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.

This original and innovative book proposes 'dismemory' as a new form of intertextual engagement with Shakespeare by modern and contemporary Irish writers. Through reflection on these canonical writers and ranging across thirteen Shakespeare plays, Taylor-Collins demonstrates how Irish writers who helped to fashion and critique the Irish nation state carry an indelible, if often subdued, mark of Shakespeare's early modern English influence. The volume overall renews and revitalises the Shakespeare-modern Ireland connection: Taylor-Collins reveals Hamlet's hauntological legacy in Playboy of the Western World, Ulysses, and Ghosts; how the corporal economies that exert pressure from Coriolanus and Ben Jonson flicker through to the antiheroes in Beckett's Three Novels; and how the landed legacies of territorial contests in Shakespeare are engaged with in Yeats's poetry, and similarly how the diseased muddiness in Hamlet is addressed by Heaney. -- .

"The Merchant of Venice" is a play that arouses conflicting passions in its audience. It is listed as a comedy, but of the three intertwined stories, one has a tragic ending, while the other two end more or less happily. What is the enduring appeal of this dark and troubling play? This study tries to answer these and other questions in a stimulating and informative way.

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 This edition is based on hitherto unpublished transcripts of the lectures made by Collier when, as a young man, he attended Coleridge's lectures.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.

This innovative collection explores uses of Shakespeare in a wide variety of 21st century contexts, including business manuals, non-literary scholarship, database aggregation, social media, gaming, and creative criticism. Essays in this volume demonstrate that users' critical and creative uses of the dramatist's works position contemporary issues of race, power, identity, and authority in new networks that redefine Shakespeare and reconceptualize the ways in which he is processed in both scholarly and popular culture. While The Shakespeare User contributes to the burgeoning corpus of critical works on digital and Internet Shakespeares, this volume looks beyond the study of Shakespeare artifacts to the system of use and users that constitute the Shakespeare network. This reticular understanding of Shakespeare use expands scholarly forays into non-academic practices, digital discourse communities, and creative critical works manifest via YouTube, Twitter, blogs, databases, websites, and popular fiction.

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.

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.

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."

Did Shakespeare really join John Fletcher to write Cardenio, a lost play based on Don Quixote? With an emphasis on the importance of theatrical experiment, a script and photos from Gary Taylor's recent production, and essays by respected early modern scholars, this book will make a definitive statement about the collaborative nature of Cardenio.

Shakespeare had extraordinary intelligence, unheard-of powers of observation and interpretation, a soaring imagination, a way with words that defies description, and a defining interest in the theater. He brought kings, queens, heroes, and peasantry to the stage so they could be seen in a more realistic fashion. Even so, in modern times, assistance is often needed to interpret Shakespeare's work.

In "A Leg Up on the Canon," author Jim McGahern provides an extensive biography of Shakespeare and offers an introductory guide to his histories, comedies, tragedies, romances, and poems. McGahern presents summaries of the texts, explanations of difficult passages, extensive historical context, and glossaries of terms no longer in use. In each volume, he outlines the plot of plays in that category and then delivers a one-act play with inclusive commentary. McGahern includes pertinent remarks and important speeches and soliloquies interlaced with brief explanations and descriptions of the actions on stage as well as plot developments.

"A Leg Up on the Canon," a four-volume series, provides insights into the word music of the talented man from Stratford.

"This book investigates the political dimensions of Czech Shakespeare appropriation and production in the wake of the fall of communism, uncovering an anxious struggle between dimensions of Czech nationhood that comes to a head in a competition for a 'true' Shakespeare, and addressing key issues such as gender, globalization and national culture"--

Carter explores early modern culture's reception of Ovid through the manipulation of Ovidian myth by Shakespeare, Middleton, Heywood, Marlowe and Marston. With a focus on sexual violence, homosexuality, incest and idolatry, Carter analyses how depictions of mythology represent radical ideas concerning gender and sexuality.

Building on current scholarly interest in the religious dimensions of the play, this study shows how Shakespeare uses Hamlet to comment on the Calvinistic Protestantism predominant around 1600. By considering the play's inner workings against the religious ideas of its time, John Curran explores how Shakespeare portrays in this work a completely deterministic universe in the Calvinist mode, and, Curran argues, exposes the disturbing aspects of Calvinism. By rendering a Catholic Prince Hamlet caught in a Protestant world which consistently denies him his aspirations for a noble life, Shakespeare is able in this play, his most theologically engaged, to delineate the differences between the two belief systems, but also to demonstrate the consequences of replacing the old religion so completely with the new.

This book fills a lacuna in the intellectual history of the seventeenth century by investigating the role that skepticism plays in the declining prestige of memory. It argues that Shakespeare and Donne revolutionize the art of memory, thanks to their skepticism, and thereby transform literary strategies like mimesis, exemplarity, and pastoral.

An extensive history of The Royal Shakespeare Company's studio theatre, Studio Shakespeare: The Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place also includes a biography of its founder and first artistic director, Mary Ann 'Buzz' Goodbody (1947-75). Alycia Smith-Howard reveals how, as a socialist, feminist, and the RSC's first female director, Goodbody sought to invigorate classical theatre and its approach to producing the works of Shakespeare. The Other Place, which opened its doors in 1973, was her greatest achievement, and was, in the words of Ron Daniels of the American Repertory Theatre, 'a training ground for an entire generation of Shakespeare actors and directors'. The volume examines Shakespeare productions at The Other Place from 1973 to its closure in 1989. The author's sources include Goodbody's 'Mission Statement' for the studio theatre as well as other previously unavailable materials such as Goodbody's private papers, journal entries, director's notes and correspondence. In addition, it contains interviews and commentary from such theatrical luminaries as Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, Cicely Berry, Trevor Nunn, Peter Hall, Patrick Stewart, and many others. Smith-Howard's narrative discusses productions of twelve plays at The Other Place, among them King Lear (1974), Hamlet (1975), The Merchant of Venice (1978), Antony and Cleopatra (1982), King John (1988) and Othello (1989). The cast lists of productions at The Other Place are included in an appendix. Smith-Howard's study captures the spirit and ethos of an important and radical exercise in theatre which influenced the mainstream work of The Royal Shakespeare Company. It is a lucid, compelling and valuable contribution not only to Shakespeare studies but also to theatre history. This book, as directors once said, 'has legs'.

Constructing 'Monsters' in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture argues for the crucial place of the 'monster' in the early modern imagination. The author traces the metaphorical significance of 'monstrous' forms across a range of early modern exhibition spaces - fairground displays, 'cabinets of curiosity' and court entertainments - to contend that the 'monster' finds its most intriguing manifestation in the investments and practices of contemporary theater. The study's new readings of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson make a powerful case for the drama's contribution to debates about the 'extraordinary body'.

Shakespeare / Nature sets new agendas for the study of nature in Shakespeare's work. Offering an expansive exploration of the intersections between the human and non-human worlds, chapters by 19 experts focus on the rich and persuasive language of nature, both as organic matter and cultural conditioning. Each chapter is grounded in a close reading of Shakespeare's plays and poems and among the many themes considered are natural theology in Macbeth; the influence of the stars in Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth; monstrous bodies in Richard III and The Tempest; kinship in King Henry V; places and spaces in Love's Labour's Lost, and acting sex scenes in a range of plays including Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Approaching ‘Nature’ in all its diversity, this collection explores the multifaceted and complex ways in which the human and non-human worlds intersect and the development of a language of symbiosis that attempts to both control as well as create the terms of human authority. It offers an entirely new approach to the subject of nature, bringing together divergent approaches that have previously been pursued independently so as to explore their shared investment in the intersections between the human and non-human worlds and how these discourses shape and condition the emotional, organic, cultural, and psychological landscapes of Shakespeare’s play world. Contributors approach Shakespeare’s nature through the various lenses of philosophy, historicism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, cosmography, geography, sexuality, linguistics, environmentalism, feminism and robotics to provide new and nuanced readings of the intersectional terms of both meaning and matter.

Can postmodern accounts of the gaze--deriving from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Lacan, Fanon, and Riviere—tell us anything about those structures of vision prior to, and repressed by, modernity? Shakespeare's Visual Regime examines the tragedies, histories, and Roman plays for an emergent early modern spectatorial subject, thereby locating Shakespearean theater within those discourses most crucial to the contemporary exposition and disruption of regimes of vision: perspective painting, cartography, optics, geometry, Puritan anti-theatrical polemic, and the occult.

Volumes in this series trace the course of Shakespeare criticism, play-by-play, from the earliest items of recorded criticism to the beginnings of the modern period. The focus of the documentary material is from the late 18th century to the first half of the 20th century. The series makes a major contribution to our understanding of the plays and traditions of Shakespearean criticism as they have developed from century to century. The introduction to each volume constitutes an important chapter of literary history, tracing the entire critical career of each play from the beginnings to the present day. Includes English, European and American excerpts from Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Ruskin, Walt Whitman, Algernon Charles Swinburne, George Bernard Shaw, John Masefield, Lytton Strachey, John Middleton Murray, and Wyndham Lewis.

This revised edition of the successful Casebook first published in 1969, has been brought up-to-date with the inclusion of more recent criticism, whilst retaining early comments and critiques. Contributors include A.C.Bradley, A.Wilson Knight, Enid Welsford, George Orwell, Robert B.Heilman, Barbara Everett, John Holloway, W.R.Elton, Stanley Cavell and Stephen Greenblatt.

From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, comes an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Cleopatra--one of the Bard's most riveting and memorable female characters--in "a masterfully perceptive reading of this seductive play's endless wonders" (Kirkus Reviews). Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history--and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. She is lover of Marc Antony, defender of Egypt, and, perhaps most enduringly, a champion of life. Cleopatra is supremely vexing, tragic, and complex. She has fascinated readers and audiences for centuries and has been played by the greatest actresses of their time, from Elizabeth Taylor to Vivien Leigh to Janet Suzman to Judi Dench. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Cleopatra with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime. The book becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our own humanity. Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare's characters make. With Cleopatra, "Bloom brings considerable expertise and his own unique voice to this book" (Publishers Weekly), delivering exhilarating clarity and inviting us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. The result is an invaluable resource from our greatest literary critic.