Shakespeare's four-hundred-year performance history is full of anecdotes - ribald, trivial, frequently funny, sometimes disturbing, and always but loosely allegiant to fact. Such anecdotes are nevertheless a vital index to the ways that Shakespeare's plays have generated meaning across varied times and in varied places. Furthermore, particular plays have produced particular anecdotes - stories of a real skull in Hamlet, superstitions about the name Macbeth, toga troubles in Julius Caesar - and therefore express something embedded in the plays they attend. Anecdotes constitute then not just a vital component of a play's performance history but a form of vernacular criticism by the personnel most intimately involved in their production: actors. These anecdotes are therefore every bit as responsive to and expressive of a play's meanings across time as the equally rich history of Shakespearean criticism or indeed the very performances these anecdotes treat. Anecdotal Shakespeare provides a history of post-Renaissance Shakespeare and performance, one not based in fact but no less full of truth.

Tempests After Shakespeare shows how the 'rewriting' of Shakespeare’s play serves as an interpretative grid through which to read three movements - postcoloniality, postpatriarchy, and postmodernism - via the Tempest characters of Caliban, Miranda/Sycorax and Prospero, as they vie for the ownership of meaning at the end of the twentieth century. Covering texts in three languages, from four continents and in the last four decades, this study imaginatively explores the collapse of empire and the emergence of independent nation-states; the advent of feminism and other sexual liberation movements that challenged patriarchy; and the varied critiques of representation that make up the 'postmodern condition'.

Shakespeare and Ireland examines the complex relationship between the most celebrated icon of the British establishment and Irish literary and cultural traditions. Addressing Shakespearean representations of Ireland as well as Irish writers' responses to the dramatist, it ranges widely across theatrical performances, pedagogical practices, editorial undertakings and political developments. The writings of Joyce, Heaney and Yeats are considered, in addition to recent nationalist discourses. In so doing, the collection establishes the multiple 'Shakespeares' and competing 'Irelands' that inform the Irish imagination.

This book explores the development of the global phenomenon of Prison Shakespeare, from its emergence in the 1980s to the present day. It provides a succinct history of the phenomenon and its spread before going on to explore one case study the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble's (Australia) Shakespeare Prison Project in detail. The book then analyses the phenomenon from a number of perspectives, and evaluates a number of claims made about the outcomes of such programs, particularly as they relate to offender health and behaviour. Unlike previous works on the topic, which are largely individual case studies, this book focuses not only on Prison Shakespeare's impact on the prisoners who directly participate, but also on prison culture and on broader social attitudes towards both prisoners and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare among the Animals examines the role of animal-metaphor in the Shakespearean stage, particularly as such metaphor serves to underwrite various forms of social difference. Working through texts such as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jonson’s Volpone, and Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the chapters of the study focus upon the allegedly natural character of femininity, masculinity, ethnicity, and the nature of the natural world itself as it appears on the Renaissance stage. Addressing each of these topics in turn, Shakespeare among the Animals explores the notions of cultural order that underlie early modern conceptions of the natural world, and the ideas of nature implicit in early modern social practice.

A theme that obsessed Shakespeare in over 20 plays from Titus Andronicus to The Tempest was the relationship between a daughter and her father. This study traces chronologically the development of this theme, relating it to the little we know of his own two daughters, and sheds new light on his exploration of the family that so dominated his approach to drama. Drawing on a lifetime's experience of playing Shakespearean roles, Oliver Ford Davies, a former university lecturer and now an Honorary Associate Artist of the RSC and Olivier Award winner, has written an engaging and deeply researched study of a topic that has intrigued him from playing Capulet in 1967, King Lear in 2002, to Polonius in 2008.

Focusing on England, Hungary and on some other European countries, the book explores the latent religious patterns in the appropriation of Shakespeare from the 1769 Stratford Jubilee to the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth in 1864. It shows how the Shakespeare cult used quasi-religious (verbal and ritual) means of reverence, how it made use of some romantic notions, and how the ensuing quasi-transcendental authority was utilized for political purposes. The book suggests a theoretical framework and a comprehensive anthropological context for the interpretation of literature.

Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans.

In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy:

• introduces Shakespeare's life and works in context, providing crucial historical background
• looks at each of Shakespeare's plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contemporary criticism and performance history
• provides detailed discussion of twentieth-century Shakespearean criticism, exploring the theories, debates and discoveries that shape our understanding of Shakespeare today
• looks at contemporary performances of Shakespeare on stage and screen
• provides further critical reading by play
• outlines detailed chronologies of Shakespeare's life and works and also of twentieth-century criticism

The companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/shaughnessy contains student-focused materials and resources, including an interactive timeline and annotated weblinks.

This study examines the profound changes that twentieth-century performance has wrought on Shakespeare's complex drama of war and politics. What was accepted at the turn of the century as a patriotic celebration of a national hero has emerged in the modern theatre as a dark and troubling analysis of the causes and costs of war. The book details the theatrical innovations and political insights that have turned one of Shakespeare's most traditional-bound plays into one of his most popular and provocative. Henry V gives details analyses of several important modern productions. Beginning with a consideration of the play's political significance in Elizabethan London, the book goes on the reveal its subsequent reinvention, both as patriotic pageant and anti-war manifesto. Individual chapters consider important productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and other British and North American companies, as well as the landmark film versions. A compelling account of the theatrical revolution that has transformed one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays. -- .

Challenging our understanding of ideas about psychology in Shakespeare's time, Shakespeare's Imagined Persons proposes we should view his characters as imagined persons. A new reading of B.F. Skinner's radical behaviourism brings out how - contrary to the impression he created - Skinner ascribes an important role in human behaviour to cognitive activity. Using this analysis, Peter Murray demonstrates the consistency of radical behaviourism with the psychology of character formation and acting in writers from Plato to Shakespeare - an approach little explored in the current debates about subjectivity in Elizabethan culture. Murray also shows that radical behaviourism can explain the phenomena observed in modern studies of acting and social role-playing. Drawing on these analyses of earlier and modern psychology, Murray goes on to reveal the dynamics of Shakespeare's characterizations of Hamlet, Prince Hal, Rosalind, and Perdita in a fascinating new light.

This comprehensive and well-informed study is also a work of detection and reappraisal. Each tragedy is considered both as a text and as a play to experience in performance. Shakespeare's engagement with this form of drama is followed step-by-step until its concluding years of intense activity. No theory of tragedy emerges, but rather an increasing ability to maintain and communicate a clear-eyed perception of a changing and often violent society in which action is stronger than words or conscious intention.

As one of the most adventurous literary and cultural critics of his generation, Terence Hawkes' contributions to the study of Shakespeare and the development of literary and cultural theory have been immense. His work has been instrumental in effecting a radical shift in the study of Shakespeare and of literary studies. This collection of essays by some of his closest colleagues, friends, peers, and mentees begins with an introduction by John Drakakis, outlining the profound impact that Hawkes' work had on various areas of literary studies. It also includes a poem by Christopher Norris, who worked with Hawkes for many years at the University of Cardiff, as well as work on translation, social class, the historicist and presentist exploration of Shakespearean texts, and teaching Shakespeare in prisons. The volume features essays by former students who have gone on to establish reputations in areas beyond the study of literature, and who have contributed ground-breaking volumes to the pioneering New Accents series. It concludes with Malcolm Evans' innovative account of the migration of semiotics into the area of business. This book is a vibrant and informative read for anyone interested in Hawkes' unique blend of literary and cultural theory, criticism, Shakespeare studies, and presentism.

With its cross-dressed heroine, gender games and explorations of sexual ambivalence, its Forest of Arden and melancholy Jacques, As You Like it speaks directly to the twenty-first century. Juliet Dusinberre demonstrates that Rosalind's authority in the play grows from new ideas about women and reveals that Shakespeare's heroine reinvents herself for every age. But As You Like it is also deeply rooted in Elizabethan culture. Through the concealing medium of literary pastoral, Shakespeare addresses some of the hottest issues of his own time, including the fortunes of the Earl of Essex and the theatre's confrontation with Puritan disapproval; this new edition connects the play to the Elizabethan court and its dynamic queen and demonstrates that the play's vital roots in its own time give it new life in ours.

Where does Shakespeare fit into the drama of his day? Getting to know the work of Shakespeare's contemporaries offers an insight into Elizabethan and Jacobean preoccupations and the theatrical climate of the early modern period. This book provides an essential overview of some major dramatic works from their stage origins to today's screen productions. Each chapter includes: * a detailed analysis of a play by Shakespeare considered alongside a key work by one other significant playwright of the day (including The Merchant of Venice, Volpone, The Spanish Tragedy, Titus Andronicus, Othello, The Changeling, Romeo and Juliet, The Duchess of Malfi, Measure for Measure, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tragedy of Mariam, Doctor Faustus and Hamlet) * close reading of the text * discussion of early modern theatrical practices * a focus on one ground-breaking example of early modern drama on screen * suggestions for links with other early modern texts and further reading This book provides a route map to the very latest developments in early modern drama studies, fostering confident and independent thinking, making it an ideal introduction for students of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

This book is a study of As You Like It , which shows how the play represents issues of interest to literate playgoers of its time, as well as speculatively to Shakespeare himself.

Shakespeare and the Question of Culture addresses the central issue of "culture" in early modern studies through both literary history and disciplinary critique. Bruster argues that the "culture" that critics investigate through the works of Shakespeare and other writers is largely a literary culture, and he examines what this necessary limitation of the scope of "cultural studies" means for the discipline of early modern studies.

Money, magic and the theatre were powerful forces in early modern England. Money was acquiring an independent, efficacious agency, as the growth of usury allowed financial signs to reproduce without human intervention. Magic was coming to seem Satanic, as the manipulation of magical signs to performative purposes was criminalized in the great 'witch craze.' And the commercial, public theatre was emerging - to great controversy - as the perfect medium to display, analyse and evaluate the newly autonomous power of representation in its financial, magical and aesthetic forms. Money and Magic in Early Modern Drama is especially timely in the current era of financial deregulation and derivatives, which are just as mysterious and occult in their operations as the germinal finance of 16th-century London. Chapters examine the convergence of money and magic in a wide range of early modern drama, from the anonymous Mankind through Christopher Marlowe to Ben Jonson, concentrating on such plays as The Alchemist, The New Inn and The Staple of News. Several focus on Shakespeare, whose analysis of the relations between finance, witchcraft and theatricality is particularly acute in Timon of Athens, The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale.

First published in 1971.
The only substantial text of a series of lectures on Shakespeare by S T Coleridge is that provided by J P Collier's Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton
(1856). His text of these important lectures given by Coleridge in 1811-12 has been the basis of all modern editions. This edition is based on hitherto unpublished transcripts of the lectures made by Collier when, as a young man, he attended Coleridge's lectures. R A Foakes' introduction and appendices demonstrate the extent to which Collier revised and altered Coleridge's words for the edition he published forty-five years later. This volume therefore provides a much more authoritative text of Coleridge's most important Shakespeare lectures.

Based on extensive archival research, Shakespeare in the Victorian Periodicals offers an entirely new perspective on popular Shakespeare reception by focusing on articles published in Victorian periodicals. Shakespeare had already reached the apex of British culture in the previous century, becoming the national poet of the middle and upper classes, but during the Victorian era he was embraced by more marginal groups. If Shakespeare was sometimes employed as an instrument of enculturation, imposed on these groups, he was also used by them to resist this cultural hegemony.

What does it mean to make life? This book focuses on one of the key questions for culture and science in both Shakespeare's time and our own. Shakespeare wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream" during a period when the "new science" had begun to unsettle the foundations of knowledge about the natural world. Through close analysis of the play and reflection on modern genetic engineering, Turner examines developments in early modern culture as it sought to come to terms with the new forces of magic, astrology, alchemy and mechanics, fields of knowledge that preoccupied the most adventurous intellects of Shakespeare's period and that promised limitless power over nature.Shakespeare's writing sheds light on current developments in science, ethics, law, and religion in contemporary culture. This book reveals the richness and peculiarity of early scientific thought in Shakespeare's time and shows how the questions he poses remain fundamental as the nature of "life" has become one of the most pressing political, ethical, and philosophical problems for society today."Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source - the most living language imaginable - and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare's original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises 'the play' is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink

This lively and provocative study offers a radical reappraisal of a century of Shakespearean theatre. Topics addressed include modernist Shakespearean performance's relation with psychoanalysis, the hidden gender dynamics of the open stage movement, and the appropriation of Shakespeare himself as a dramatic fiction and theatrical icon.

This collection of essays reassesses a range of Shakespeare's plays in relation to carnivalesque theory. The plays discussed include: Henry IV; Romeo and Juliet; A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Hamlet; Measure For Measure; The Winter's Tale; and Henry VIII. Contributors re-historicize the carnivalesque in different ways, offering both a developed application, or critique of, Bakhtin's thought."