This ground-breaking new book uncovers the way Shakespeare draws upon the available literature and visual representations of the hand to inform his drama. Providing an analysis of gesture, touch, skill and dismemberment in a range of Shakespeare's works, it shows how the hand was perceived in Shakespeare's time as an indicator of human agency, emotion, social and personal identity. It demonstrates how the hand and its activities are described and embedded in Shakespeare's texts and about its role on the Shakespearean stage: as part of the actor's body, in the language as metaphor, and as a morbid stage-prop. Understanding the cultural signifiers that lie behind the early modern understanding of the hand and gesture, opens up new and sometimes disturbing ways of reading and seeing Shakespeare's plays.

Approaching the subject from a dramaturgical point of view, this investigation differs from anything that has been written about the relationship between Thomas More and William Shakespeare. Charles A. Hallett and Elaine S. Hallett define, in specific terms, what Shakespeare learned from his study of More's "History" and how he exploited that knowledge to heighten the drama in his enduring masterpiece "Richard III."

Shakespeare / Text sets new agendas for the study and use of the Shakespearean text. Written by 20 leading experts on textual matters, each chapter challenges a single entrenched binary - such as book/theatre, source/adaptation, text/paratext, canon/apocrypha, sense/nonsense, extant/ephemeral, material/digital and original/copy - that has come to both define and limit the way we read, analyze, teach, perform and edit Shakespeare today. Drawing on methods from book history, bibliography, editorial theory, library science, the digital humanities, theatre studies and literary criticism, the collection as a whole proposes that our understanding of Shakespeare - and early modern drama more broadly - changes radically when 'either/or' approaches to the Shakespearean text are reconfigured. The chapters in Shakespeare / Text make strong cases for challenging received wisdom and offer new, portable methods of treating 'the text', in its myriad instantiations, that will be useful to scholars, editors, theatre practitioners, teachers and librarians.

"Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books of truly vital literary scholarship, each with its own distinctive form. "Shakespeare Now!" recaptures the excitement of Shakespeare; it doesn't assume we know him already, or that we know the best methods for approaching his plays. "Shakespeare Now!" is a new generation of critics, unafraid of risk, on a series of intellectual adventures. Above all - it is a new Shakespeare, freshly present in each volume. In "Godless Shakespeare", Mallin argues that there is a profound absence of, or hostility to, God in Shakespeare's plays. It is clear that Shakespeare engaged with and deployed much of his culture's broadly religious interests: his language is shot through with biblical quotations, priestly sermonizing, Christian imagery and miracle-play style allegory. However, he claims that a counter-discourse also emerges in the works, arguing against God, or the idea of God. This is a polemical account of the absence of God and of belief in the plays, and of how this absence functions in theatrical moments of crux and crisis. Following Dante's three part structure for the "Divine Comedy" - the first part (Inferno) represents expressions of religious faith in Shakespeare's plays, the second (Purgatorio) sets out more sceptical positions, and the last (Paradiso) articulations of godlessness. The discussion focuses on the moral and spiritual dilemmas of major characters, developing the often subtle transitions between belief, scepticism and atheism and suggesting that there is a liberating potential in unbelief.

Shakespeare's legal references and allusions constitute a complete catalogue of the substantive, social, institutional, and "professional" concerns of early modern English law. This encyclopaedia-style dictionary explores a wide range of formal, technical, historical, rhetorical and artistic issues, while maintaining regard for the fact that matters of social history cannot be ignored in discussions of either theater or law. New perspectives and questions are revealed concerning Shakespearean drama, early modern social life, legal thought, and their interactions.

This catalogue of the Shakespeare First Folio (1623) is the result of two decades of research during which 232 surviving copies of this immeasurably important book were located - a remarkable 72 more than were recorded in the previous census over a century ago - and examined in situ, creating an essential reference work.

Spirit, Soul, and City offers a new reading of Coriolanus, Shakespeare's most political play and the last of his great tragedies. Portraying the founding of the Roman republic and the life and soul of its legendary warrior, Coriolanus, the play brings to light not only the hidden working of Rome's mixed regime but the inherent tragic tensions in the soul's spirited tendency to strive to go beyond itself in order to be true to itself. Distinguished scholar Jan H. Blits provides a fresh interpretation of this rich, complex, and often perplexing play, combining meticulous detail and insightful breadth. Proceeding line-by-line through the play, this book reaches its conclusions by closely examining Shakespeare's text--his plot, characters, language, structure, allusions, puzzles, and other devices.

Piece together the world of Shakespeare in this art jigsaw puzzle depicting the London of his day. Spot a huge cast of contemporary extras as a Midsummer Night’s dream is rehearsed at the globe and fellow actors wander the streets, along with local characters who may well have provided the Bard with inspiration. From lovers ascending ladders and bears being baited to tavern brawls and summer fetes, there is something to delight in every detail.

This book explores the appropriation of Shakespeare by youth culture and the expropriation of youth culture in the manufacture and marketing of 'Shakespeare'. Considering the reduction, translation and referencing of the plays and the man, the volume examines the confluence between Shakepop and rock, rap, graphic novels, teen films and pop psychology.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream "is an enchanting and extraordinary comedy. With its rich poetry and vigorous prose, and its combination of magic, myth, romance and humor, it ranks among Shakespeare's most popular and memorable plays. However, it has also increasingly been recognized as a profound and penetrating exploration of love, desire, gender, social hierarchy, dramatic art, imagination and vision.
In this Reader's Guide, Nicolas Tredell:
- explores the key critical responses to the play, from the late seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries
- provides succinct and searching accounts of the most vibrant commentaries and interpretations
- sets these accounts in their critical, theoretical and historical contexts.
Informed and incisive, this survey is an invaluable resource for students, teachers and all those who wish to enhance their grasp of Dream criticism and engage in the ongoing critical debates about the play.

Arden Student Guides offer a new type of study aid which combines lively critical insight with practical guidance on the critical and writng skills students need to develop in order to engage fully with Shakespeare's texts. The books' core focus is on langauge: both understanding and enjoying Shakespeare's rich and complex dramatic lanaguage, and the student's own critical language and how she can improve and develop this to become a critical writer. This lively and informative guide reveals Hamlet as marking a turning point in Shakespeare's use of language and dramatic form as well as addressing the key problem at the play's core: Hamlet's inaction. It also looks at recent critical approaches to the play and its theatre history, including the recent David Tennant/RSC Hamlet on both stage and TV screen.

Shakespeare's plays are too often analysed as if they existed in a vacuum. This book looks at the Problem Plays as designed to produce a response in the audience, and offers a vision of them quite different from conventional judgements. Extending the category from the traditional "Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure" to include "The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing "and" Othello," the author closely examines the texts to argue that Shakespeare purposely disturbs his audience. The endings in particular reveal an intention to cause frustration by first creating expectations through the form and then contradicting them in the content. Thus, the marriages which seem to fulfil the expectations of a comedy's happy ending clash unresolvably with the audience's recognition of their doubts about the specific match. Shakespeare's cynicism feels surprisingly relevant today, while the plays' increasing skill and subtlety continue to offer real pleasure.

The last quarter century has seen a "turn to religion" in Shakespeare studies as well as competing assertions by secular critics that Shakespeare's plays reflect profound skepticism and even dismissal of the truth claims of revealed religion. This divide, though real, obscures the fact that Shakespeare often embeds both readings within the same play. This book is the first to propose an accommodation between religious and secular readings of the plays. Benson argues that Shakespeare was neither a mere debunker of religious orthodoxies nor their unquestioning champion. Religious inquiry in his plays is capacious enough to explore religious orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, everything from radical belief and the need to tolerate religious dissent to the possibility of God's nonexistence. Shakespeare's willingness to explore all aspects of religious and secular life, often simultaneously, is a mark of his tremendous intellectual range. Taking the heterodox as his focus, Benson examines five figures and ideas on the margins of the post-Reformation English church: nonconforming puritans such as Malvolio as well as physical revenants-the walking dead-whom Shakespeare alludes to and features so tantalizingly in Hamlet. Benson applies what Keats called Shakespeare's "negative capability"-his ability to treat both sides of an issue equally and without prejudice-to show that Shakespeare considers possible worlds where God is intimately involved in the lives of persons and, in the very same play, a world in which God may not even exist. Benson demonstrates both that the range of Shakespeare's investigation of religious questions is more daring than has previously been thought, and that the distinction between the sacred and the profane, between the orthodox and the unorthodox, is one that Shakespeare continually engages.

More than just a book of definitions, the dictionary provides a comprehensive account of Shakespeare's portrayal of military life, tactics, and technology. His use of military expressions, customs, and ideas is discussed, with insights into how the plays comment upon military incidents and personalities of the Elizabethan era, and how warfare was presented on the Elizabethan stage.

Cinematic Shakespeare takes the reader inside the making of a number of significant adaptations to illustrate how cinema transforms and re-imagines the dramatic form and style central to Shakespeare's imagination. Cinematic Shakespeare investigates how Shakespeare films constitute an exciting and ever-changing film genre. The challenges of adopting Shakespeare to cinema are like few other film genres. Anderegg looks closely at films by Laurence Olivier (Richard III), Orson Welles (Macbeth), and Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet) as well as topics like "Postmodern Shakespeares" (Julie Taymor's Titus and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books) and multiple adaptations over the years of Romeo and Juliet. A chapter on television looks closely at American broadcasting in the 1950s (the Hallmark Hall of Fame Shakespeare adaptations) and the BBC/Time-Life Shakespeare Plays from the late 70s and early 80s.

This book is the first-ever reference to the four seventeenth-century editions of William Shakespeare's collected plays known as the folios. Along with the quartos, these works are highly valued as the earliest surviving texts of the plays and are frequently cited and discussed in textual studies and general criticism. As an introductory study of these editions, this book focuses on how the folios have traveled over time, where they can be found today, and how they have been valued monetarily. It is the first census of Shakespeare folios conducted in the last fifty years, and it is the first handbook to these important texts ever compiled. The book provides a wealth of information about the folios in a format that can be quickly and easily accessed. It describes the four editions, explains their significance, and traces their market value over time. In addition, a census shows which libraries in the United States hold folios, the chronological movement of the copies to the U.S., and some specific details on each copy. Also included are a biographical dictionary, which offers information on publishers, editors, collectors, and major scholars important to the folios, descriptions of famous copies, a list of donors, discussions of folio lore and bindings, and a bibliography. An essential reference for all Shakespeare collections, this book will be an valuable resource for courses in Shakespearian history and the history of books and printing. It will also be an important addition to both academic and public libraries.

The aesthetics of frame theory form the basis of "Framing Shakespeare on Film." This groundbreaking work expands on the discussion of film constructivists in its claim that the spectacle of Shakespeare on film is a problem-solving activity.
Kathy Howlett demonstrates convincingly how viewers' expectations for understanding Shakespeare on film can be manipulated by the director's cinematic technique. Emphasizing that the successful film can transform Shakespeare's text while remaining rooted in Shakespearean conceptions, Howlett raises the question of how directors and audiences understand the genre of Shakespeare on film and reveals how the medium alters the patterns through which the audience views Shakespeare.

John Russell Brown is arguably the most influential scholar in the field of Shakespeare in performance. This collection brings together and makes accessible his most important writings across the past half-century or so. Ranging across space, words, audiences, directors and themes, the book maps John Russell Brown's search for a fuller understanding of Shakespeare's plays in performance. New introductory notes for each chapter give a fascinating insight into his critical and scholarly journey. Together the essays provide an authoritative and engaging account of how to study Shakespeare's plays as texts for performance. Drawing readers into a wide variety of approaches and debates, this book will be important and provocative reading for anyone studying Shakespeare or staging one of his plays.

'Julius Caesar is, simply, Shakespeare's African play' John Kani In 2012, actor Paterson Joseph played the role of Brutus in the Royal Shakespeare Company's acclaimed production of Julius Caesar - Gregory Doran's last play before becoming Artistic Director for the RSC. It is a play, Joseph is quick to acknowledge, that is widely misunderstood - even dreaded - when it comes to study and performance. Alongside offering fascinating insights into Julius Caesar and Shakespeare's writing, Joseph serves up details of the rehearsal process; his key collaborations during an eclectic career; as well as his experience of working with a majority black cast. He considers the positioning of ethnic minority actors in Shakespeare productions in general, and female actors tackling so seemingly masculine a play in particular. Audience reactions are also investigated by Joseph, citing numerous conversations he has had with psychologists, counsellors and neurologists on the subject of what happens between performer and spectator. For Paterson Joseph, his experience of playing Brutus in Julius Caesar with the RSC was a defining point in his career, and a transformative experience. For any actor or practitioner working on Shakespeare - or for any reader interested in his plays - this is a fascinating and informative read, which unlocks so much about making and understanding theatre from the inside.

In this book White "traces the influence of both the comedies and tragedies {of Shakespeare} on Keats's work." (Choice)

Shakespeare was a master of language, his sayings have become part of everyday speech, and his plays endure, in part, because of the beauty of his verse. Shakespeare's language, however, poses special difficulties for modern actors because many of his words seem unusual or difficult to pronounce, he employs rhetorical devices throughout his works, and he carefully uses rhythm to convey sense.

The relation of the modern actor to the Shakespearean text, the importance of understanding the nuances of his language, and the fundamentals of grammar are all thoroughly examined in this volume. Its heart is a detailed consideration of the iambic code, the metrical system that Shakespeare used to give so much power to his verse. O'Dell also examines the importance of formal rhetoric in Elizabethan England and Shakespeare's artful use of rhetorical devices in his plays. As a practical reference guide, this volume keeps in mind the particular needs of theater professionals.

Shakespeare everyone can understand--now in new DELUXE editions! Why fear Shakespeare? By placing the words of the original play next to line-by-line translations in plain English, these popular guides make Shakespeare accessible to everyone. They introduce Shakespeare's world, significant plot points, and the key players. And now they feature expanded literature guide sections that help students study smarter, along with links to bonus content on the Sparknotes.com website. A Q&A, guided analysis of significant literary devices, and review of the play give students all the tools necessary for understanding, discussing, and writing about King Lear. The expanded content includes: Five Key Questions: Five frequently asked questions about major moments and characters in the play. What Does the Ending Mean?: Is the ending sad, celebratory, ironic . . . or ambivalent? Plot Analysis: What is the play about? How is the story told, and what are the main themes? Why do the characters behave as they do? Study Questions: Questions that guide students as they study for a test or write a paper. Quotes by Theme: Quotes organized by Shakespeare's main themes, such as love, death, tyranny, honor, and fate. Quotes by Character: Quotes organized by the play's main characters, along with interpretations of their meaning.

Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama represents the first sustained study of Middleton's dramatic works as responses to James I's governance. Through examining Middleton's poiesis in relation to the political theology of Jacobean London, Kaethler explores early forms of free speech, namely parrhesia, and rhetorical devices, such as irony and allegory, to elucidate the ways in which Middleton's plural art exposes the limitations of the monarch's sovereign image. By drawing upon earlier forms of dramatic intervention, James's writings, and popular literature that blossomed during the Jacobean period, including news pamphlets, the book surveys a selection of Middleton's writings, ranging from his first extant play The Phoenix (1604) to his scandalous finale A Game at Chess (1624). In the course of this investigation, the author identifies that although Middleton's drama spurs political awareness and questions authority, it nevertheless simultaneously promotes alternative structures of power, which manifest as misogyny and white supremacy.

In this volume on "Othello," Laurie Maguire examines the use and misuse of language, the play's textual and performance histories and how critics and directors have responded to the language of sexual jealousy.