First published in 1980. This collection of essays by the first General Editor of the New Arden Shakespeare brings together the best of Ellis-Fermor's Shespearean criticism, in addition to outstanding essays on Coriolanus and Troilus and Cressida. Collected and edited by Kenneth Muir, the book is prefaced by an appreciation of Ellis-Fermor's work.

First published in 1952. This volume explores the function of verse in drama and the developing way in which Shakespeare controlled the rhetorical and decorative elements of speech for the dramatic purpose. The Language of Shakespeare's Plays explores the plays chronologically and so covers all the outstanding problems of Shakespearian language in a way that makes reference easy, without any loss of a continuing narrative.

First published in 1971. This volume explains and analyses the last plays of Shakespeare as dramatic structures. Beginning from the dark comedies, the author describes the ways in which Shakespeare was affected by the new techniques and possibilities for drama opened up by the innovations of the years after 1600, notably by the rise in children's companies. The main line of development of Shakespeare's dramatic skills is shown as leading from the dark comedies, through the late tragedies, to the last plays. A major part of the book is devoted to analyses of Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest and King Henry VIII.

First published in 1962. This volume gives as complete an account as possible of the Shakespearian experience, particularly in terms of one play, King Lear, but in general against the context of all of Shakespeare's work and that of the age in which it was created. Chapters cover: King Lear in the Renaissance; Providence; Kind; Fortune; Anarchy and Order; Reason and Will; Show and Substance; Redemption and Shakespeare's Poetics.

This edition first published in 1982. Previous edition published in 1972 by Houghton Mifflin. Outlining methods and techniques for reading Shakespeare's plays, Roland Frye explores and develops a comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare's drama, focussing on the topics which must be kept in mind: the formative influence of the particular genre chosen for telling a story, the way in which the story is narrated and dramatized, the styles used to convey action, character and mood, and the manner in which Shakespeare has constructed his living characterizations. As well as covering textual analysis, the book looks at Shakespeare's life and career, his theatres and the actors for whom he wrote and the process of printing and preserving Shakespeare's plays. Chapters cover: King Lear in the Renaissance; Providence; Kind; Fortune; Anarchy and Order; Reason and Will; Show and Substance; Redemption and Shakespeare's Poetics.

First published in 1927. The main argument in this book is that Shakespeare's work is of such intense vitality that it is always modern and that although historical associations may have grown up round it, considerations of the works that grew out of it, or the works that it derives from, are pure irrelevancies. The author maintains that the quality of Shakespeare's achievement has never been surpassed and that all other considerations - date, time, place, conditions of production and historical significance of his plays - have no bearing whatsoever.

First published in 1972. The imagery of field sports - of hawking, hunting, shooting and fishing - and the associated imagery of warfare are a striking feature in Shakespeare's plays. The Living Image examines the nature of this imagery, considering it first in the light of the practices and techniques of Elizabethan field sports and weaponry and then its broader metaphoric significance in relation to the themes of the plays. The contemporary associations of the imagery - the inferences of female sexuality and waywardness from hawking imagery, for example, and the ideals of nobility and courage attached to images of hunting and war are all discussed.

This edition first published in 1979. Discussing Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to sonnets by Italian, French and English poets, Kenneth Muir shows how they were influenced by Shakespeare's reading of Sidney, Erasmus and Ovid and discusses their art in terms of construction, sound patterns and imagery. He considers the relationship of the sonnets to Shakespeare's dramatic writing, while stressing the dramatic element in the sonnets themselves. Finally he surveys the changing attitudes to the sonnets during the last three centuries.

First published in 1937. This study argues that the plays of Shakespeare must be studied by comparison with each other and not as separate entities; that they must be related to one another, to the poems and to the Sonnets; that each individual play acquires a deeper significance from its setting in the corpus. Muir and O'Loughlin's critical analysis takes place against the personality of Shakespeare, asserting that that despite all their diversities a single mind and a single hand dominate them and that they are the outcome of one man's critical and emotional reactions to life.

First published in 1952. An invaluable introduction to Shakespeare, this book places Shakespeare's work and criticism against the background of Elizabethan life in its historical, social, political, religious, linguistic and literary aspects. Contents include: The Problem of Interpretation; Shakespeare at Work; Man and Society; Man and the Universe; The Inner Life.

First published in 1957. This edition re-issues the second edition of 1965. Recognized as one of the leading books in its field, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare presents the most comprehensive account available of the English historical drama from its beginning to the closing of the theatres in 1642 and relates this development to Renaissance historiography and Elizabethan political theory.

First published in 1986. 'Impressively open to the complexity of cultural discourses, to the ways in which one discursive form may function as a screen for another above all to the political entailment of genre.'Stephen Greenblatt. What is the relation between literary and political power? How do the symbolic dimensions of social practice and the social dimensions of artistic practice relate to one another? Power on Display considers Shakespeare's progression from romantic comedies and history plays to tragedy and romance in the light of the general process of cultural change in the period.

Old Vic Prefaces is a collection of the author's talks to the actors on those plays which he produced, while a Director of the Old Vic from 1949 to 1953. The prefaces are unique in that they relate to actual performances, and each preface is followed by a short post-script in which the producer draws attention to some point that arose in production or in rehearsal, which illustrates the sort of problems that confront the producer of a Shakespeare play.

First published in 1968. Shakespeare's Early Tragedies contains studies of six plays: Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. The emphasis is on the variety of the plays, and the themes, a variety which has been too often obscured by the belief in a single 'tragic experience'. The kind of experience the plays create and their quality as dramatic works for the stage are also examined. These essays develop an understanding of Shakespeare's use of the stage picture in relation to the emblematic imagery of Elizabethan poetry.

First published in 1951. G B Harrison here recognizes that Shakespeare's tragedies were intended for performance in a theatre and that the playwright's conspicuous gift among his contemporaries was a sympathy for joy and sorrow, pity and terror, and right and wrong of his people. The plays covered are: Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens.

'Mr Hawkes is a good critic, oriented towards history of ideas. He operates on the formula that Shakespeare was interested in the available distinctions between discursive and intuitive reason, and disliked a growing tendency for the first to be thought of as manly and the second effeminate. One sees how this action-contemplation polarity works, in Hamlet for instance, and Mr Hawkes thinks the kind of choices forced on tragic heroes can be better understood in terms of it.' Frank Kermode, New Statesman. In the seven plays on which the book concentrates, Terence Hawkes finds Shakespeare investigating the operation of two opposed forms of reason, and constructing dramatic metaphors such as the opposition between appearance and reality, or that between true 'manliness' and its false counterpart, which express to the full the tragic nature of the situation.

First published in 1961. Critiquing the critics, and examining the vocabulary of twentieth century criticism of the Shakespearean tragedies, John Holloway's book covers Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and the themes of Shakespearean Tragedy and the idea of human sacrifice and the concepts of myth and ritual in literature.

First published in 1985. In this revisionist history of comic characterization, Karen Newman argues that, contrary to received opinion, Shakespeare was not the first comic dramatist to create self-conscious characters who seem 'lifelike' or 'realistic'. His comic practice is firmly set within a comic tradition which stretches from Plautus and Menander to playwrights of the Italian Renaissance.

First published in 1980. At their most successful, Shakespeare's styles are strategies to make plain the limits of thought and feeling which define the significance of human actions. John Baxter analyses the way in which these limits are reached, and also provides a strong argument for the idea that the power of Shakespearean drama depends upon the co-operation of poetic style and dramatic form. Three plays are examined in detail in the text: The Tragedy of Mustapha by Fulke Greville and Richard II and Macbeth by Shakespeare.

First published in 1972. Studying Shakespeare's 'art of preparation', this book illustrates the relationship between the techniques of preparation and the structure and theme of the plays. Other essays cover Shakespeare's use of the messenger's report, his handling of the theme of appearance and reality and the basic characteristics of Shakespearian drama.

First published in 1968. Providing a detailed and rigorous analysis of Richard III, this Commentary reveals every nuance of meaning whilst maintaining a firm grasp on the structure of the play. The result is an outstanding lesson in the methodology of Shakespearian criticism as well as an essential study for students of the early plays of Shakespeare.

First published in 1969. Critics have in the past described The Winter's Tale as a work of "haphazard structure". More recent criticism has defended the structure of the play and this work shows that the evidence points to the fact that Shakespeare took infinite pains with the choice and disposition of the materials of The Winter's Tale. The scene-by-scene commentary considers The Winter's Tale in isolation, but prologue, epilogue and appendix place it in the context of related plays, and discuss, among others, the problem of genre as it affects the play.

First published in 1981. Each of Shakespeare's plays is in a continuous state of development in performance. This book examines major changes whilst focusing on six plays in detail: Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Henry V, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Changing Styles in Shakespeare looks at representative and key productions to trace the evolution of each play on today's stage, illustrating how production changes relate to a changed perception of the play, and thus to shifts in social attitudes. It singles out the salient features of many productions, paying special attention to reviews and prompt books.

First published in 1972. The emphasis of this book is that each of Shakespeare's tragedies demanded its own individual form and that although certain themes run through most of the tragedies, nearly all critics refrain from the attempt to apply external rules to them. The plays are almost always concerned with one person; they end with the death of the hero; the suffering and calamity that befall him are exceptional; and the tragedies include the medieval idea of the reversal of fortune.

This volume offers a new introduction which provides a wide-ranging survey of criticism of "Macbeth" and four new essays. The new essays from Muriel Bradbrook, Malcolm Evans, Graham Holderness and Germaine Greer bring this edition up-to-date with current critical approaches. The essays are contributed by - A.C. Bradley, S. Freud, G. Wilson Knight, C. Spurgeon, J. Masefield, C. Brooks, L.C. Knight's, M. Bradbrook, G. Holderness, G. Greer and M. Evans.