This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

Since its first performances around 1596 and its earliest editions (1597, 1599), "Romeo and Juliet" has remained one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. The reasons are not far to seek, as the play centers on a subject of perennial interest: romantic love. A mixed genre, the play begins as a comedy and ends as a tragedy. Romeo and Juliet are among Shakespeare's most memorable characters, for he has endowed them with some of his greatest lyric poetry. Students and scholars continue to debate whether the death of the two lovers is a tragedy of fate, or whether Romeo and Juliet are responsible for what happens to them, like so many of Shakespeare's later protagonists. The lovers do all they can to escape the violence in Verona, and Friar Lawrence hopes that their marriage will end the feud between their families. But events prove beyond their means of control, and rather than submit to Verona's traditions of hatred and violence, Romeo and Juliet choose to end their lives. Ironically, their deaths bring the Capulets and Montagues to recognize their children's sacrifice and finally make peace.

Taught at the high school level and studied extensively by Shakespeareans, "Romeo and Juliet" has attracted an enormous amount of both popular and scholarly interest. This reference book examines every aspect of Shakespeare's creation: the transformation of the story from its sources, the use of the arts of language in both prose and verse, the dramatic structure and its significance, and the most significant themes and their development. In addition, a chapter on the textual history of "Romeo and Juliet" reviews past and current theories, and a chapter on performances from Shakespeare's time to ours analyzes important productions both on stage and on film. Psychoanalytical, feminist, and gender criticism are also considered as alternative critical approaches along with myth and archetypal criticism. Finally, the volume contains a current selected, annotated bibliography. Thus the book is the fullest and most comprehensive account of "Romeo and Juliet" to appear in years and is of value both to students approaching the play for the first time and to scholars seeking a lucid synthesis of recent information.

Ecofeminism has been an important field of theory in philosophy and environmental studies for decades. It takes as its primary concern the way the relationship between the human and nonhuman is both material and cultural, but it also investigates how this relationship is inherently entangled with questions of gender equity and social justice. Shakespeare and Ecofeminist Theory engagingly establishes a history of ecofeminist scholarship relevant to early modern studies, and provides a clear overview of this rich field of philosophical enquiry. Through fresh, detailed readings of Shakespeare's poetry and drama, this volume is a wholly original study articulating the ways in which we can better understand the world of Shakespeare's plays, and the relationships between men, women, animals, and plants that we see in them.

Despite a recent surge of critical interest in the Shakespeare Tercentenary, a great deal has been forgotten about this key moment in the history of the place of Shakespeare in national and global culture - much more than has been remembered. This book offers new archival discoveries about, and new interpretations of, the Tercentenary celebrations in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and reflects on the long legacy of those celebrations. This collection gathers together five scholars from Britain, Australia and New Zealand to reflect on the modes of commemoration of Shakespeare across the hemispheres in and after the Tercentenary year, 1916. It was at this moment of remembering in 1916 that 'global Shakespeare' first emerged in recognizable form. Each contributor performs their own 'antipodal' reading, assessing in parallel events across two hemispheres, geographically opposite but politically and culturally connected in the wake of empire.

This edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona offers a complete consideration of all aspects of the text. It interprets the play less as a contribution to a Renaissance literary debate between love and friendship (the traditional academic view) than as a dramatization of competing kinds of love - a theatrical counterpart to Shakespeare's Sonnets. It analyzes the lyrical language with which these kinds of love are expressed, and explores the tension between lyricism and the violence of some of the play's events, notably the concluding attempted rape scene. It also provides further evidence that The Two Gentlemen is Shakespeare's earliest surviving play, and proposes a new actor for whom the principal comic role of Lance may have been designed. This is the only edition to offer a setting of the song 'Who is Silvia?', prepared by Guy Woolfenden from an Elizabethan source, and is therefore the only edition on the market to provide a complete text for performance.

Cracking Shakespeare serves to demystify the process of speaking Shakespeare's language, offering hands-on techniques for drama students, young actors and directors who are intimidated by rehearsing, performing and directing Shakespeare's plays. For some artists approaching Shakespeare, the ability to capture the dynamic movement of thought from mind to mouth, and the paradox of using the formality of verse to express a realistic form of speech, can seem daunting. Cracking Shakespeare includes practical techniques and exercises to solve this dilemma - including supporting online video which demonstrate how to embody Shakespeare's characters in rehearsal and performance - offering a toolkit that will free actors and directors from their fear of Shakespeare. The result of thirty years of acting, teaching and directing Shakespeare, Kelly Hunter's Cracking Shakespeare is the ideal textbook for actors and directors looking for new ways to approach Shakespeare's plays in a hands-on, down-to-earth style.

Shakespare and Montaigne are the English and French writers of the sixteenth century who have the most to say to modern readers. Shakespeare certainly drew on Montaigne's essay 'On Cannibals' in writing The Tempest and debates have raged amongst scholars about the playwright's obligations to Montaigne in passages from earlier plays including Hamlet, King Lear and Measure for Measure. Peter Mack argues that rather than continuing the undeterminable quarrel about how early in his career Shakespeare came to Montaigne, we should focus on the similar techniques they apply to shared sources. Grammar school education in the sixteenth century placed a special emphasis on reading classical texts in order to reuse both the ideas and the rhetoric. This book examines the ways in which Montaigne and Shakespeare used their reading and argued with it to create something new. It is the most sustained account available of the similarities and differences between these two great writers, casting light on their ethical and philosophical views and on how these were conveyed to their audience.

Often regarded as Shakespeare's most complex and difficult play Hamlet is also one of his most popular. It has been performed countless times on the stage and has been produced in many film and television versions. Even those who have never read the complete play or seen a performance know a few lines of "To be or not to be" and the image of a young man contemplating the skull of his dead friend Yorick. The play continues to attract the attention of high school students and scholars alike and has generated a tremendous amount of criticism. Because Hamlet exists as text, performance, and cultural icon, only through a study of the play in these three different dimensions can Shakespeare's complex work be appreciated. The purpose of this reference book is to introduce students and others first approaching Hamlet to the traditions of scholarship, criticism, and performance that it has inspired in four centuries. The volume gives close attention to the textual history of the play and to the historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts in which it emerged. Special attention is given to the religious, philosophical, and psychological aspects of the text. The book also treats Shakespeare's language, imagery, themes, and dramatic art, and it offers a summary of the play's critical reception. Throughout an attempt is made to visualize the play in performance, and constant reference is made to the conventions of staging in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, it is difficult to imagine a time when he was not considered a genius. But those 400 years have seen his plays banished and bowdlerized, faked and forged, traded and translated, re-mixed and re-cast. Shakespeare's story is not one of a steady rise to fame; it is a tale of set-backs and sea-changes that have made him the cultural icon he is today. This revealing new book accompanies an innovative exhibition at the British Library that will take readers on a journey through more than 400 years of performance. It will focus on ten moments in history that have changed the way we see Shakespeare, from the very first production of Hamlet to a digital-age deconstruction. Each performance holds up a mirror to the era in which it was performed. The first stage appearance by a woman in 1660 and a black actor playing Othello in 1825 were landmarks for society as well as for Shakespeare's reputation. The book will also explore productions as diverse as Peter Brook's legendary A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mark Rylance's 'Original Practices' Twelfth Night, and a Shakespeare forgery staged at Drury Lane in 1796, among many others.Over 100 illustrations include the only surviving playscript in Shakespeare's hand, an authentic Shakespeare signature, and rare printed editions including the First Folio. These - and other treasures from the British Library's manuscript and rare book collections - will feature alongside film stills, costumes, paintings and production photographs.In this book ten leading experts take a fresh look at Shakespeare, reminding us that the playwright's iconic status has been constructed over the centuries in a process that continues across the world today.

Comparatively little is known about Shakespeare's first audiences. This study argues that the Elizabethan audience is an essential part of Shakespeare as a site of cultural meaning, and that the way criticism thinks of early modern theatregoers is directly related to the way it thinks of, and uses, the Bard himself.

Applause BooksThe acclaimed stage director and theatre critic Charles Marowitz in tandem with Jan Kott, one of the most penetrating and incisive Shakespearean scholars to emerge in the 20th Century, probe the mysteries of some of the more problematic plays in Shakespeare's canon. The innovative director and dazzling classicist bring two complementary viewpoints to bear as they delve into the collected works, illuminating the constantly changing nature and philosophic nuances of the various plays.The book's centerpiece consists of Kott and Marowitz's insights on such plays as Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Troilus & Cressida and Measure for Measure. They reveal the ideas behind Shakespeare's plays and the process of making them come alive before and audience and present frank, no-holds barred discussions on such subjects as The Shakespeare Industry, The Boundaries of Interpretation, Dramaturgy and Mise-en-scene.

Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine is a bold new investigation of Shakespeare's female characters using the late plays and the early adaptations written and staged during the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

Geoffrey Bullough's The Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (1957-75) established a vocabulary and a method for linking Shakespeare's plays with a series of texts on which they were thought to be based. Shakespeare's Resources revisits and interrogates the methodology that has prevailed since then and proposes a number of radical departures from Bullough's model. The tacitly accepted linear model of 'source' and 'influence' that critics and scholars have wrestled with is here reconceptualised as a dynamic process in which texts interact and generate meanings that domesticated versions of intertextuality do not adequately account for. The investigation uncovers questions of exactly how Shakespeare 'read', what he read, the practical conditions in which narratives were encountered, and how he re-deployed earlier versions that he had used in his later work. -- .

Perhaps more than any other single work, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has popularized the image of Brutus as a ruthless and cowardly traitor, Caesar as a noble ruler and sympathetic victim, and the Ides of March as a time of danger and duplicity. On the surface, the play is comparatively simple and straightforward, and thus it has served to introduce generations of students to Shakespeare's works. But the play is deceptive in its apparent simplicity. While Brutus joins the conspirators in assassinating Caesar, his possibly selfless motives may make him the noblest Roman of them all. And while Caesar emerges as a beneficent leader in Antony's funeral oration, other traditions with which Shakespeare's audience would have been familiar paint him as a tyrannical despot. The play, then, is laden with ambiguity, and it raises more questions about human nature than it answers about Roman history. And while some scholars have criticized the play's language for being relatively unpoetic and inferior to some of Shakespeare's later tragedies, Julius Caesar has given us some of the most memorable passages in English literature. This addition to the "Greenwood Guides to Shakespeare" series offers a comprehensive overview of Julius Caesar and the issues central to an understanding and appreciation of the tragedy. Written at a level accessible to readers of all backgrounds, from secondary school students to scholars, the volume gives full attention to textual, contextual, dramatic, thematic, critical, and performance aspects of the play. The book begins with a look at the history of the text and a consideration of some modern editions. It then examines the historical and cultural contexts ofShakespeare's England and shows how they shaped his work. The book discusses Shakespeare's likely sources and how he adapted them, and it analyzes his dramatic art, including his characterizations, language, and imagery. The guide then turns to the themes treated throughout the play, and it surveys the tragedy's critical reception. Finally, the book charts the drama's lengthy stage history and looks closely at representative productions, including some film versions. An annotated bibliography and comprehensive index conclude the work.

This book is an attempt to explore Shakespearean drama from the vantage point of the oppressed, invisible, and silent individuals and collectivities constructed in the plays. It examines the ideological apparatuses which produce and naturalise oppression and the political structures through which that oppression is sustained. Derek Cohen is concerned to demonstrate the many ways in which political and personal life, always interdependent, intersect. contradict, and disrupt one another often in the interests of and to the advantage of the dominant social ideology.

The relation between body and mind is one of the oldest riddles that has puzzled mankind. That material and mental events may interact is accepted even by the law: our mental capacity to concentrate on the task can be seriously reduced by drugs. Physical and chemical processes may act upon the mind; and when we are writing a difficult letter, our mind acts upon our body and, through a chain of physical events, upon the mind of the recipient of the letter. This is what the authors of this book call the 'interaction of mental and physical events'. We know very little about this interaction; and according to recent philosophical fashions this is explained by the alleged fact that we have brains but no thoughts. The authors of this book stress that they cannot solve the body mind problem; but they hope that they have been able to shed new light on it. Eccles especially with his theory that the brain is a detector and amplifier; a theory that has given rise to important new developments, including new and exciting experiments; and Popper with his highly controversial theory of 'World 3'. They show that certain fashionable solutions which have been offered fail to understand the seriousness of the problems of the emergence of life, or consciousness and of the creativity of our minds. In Part I, Popper discusses the philosophical issue between dualist or even pluralist interaction on the one side, and materialism and parallelism on the other. There is also a historical review of these issues. In Part II, Eccles examines the mind from the neurological standpoint: the structure of the brain and its functional performance under normal as well as abnormal circumstances. The result is a radical and intriguing hypothesis on the interaction between mental events and detailed neurological occurrences in the cerebral cortex. Part III, based on twelve recorded conversations, reflects the exciting exchange between the authors as they attempt to come to terms with their opinions.

Shakespeare's famous play, "Hamlet," has been the subject of more scholarly analysis and criticism than any other work of literature in human history. For all of its generally acknowledged virtues, however, it has also been treated as problematic in a raft of ways. In "Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet," Leon Craig explains that the most oft-cited problems and criticisms are actually solvable puzzles. Through a close reading of the philosophical problems presented in "Hamlet," Craig attempts to provide solutions to these puzzles. The posing of puzzles, some more conspicuous, others less so, is fundamental to Shakespeare's philosophical method and purpose. That is, he has crafted his plays, and "Hamlet "in particular, so as to stimulate philosophical activity in the "judicious" (as distinct from the "unskillful") readers. By virtue of showing what so many critics treat as faults or flaws are actually intended to be interpretive challenges, Craig aims to raise appreciation for the overall coherence of "Hamlet" that there is more logical rigor to its plot and psychological plausibility to its characterizations than is generally granted, even by its professed admirers. "Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet" endeavors to make clear why "Hamlet," as a work of reason, is far better than is generally recognized, and proves its author to be, not simply the premier poet and playwright he is already universally acknowledged to be, but a philosopher in his own right.

This major reference book for Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers is the second part of the story of 'the greatest book' in the English language. Listing 228 copies of the First Folio, the Census gives concise descriptions of each, covering condition, special features, provenance, and binding. It traces the search for copies, deals with doubtful identifications, describes the tests for inclusion, and presents details of missing copies.

Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England examines assumptions about what a lost play is and how it can be talked about; how lost plays can be reconstructed, particularly when they use narratives already familiar to playgoers; and how lost plays can force us to reassess extant plays, particularly through ideas of repertory studies.