Focusing on All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, Nicholas Marsh uses close analysis of extracts from the plays to build the reader's confidence when approaching Shakespeare's Problem Plays, and exploring the unresolved competing discourses they dramatize. In the first part of the text, chapters on Openings, Young Men, Women, Politics, and Society, Fools and fools, and Drama highlight the multiple interpretations these plays provoke. In the second part, discussion of where the Problem Plays stand in relation to Shakespeare's life and works, a chapter about the historical and cultural context, and a comparison of five critical views, with suggestions for further reading, provide a bridge towards further study.

When actors perform Shakespeare, what do they do with their bodies? How do they display to the spectator what is hidden in the imagination? This is a history of Shakespearean performance as seen through the actor's body. Tunstall draws upon social, cognitive and moral psychology to reveal how performers from Sarah Siddons to Ian McKellen have used the language of gesture to reflect the minds of their characters and shape the reactions of their audiences. This book is rich in examples, including detailed analysis of recent performances and interviews with key figures from the worlds of both acting and gesture studies. Truly interdisciplinary, this provocative and original contribution will appeal to anyone interested in Shakespeare, theatre history, psychology or body language.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Othello on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare containsThe complete text of the original playA line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday languageA complete list of characters with descriptionsPlenty of helpful commentary

Harold Bloom is one of the most influential—and controversial—of contemporary Shakespeare critics. These essays examine the sources and impact of his Shakespearean criticism. Through focused and sustained study of this writer as literary icon and his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, the essays address a wide range of issues, from the cultural role of Shakespeare to the ethics of literary theory and criticism.

Read Shakespeare's plays in all their brilliance--and understand what every word means! Don't be intimidated by Shakespeare! These popular guides make the Bard's plays accessible and enjoyable. Each No Fear guide contains: The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts the words into everyday language A complete list of characters, with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary

Taking a wide-ranging intertextual approach, Richard Hillman produces fresh readings of some familiar Early Modern English plays by setting them against political and cultural discourses concerning France, as the latter informed contemporary English consciousness. The English works explored go beyond those directly representing French affairs, on the premise that dramatic treatments of English historical topics, notably by Shakespeare and Marlowe, were inflected by events across the Channel.

This collection of 12 essays uses the works of Shakespeare to show how experts in their field formulate critical positions.
A helpful guidebook for anyone trying to think of a new approach to Shakespeare
Twelve experts take new critical positions in their field of study using the writings and analysis of Shakespeare, to show how writers (students and academics) find topics and develop their ideas
Features autobiographical prefaces that explain how the experts chose their topics and why the editor commissioned these particular essays, topics, and authors
Argues that literary research is a reaction to experiences, thoughts or feelings
Essays are arranged in small dialogues of two or three, forming a debate
Teaches students to respond individually to cultural positions

This volume, while it raises all the questions appertaining to the cultural, historical and critical contexts of the play, has as its primary focus the play as theatrical performance. This focus is not taken in isolation, but observed in terms of all the social, material and practical aspects of theatrical production. The questions raised are those that face actors, stage managers and directors, scenic and costume designers, in the rehearsal room and on the stage.

Marriage features to a greater or lesser extent in virtually every play Shakespeare wrote - as the festive end of comedy, as the link across the cycles of the history plays, as a marker of the difference between his own society and that depicted in the Roman plays, and, all too often, as the starting-point for the tragedies. Situating his representations of marriage firmly within the ideologies and practices of Renaissance culture, Lisa Hopkins argues that Shakespeare anatomises marriage much as he does kingship, and finds it similarly indispensable to the underpinning of society, however problematic it may be as a guarantor of personal happiness.

Shakespeare in mass media–particularly film, video, and television–is arguably the fastest growing research agenda in Shakespeare studies. Shakespeare after Mass Media provides both students and scholars with the most comprehensive resource available on the market for studying the extraordinary afterlife of Shakespeare’s plays in a wide range of media. From marketing to electronic Shakespeares, comics to romance novels, Star Trek to Kenneth Branagh, radio and popular music to Bartlett’s Quotations, the contributors explore the contemporary cultural significance of Shakespeare with theoretical sophistication and accessible writing.

This original and scholarly work uses three detailed case studies of plays - Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra," "King Lear" and "Cymbeline "- to cast light on the ways in which early modern writers used metaphor to explore how identities emerge from the interaction of competing regional and spiritual topographies.

The subjects of this book are the subjects whose subjects are themselves.
Narcissus so himself himself forsook,
And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.
In accusing the introspective Adonis of narcissistic self-absorption, Shakespeare's Venus employs a geminative construction - 'himself himself' - that provides a keynote for this study of Renaissance reflexive subjectivity. Through close analysis of a number of Shakespearean texts - including Venusand Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Othello - his book illustrates how radical self-reflection is expressed on the Renaissance page and stage, and how representations of the two seemingly extreme figures of the narcissist and self-slaughterer are indicative of early-modern attitudes to introspection. Encompassing a broad range of philosophical, theological, poetic, and dramatic texts, this study examines period descriptions of the early-modern subject characterized by the rhetoric of reciprocation and reflection. The narcissist and the self-slaughter provide models of dialogic but self-destructive identity where private interiority is articulated in terms of self-response, but where this geminative isolation is understood as self-defeating, both selfish and suicidal. The study includes work on Renaissance revisions of Ovid, classical attitudes to suicide, the rhetoric of friendship literature, discussion of early-modern optic theory, and an extended discussion of narcissism in the epyllia tradition. Sustained textual analysis offers new readings of major Shakespearean texts, allowing familiar works of literature to be seen from the unusual and anti-social perspectives of their narcissistic and suicidal protagonists.

This Handbook provides an introductory guide to "The Winter's Tale" offering a scene-by-scene theatrically aware commentary, contextual documents, a brief history of the text and first performances, case studies of key performances and productions, a survey of film and TV adaptation, a wide sampling of critical opinion and further reading.

This open access book provides translations of early German versions of Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew. The introductory material situates these plays in their German context and discusses the insights they offer into the original English texts. English itinerant players toured in northern Continental Europe from the 1580s. Their repertories initially consisted of plays from the London theatre, but over time the players learnt German, and German players joined the companies, meaning the dramatic texts were adapted and translated into German. There are four plays that can legitimately be considered as versions of Shakespeare's plays. The present volume (volume 2) offers fully-edited translations of two of them: Tito Andronico (Titus Andronicus) and Kunst uber alle Kunste, ein boes Weib gut zu machen / An Art beyond All Arts, to Make a Bad Wife Good (The Taming of the Shrew). For the other two plays, Der Bestrafte Brudermord / Fratricide Punished (Hamlet) and Romio und Julieta (Romeo and Juliet), see volume 1. These plays are of great interest not only to all Shakespeareans, but also to scholars who are concerned with the broader issues of translation, performance and textual transmission over time. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Swiss National Science Foundation.

Exile defines the Shakespearean canon, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen. This book traces the influences on the drama of exile, examining the legal context of banishment (pursued against Catholics, gypsies and vagabonds) in early modern England; the self-consciousness of exile as an amatory trope; and the discourses by which exile could be reshaped into comedy or tragedy. Across genres, Shakespeare's plays reveal a fascination with exile as the source of linguistic crisis, shaped by the utterance of that word "Banished".

Complementing other volumes in the Shakespeare Criticism Series, this collection of twenty original essays will expand the critical contexts in which Antony and Cleopatra can be enjoyed as both literature and theater. The essays will cover a wide spectrum of topics and utilize a diversity of scholarly methodologies, including textual and performance-oriented approaches, intertextual studies, as well as feminist, psychoanalytical, Marxist, and postcolonial inquiries. The volume will also feature an extensive introduction by the editor surveying the under-examined performance history and critical trends/legacy of this complex play. Contributors include prominent Shakespeare scholars David Bevington, Dympna Callaghan, Leeds Barroll, David Fuller, Dorothea Kehler, and Linda Woodbridge.

What are Shakespeare's uses of the conceptual space of conflict? And what has been the role played by principles, patterns and situations of conflict in the construction of the Shakespeare myth, and in its European and then global spread? This collection looks, from a truly pan-European vantage point, at the variety of conflictive and conflicting dimensions embedded in Shakespeare's texts (Part I); at the way Shakespeare's universe of discourse has been enlisted to address and dramatize conflicts of a socio-political, cultural or aesthetic nature (Part II); and at how Shakespearean meanings have been renegotiated through reception and reproduction in actual historical contexts of strife or outright belligerence (Part III). The fascinatingly complex picture that emerges from the original studies gathered here provides new insight into Shakespeare's unique position in world literature and culture.

The word "like" occurs some 2,400 times in the writings ascribed to Shakespeare. So many occurrences of the word suggest that Shakespeare's is a theater of likeness, "as you like it." This book demonstrates that part of the enduring value of Shakespeare's art is his poetry of likeness here, in the "land of unlikeness," where human beings invent their likenesses. It shows that Shakespeare's theater is also Shakespeare's theory of the psychology of likeness and unlikeness in the human striving for the most elusive (and allusive) of all attainments, an individual identity. "This is an extraordinary book, an examination like no other of Shakespeare's plays, a brilliant study . . . that will help shape for the next generation the way the world reads Shakespeare. It is long, dense, exciting, and exact. . . . But those to whom this method is congenial will treasure this work and will come to a new understanding of where Shakespeare's great power resides." - Mark Taylor, Professor of English, Manhattan College. "Professor Shoaf has picked up on Shakespeare's use of the word 'like' with its interesting ambiguities. . . . I can imagine this book being cited by Shakespeare critics and scholars in all kinds of contexts for years and years. . . . This book looks like a winner." - Norman N. Holland, Marston-Milbauer Professor of English, University of Florida. "I find this book to be a valuable and useful contribution to the understanding of Shakespeare. It is original and stimulating." - Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University.

Arguably the first play in a Shakespearean tetralogy, Richard II is a unique and compelling political drama whose themes still resonate today. It is one of the few Shakespeare plays written entirely in verse and its format presents unique theatrical challenges. Politically engaged and controversial, it raises crucial debates about the relationship between early modern art, audience response and state power. This collection provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the critical and theatrical history of the play. The substantial introduction surveys the history of critical interpretations of Richard II since the eighteenth century. The eleven newly written critical essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field then adopt an eclectic range of critical approaches that encourage scholars and students to pursue new and imaginative directions with the text.

THESEUS. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon; but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager, Long withering out a young man's revenue. HIPPOLYTA. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities.

Weyward Macbeth, a volume of entirely new essays, provides innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the various ways Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' has been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial constructions. Comprehensive in its scope, this collection addresses the enduringly fraught history of 'Macbeth' in the United States, from its appearance as the first Shakespearean play documented in the American colonies to a proposed Hollywood film version with a black diasporic cast. Over two dozen contributions explore 'Macbeth's' haunting presence in American drama, poetry, film, music, history, politics, acting, and directing - all through the intersections of race and performance.

Joyce Rogers sheds new light upon Shakespeare's last public words through her study of medieval and Renaissance ecclesiastical and testamentary laws and custom. Professor Rogers provides extensive background material on English legal history and shows that the legal documents of the time do give legal answer to the doubts and speculations that have grown up around Shakespeare's will. She shows how the will is replete with elements of civil and common as well as ecclesiastical law and custom, making more understandable the disputed points of Shakespeare's will, and establishing that the will was as correct, incontestable, and conventional as possible.

The main thrust of the book, however, is not on the law as such. It is on how the law was used by Shakespeare to serve the best interests and needs of the women and children in his family as well as the friends named therein. As such, the book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Elizabethan society and to all Shakespearean scholars.

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.