jenkins shows, these texts propose ways to alleviate violence, violence both personal and political, through attention to inheritance law.

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

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. King Lear has been widely acclaimed as Shakespeare's most powerful tragedy. Elemental and passionate, it encompasses the horrific and the heart-rending. Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world's literature. In the theatre and on screen King Lear continues to challenge and enthral. This Wordsworth edition of King Lear provides a comprehensive, integrated text of the play.

Shakespeare's Henry VI plays have come fully into their own in the modern theatre. For this new edition of Henry VI, Part Two, Roger Warren draws on his experience of the play both in rehearsal and performance to focus its theatricality and contemporary relevance, as well as providing a detailed commentary and a fresh consideration of the relation between the two original texts.

This book explores traditional approaches to the play, which includes an examination of the play in light of current history, in the context of Renaissance England, and in relation to Shakespeare's other Roman plays as well as structural examination of plot, language, character, and source material. Julius Caesar: Critical Essays also examines the current debates concerning the play in Marxist, psychoanalytic, deconstructive, queer, and gender contexts.

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.

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.

It's a fact - Pinocchio had a long life as well as a long nose before Walt Disney! Noted writer Leon Katz has taken the puppet and all the colourful characters out of the play box to write a brand new stage adaptation for children's theatre. Also included are costume sketches from the original production, stages cues, even a few stage tricks (just how do you get a wooden nose to grow on stage?), and stage directions.

In this study, Erin Minear explores the fascination of Shakespeare and Milton with the ability of music-heard, imagined, or remembered-to infiltrate language. Such infected language reproduces not so much the formal or sonic properties of music as its effects. Shakespeare's and Milton's understanding of these effects was determined, she argues, by history and culture as well as individual sensibility. They portray music as uncanny and divine, expressive and opaque, promoting associative rather than logical thought processes and unearthing unexpected memories. The title reflects the multiple and overlapping meanings of reverberation in the study: the lingering and infectious nature of musical sound; the questionable status of audible, earthly music as an echo of celestial harmonies; and one writer's allusions to another. Minear argues that many of the qualities that seem to us characteristically 'Shakespearean' stem from Shakespeare's engagement with how music works-and that Milton was deeply influenced by this aspect of Shakespearean poetics. Analyzing Milton's account of Shakespeare's 'warbled notes,' she demonstrates that he saw Shakespeare as a peculiarly musical poet, deeply and obscurely moving his audience with language that has ceased to mean, but nonetheless lingers hauntingly in the mind. Obsessed with the relationship between words and music for reasons of his own, including his father's profession as a composer, Milton would adopt, adapt, and finally reject Shakespeare's form of musical poetics in his own quest to 'join the angel choir.' Offering a new way of looking at the work of two major authors, this study engages and challenges scholars of Shakespeare, Milton, and early modern culture.

First published in English in 1965, this book discusses the roots and development of the dumb show as a device in Elizabethan drama. The work provides not only a useful manual for those who wish to check the ocurrence of dumb shows and the uses to which they are put; it also makes a real contribution to a better understanding of the progress of Elizabethan drama, and sheds new light on some of the lesser known plays of the period.

In this book, Stone effects a return to gender, after many years of neglect by Twenty-First-Century critics, via a methodology of close reading that foregrounds moments of sexual decentering and disequilibrium within the text and in the interstices of the dialogue between Shakespeare and his critics. Issues addressed range from the cross dressing of Viola and Imogen to the cross gartering of Malvolio, the sound of "un" and the uncanny lyric narcissism of Richard II, Hamlet s misogyny, androgyny, and the poison of marital/political "union," Othello s fears of impotence, rumors of Antony s emasculation versus the militant yet nurturing triumphalism of Cleopatra s suicide, and Posthumus s hysterical reaction to the "woman s part" in himself and his compensatory fantasies of parthenogenesis. Stone unpacks ideologically powerful but unsustainable male claims to self-identity and sameness, set over against man s type-gendering of women as the origin of divisive sexual difference, discord, and the dissolution of marriage. Men who blame women for the difference that divides and weakens their sense of unity and sameness to oneself are unconscious that the uncanny feminine is not outside the masculine, its reassuring canny opposite; it is inside the masculine, its uncanny difference from itself.

Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare's England offers a new approach to evaluating the psychological 'loss' of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England by illustrating how, in the wake of Mary's demotion, re-inscriptions of her roles and meanings only proliferated, seizing hold of national imagination and resulting in new configurations of masculinity. The author surveys the early modern cultural and literary response to Mary's marginalization, and argues that Shakespeare employs both Roman Catholic and post-Reformation views of Marian strength not only to scrutinize cultural perceptions of masculinity, but also to offer his audience new avenues of exploring both religious and gendered subjectivity. By deploying Mary's symbolic valence to infuse certain characters, and dramatic situations with feminine potency, Espinosa analyzes how Shakespeare draws attention to the Virgin Mary as an alternative to an otherwise unilaterally masculine outlook on salvation and gendered identity formation.