The 'Sound of Shakespeare' reveals the surprising extent to which Shakespeare's art is informed by the various attitudes, beliefs, practices and discourses that pertained to sound and hearing in his culture.
In this engaging study, Wes Folkerth develops listening as a critical practice, attending to the ways in which Shakespeare's plays express their author's awareness of early modern associations between sound and particular forms of ethical and aesthetic experience. Through readings of the acoustic representation of deep subjectivity in Richard III, of the 'public ear' in Antony and Cleopatra, the receptive ear in Coriolanus, the grotesque ear in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the 'greedy ear' in Othello, and the 'willing ear' in Measure for Measure, Folkerth demonstrates that by listening to Shakespeare himself listening, we derive a fuller understanding of why his works continue to resonate so strongly with is today.

The 'Sound of Shakespeare' reveals the surprising extent to which Shakespeare's art is informed by the various attitudes, beliefs, practices and discourses that pertained to sound and hearing in his culture.
In this engaging study, Wes Folkerth develops listening as a critical practice, attending to the ways in which Shakespeare's plays express their author's awareness of early modern associations between sound and particular forms of ethical and aesthetic experience. Through readings of the acoustic representation of deep subjectivity in Richard III, of the 'public ear' in Antony and Cleopatra, the receptive ear in Coriolanus, the grotesque ear in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the 'greedy ear' in Othello, and the 'willing ear' in Measure for Measure, Folkerth demonstrates that by listening to Shakespeare himself listening, we derive a fuller understanding of why his works continue to resonate so strongly with is today.

A new biography of William Shakespeare that explores his private life in Stratford-upon-Avon, his personal aspirations, his self-determination, and his relations with the members of his family and his neighbours. The Private Life of William Shakespeare tells the story of Shakespeare in Stratford as a family man. The book offers close readings of key documents associated with Shakespeare and develops a contextual understanding of the genres from which these documents emerge. It reconsiders clusters of evidence that have been held to prove some persistent biographical fables. It also shows how the histories of some of Shakespeare's neighbours illuminate aspects of his own life. Throughout, we encounter a Shakespeare who consciously and with purpose designed his life. Having witnessed the business failures of his merchant father, he determined not to follow his father's model. His early wedding freed him from craft training to pursue a literary career. His wife's work, and probably the assistance of his parents and brothers, enabled him to make the first of the property purchases that grounded his life as a gentleman. With his will, he provided for both his daughters in ways that were suitable to their circumstances; Anne Shakespeare was already protected by dower rights in the houses and lands he had acquired. His funerary monument suggests that the man of 'small Latin and less Greek' in fact had some experience of an Oxford education. Evidences are that he commissioned the monument himself.

When critical theory met literary studies in the 1970s and 80s, some of the most radical and exciting theoretical work centred on quasi-sacred figure of Shakespeare. In Alternative Shakespeares, John Drakakis brought together key essays by founding figures in this movement to remake Shakespeare studies.
A new afterword by Robert Weimann outlines the extraordinary impact of Alternative Shakespeares on academic Shakespeare studies. But as yet, the Shakespeare myth continues to thrive both in Stratford and in our schools. These essays are as relevant and as powerful as they were upon publication and with a contributor list that reads like a 'who's who' of modern Shakespeare studies, Alternative Shakespeares demands to be read.

English Literary Afterlives traces life narratives of early modern authors created for them after their deaths by readers or publishers, who retrospectively tried to make sense of the author's life and works. In a series of case-studies of the reception history of major poets - Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, as well as Robert Greene, the first 'celebrity author' - within a generation of their deaths, it shows how those authors were posthumously fashioned and refashioned. It argues that during the early modern period there is a gradual movement towards biographical readings that attempt to find the author in the works, which in turn led to the emergence of written lives that consider poets not in terms of their 'public' lives but in terms of their poetic activity, i.e. the beginnings of literary biography. Will be of interest to students and scholars of several canonical early modern authors. -- .

Othello: Critical Essays includes twenty-one groundbreaking chapters that examine one of Shakespeare's most complex tragedies, exploring issues of friendship and fealty, love and betrayal, race and gender issues, and much more.

Arthur F. Kinney and his international team of ten Shakespearean scholars shine new light on the world's most famous tragedy. With essays covering a wide range of topics, from editorial and production issues to postmodern studies of race and gender dynamics, this volume offers cutting-edge analyses of the play. The refreshing insight and originality of the selections will surprise students new to Shakespeare as well as experts in the field. For anyone interested in what is arguably the most complex tale ever told, Kinney and his contributors have enlivened a fascinating, age-old debate.

Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the international contributors to Hamlet: New Critical Essays contribute major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of Hamlet. This book is the most up-to-date and comprehensive critical analysis available of one of Shakespeare's best-known and most engaging plays.

The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare's most perfectly realized tragicomedy, as notable for its tragic intensity as for its comic grace and, throughout, for the richness and complexity of its poetry. It concludes, moreover, with the most daring and moving reconciliation scene in all Shakespeare's plays. Though the title may suggest an escapist fantasy, recent criticism has seen in the play a profoundly realistic psychology and a powerful commentary on the violence implicit in family relationships and deep, longlasting friendships. Stephen Orgel's edition considers the play in relation to Renaissance conceptions of both dramatic genre and the family, traced the changing critical and theatrical attitudes towards it, and places its psychological and dramatic conflicts within the Jacobean cultural and political context. The commentary pays special attention to the play's linguistic complexity, and the edition also includes a complete reprint of Shakespeare's source, Pandosto, by Robert Greene.

A comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, including studies of the play's print, theatre, and performance history. The essay deals primarily with issues of gender, authority, domination, metatheatricality, and privacy. The volume includes a bibliographic introduction, which provides an historical overview of the play's place in Shakespeare's canon and contextualizes the issues historically.

Contents:
General Editor's Introduction, Acknowledgments, Part I. The Tempest and the Critical Legacy Interpreting The Tempest: A History of Its Readings Part II. The Tempest and the Critics Preface to The Tempest or the Enchanted Island Patrick Murphy, Comment on Caliban John Dryden, The Adventurer, Number 83 Joseph Wharton, The Transcript of Lecture 9 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notes on The Tempest Colerdige, The Tempest William Hazlitt, Tempest W.J. Birch, The Monster Caliban Daniel Wilson, Shakespeare's Last Plays Edward Dowden, Shakespeare's Tempest as Originally Produced at Court Ernest Law, The Tempest Don Cameron Allen, Romance, Farewell!: The Tempest M.C. Bradbrook, The Day of The Tempest John Bender, The Miranda Trap: Sexism and Racism in Shakespeare's Tempest Lorie Jerrell Leininger, Propsero's Wife Stephen Orgel, "Remember/First to Posses His Books:" The Appropriation of The Tempest, 1700-1800, Michael Dobson, Local Tempest: Shakespeare and the Work of the Early Modern Playhouse Douglas Bruster, Revisiting The Tempest, Fantasy an History in The Tempest Richard Wheeler, Part III. Performances of The Tempest The Tempest at Covent-Garden Hazlitt, Shakespeare Illuminated: Charles Kean's 1857 Production of The Tempest Mary Nillan, The Tempest at the Turn of the Century: Cross Currents in Production Nilan, Peter Brook's Tempest Margaret Croyden, The Tempest (National Theater at Old Vic's on 5 March 1974) Peter Ansorage, Prospero or the Director: Giorgio Strehler's The Tempest Jan Kott, A Brave New Tempest Lois Potter, The Tempest in Bali David E. R. George, Tampering with The Tempest Virginia Mason Vaughn & Alden T. Vaughn, Shakespeare at the Guthrie: The Tempest Through a Glass Darly Randall Louis Anderson, Tempest in a Smokepot Robert Brustein, Part IV. New Essays on The Tempest Listening for the Playwright's Voice, 4.1.139-5.1.32 Robert Hapgood, Alien Habitats in The Tempest Geraldo U de Sousa, Peopling, Profiting, and Pleasure in The Tempest Barbara Ann Sebeck, Print History of The Tempest in Early America, 1623-1787 Christopher Felker, "Their Senses I'll Restore": Montaigne and The Tempest Reconsidered Alan De Gooyer, Drama's "Inward Pinches": The Tempest James Stephans, Modernist Revisions of The Tempest: Auden, Woolf, Tippett Edward O'Shea, The Tempest as Political Allegory Claudia Harris

Shakespeare's characterization of Cleopatra may dominate the collective consciousness, but he was only one of several 16th-century writers fascinated by the enigmatic queen of Egypt. Early modern conceptions of Cleopatra offer a rich, complex, and variable set of models for understanding the period's responses to race, female sovereignty, and classical antiquity. This interdisciplinary study investigates images of Cleopatra in the early modern period and examines how her story was mediated and used - from drawing lessons from history to being a symbol of female heroism. It draws on early historiographical works, political and philosophical treatises, coterie dramatic productions, and gender, race and performance studies, as well as evidence from material culture, to consider what was known and thought about Cleopatra in the period This book provides a new literary and cultural history of one of the world's most contested and politically-charged iconic female figures. It combines a close reading of literary and dramatic works with historical and political contexts, paying particular attention to the three major early modern Cleopatra plays: Mary Sidney's translation of Robert Garnier's Marc Antoine, Samuel Daniel's The Tragedie of Cleopatra, and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. By examining these conflicting historical and fictional identities, Yasmin Arshad offers a diverse and ground-breaking study of Cleopatra's 'infinite variety'.

One of Shakespeare's later plays, best described as a tragic-comedy, the play falls into two distinct parts. In the first Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage by his suspicions of his wife Hermione and his best-friend, and imprisons her and orders that her new born daughter be left to perish. The second half is a pastoral comedy with the "lost" daughter Perdita having been rescued by shepherds and now in love with a young prince. The play ends with former lovers and friends reunited after the apparently miraculous resurrection of Hermione. John Pitcher's lively introduction and commentary explores the extraordinary merging of theatrical forms in the play and its success in performance. As the recent Sam Mendes production at the Old Vic shows, this is a play that can work a kind of magic in the theatre. For more than a century educators, students and general readers have relied on The Arden Shakespeare to provide the very best scholarship and most authoritative texts available.
The Third Series editions' added emphasis on all aspects of Shakespeare performance extended the Arden editions readership to also become the preferred text for theatre professionals.

Series Information:
Shakespeare Criticism

Shakespeare, Violence and Early Modern Europe broadens our understanding of the final years of the last Tudor monarch, revealing the truly international context in which they must be understood. Uncovering the extent to which Shakespeare's dramatic art intersected with European politics, Andrew Hiscock brings together close readings of the history plays, compelling insights into late Elizabethan political culture and renewed attention to neglected continental accounts of Elizabeth I. With fresh perspective, the book charts the profound influence that Shakespeare and ambitious courtiers had upon succeeding generations of European writers, dramatists and audiences following the turn of the sixteenth century. Informed by early modern and contemporary cultural debate, this book demonstrates how the study of early modern violence can illuminate ongoing crises of interpretation concerning brutality, victimization and complicity today.

Othello, the general of the Venetian army, holds much power and influence but becomes the target of an insidious plot to steal his coveted position. He is overcome with paranoia and enthralled with rumors of his wife's potential infidelity. Othello has fallen in love with a senator's daughter, Desdemona, and the two secretly marry. Their partnership generates shock and confusion as Desdemona was also loved by Roderigo, who'd already asked for her hand. Othello's ensign, Iago, is envious of the general and is spurned when he promotes the young Cassio to a higher position. This marks the beginning of a plot in which Iago plans to destroy Othello's personal and professional life. He attacks his marriage by stoking the flames of jealousy, insinuating Desdemona's infidelity. This leads to a violent confrontation with a morbid outcome. Othello is one of William Shakespeare's most well-known plays. It tackles multiple topics including race, gender, politics and revenge. It's a gripping drama that details the dangers of greed, envy and their inescapable consequences. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Othello is both modern and readable.

The creation of the new Globe Theatre in London has heightened interest in Shakespeare performance studies in recent years. The essays in this volume testify to this burgeoning research into issues surrounding contemporary performances of plays by Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists, as well as modern trends and developments in stage and media presentations of these works. Truly international in coverage, the discussion here ranges across the performance and reception of Shakespeare in Japan, India, Germany, Italy, Denmark and the United States as well as in Britain. Dennis Kennedy's introductory essay places the new Globe Theatre in the context of Shakespearean cultural tourism generally. This is followed by five sections of essays covering aspects of Shakespeare on film, the stage history of his plays, Renaissance contexts, the movement of the text from page to stage, and female roles. Exploring many of current issues in Shakespeare studies, this volume provides a global perspective on Renaissance performance and the wide variety of ways in which it has been translated by today's media. About the Editor: Edward J. Esche is a Senior Lecturer in English and Head of Drama at Anglia Polytechnic University. He has published on renaissance drama and twentieth-century modern British and American drama. His most recent publication is an edition of Christopher Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris for the Clarendon Press The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe.

Enter the Body offers a series of provocative case studies of the work women's bodies do on Shakespeare's intensely body-conscious stage. Rutter's topics are sex, death, race, gender, culture, politics, and the excessive performative body that exceeds the playtext it inhabits. As well as drawing upon vital primary documents from Shakespeare's day, Rutter offers close readings of women's performance's on stage and film in Britian today, from Peggy Ashcroft's (white) Cleopatra and Whoopi Goldberg's (whiteface) African Queen to Sally Dexter's languorous Helen and Alan Howard's raver 'Queen' of Troy.

Enter the Body offers a series of provocative case studies of the work women's bodies do on Shakespeare's intensely body-conscious stage. Rutter's topics are sex, death, race, gender, culture, politics, and the excessive performative body that exceeds the playtext it inhabits. As well as drawing upon vital primary documents from Shakespeare's day, Rutter offers close readings of women's performance's on stage and film in Britian today, from Peggy Ashcroft's (white) Cleopatra and Whoopi Goldberg's (whiteface) African Queen to Sally Dexter's languorous Helen and Alan Howard's raver 'Queen' of Troy.

This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Miola's edited work also features a comprehensive critical history, coupled with a full bibliography and photographs of major productions of the play from around the world.

This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essays focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

Drawing comparisons between consultancy and the classical tragedy King Lear, the author explores the core theme of responsibility. Arguing that King Lear is vital in gaining an understanding of consulting, leadership and management, the author explores in detail the positive lessons to be learnt from this tragedy for the manager and the manageme

This anthology examines Love's Labours Lost from a variety of perspectives and through a wide range of materials. Selections discuss the play in terms of historical context, dating, and sources; character analysis; comic elements and verbal conceits; evidence of authorship; performance analysis; and feminist interpretations. Alongside theatre reviews, production photographs, and critical commentary, the volume also includes essays written by practicing theatre artists who have worked on the play.

This is an enquiry into the historiographical quality of Shakespeare's histories. The main assumption is that Shakespeare's staging of English history helped to shape a new historiographical outlook. In particular, multi-perspectivism in the treatment of political issues produced a problem-oriented kind of historical perspective. This explored the opportunities offered by the theatrical medium, and inaugurated a perspective which considered history as critical outlook on a world of problems and retrospective possibilities rather than as unconditional belief in, or even worship of, a world of facts.