Eubanks Winkler and Schoch reveal how - and why - the first generation to stage Shakespeare after Shakespeare's lifetime changed absolutely everything. Founder of the Duke's Company, Sir William Davenant influenced how Shakespeare was performed in a profound and lasting way. This open access book provides the first performance-based account of Restoration Shakespeare, exploring the precursors to Davenant's approach to Restoration Shakespeare, the cultural context of Restoration theatre, the theatre spaces in which the Duke's Company performed, Davenant's adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, acting styles, and the lasting legacy of Davenant's approach to staging Shakespeare. The eBook editions of this work are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Queens University Belfast.

Over the last 20 years, the concept of 'economic' activity has come to seem inseparable from psychological, semiotic and ideological experiences. In fact, the notion of the 'economy' as a discrete area of life seems increasingly implausible. This returns us to the situation of Shakespeare's England, where the financial had yet to be differentiated from other forms of representation. This book shows how concepts and concerns that were until recently considered purely economic affected the entire range of sixteenth and seventeenth century life. Using the work of such critics as Jean-Christophe Agnew, Douglas Bruster, Hugh Grady and many others, Shakespeare and Economic Theory traces economic literary criticism to its cultural and historical roots, and discusses its main practitioners. Providing new readings of Timon of Athens, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and The Tempest, David Hawkes shows how it can reveal previously unappreciated qualities of Shakespeare's work.

Shakespeare's plays have long been open to reimagining and reinterpretation, from John Fletcher's riposte to The Taming of the Shrew in 1611 to present day spin-offs in a whole range of media, including YouTube videos and Manga comics. This book offers a clear route map through the world of adaptation, selecting examples from film, drama, prose fiction, ballet, the visual arts and poetry, and exploring their respective political and cultural interactions with Shakespeare's plays. 36 specific case studies are discussed, three for each of the 12 plays covered, offering additional guidance for readers new to this important area of Shakespeare studies. The introduction signals key adaptation issues that are subsequently explored through the chapters on individual plays, including Shakespeare's own adaptive art and its Renaissance context, production and performance as adaptation, and generic expectation and transmedial practice. Organized chronologically, the chapters cover the most commonly studied plays, allowing readers to dip in to read about specific plays or trace how technological developments have fundamentally changed ways in which Shakespeare is experienced. With examples encompassing British, North American, South and East Asian, European and Middle Eastern adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, the volume offers readers a wealth of insights drawn from different ages, territories and media.

Rome was a recurring theme throughout Shakespeare's career, from the celebrated Julius Caesar, to the more obscure Cymbeline. In this book, Paul Innes assesses themes of politics and national identity in these plays through the common theme of Rome. He especially examines Shakespeare's interpretation of Rome and how he presented it to his contemporary audiences. Shakespeare's depiction of Rome changed over his lifetime, and this is discussed in conjunction with the emergence of discourses on the British Empire. Each chapter focuses on a play, which is thoroughly analysed, with regard to both performance and critical reception. Shakespeare's plays are related to the theatrical culture of their time and are considered in light of how they might have been performed to his contemporaries. Innes engages strongly with both the plays the most current scholarship in the field.

Shakespeare was born into a new age of will, in which individual intent had the potential to overcome dynastic expectation. The 1540 Statute of Wills had liberated testamentary disposition of land and thus marked a turning point from hierarchical feudal tradition to horizontal free trade. Focusing on Shakespeare's late Elizabethan plays, Gary Watt demonstrates Shakespeare's appreciation of testamentary tensions and his ability to exploit the inherent drama of performing will. Drawing on years of experience delivering rhetoric workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company and as a prize-winning teacher of law, Gary Watt shows that Shakespeare is playful with legal technicality rather than obedient to it. The author demonstrates how Shakespeare transformed lawyers' manual book rhetoric into powerful drama through a stirring combination of word, metre, movement and physical stage material, producing a mode of performance that was truly testamentary in its power to engage the witnessing public. Published on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's last will and testament, this is a major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of law and humanities.

In Shakespeare in Quebec, Jennifer Drouin analyses representations of nation and gender in Shakespearean adaptations written in Quebec since the Quiet Revolution. Using postcolonial and gender theory, Drouin traces the evolution of discourses of nation and gender in Quebec from the Conquest of New France to the present, and she elaborates a theory of adaptation specific to Shakespeare studies. Drouin's book explains why Quebecois playwrights seem so obsessed with rewriting "le grand Will," what changes they make to the Shakespearean text, and how the differences between Shakespeare and the adaptations engage the nationalist, feminist, and queer concerns of Quebec society. Close readings from ten plays investigate the radical changes to content that allowed Quebecois playwrights to advocate for political change and contribute to the hot debates of the Quiet Revolution, the 1970 October Crisis, the 1980 and 1995 referenda, the rise of feminism, and the emergence of AIDS. Drouin reveals not only how Shakespeare has been adapted in Quebec but also how Quebecois adaptations have evolved in response to changes in the political climate. As a critical analysis in English of rich but largely ignored French plays, Shakespeare in Quebec bridges Canada's "two solitudes."

The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare presents a broad sampling of current historical scholarship on the period of Shakespeare's career that will assist and stimulate scholars of his poems and plays. Rather than merely attempting to summarize the historical 'background' to Shakespeare, individual chapters seek to exemplify a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies currently used in historical research on the early modern period that can inform close analysis of literature. Different sections examine political history at both the national and local levels; relationships between intellectual culture and the early modern political imagination; relevant aspects of religious and social history; and facets of the histories of architecture, the visual arts and music. Topics treated include the emergence of an early modern 'public sphere' and its relationship to drama during Shakespeare's lifetime; the role of historical narratives in shaping the period's views on the workings of politics; attitudes about the role of emotion in social life; cultures of honour and shame and the rituals and literary forms through which they found expression; crime and murder; and visual expressions of ideas of moral disorder and natural monstrosity, in printed images as well as garden architecture.

King Lear is arguably the most complex and demanding play in the whole of Shakespeare. Once thought impossible to stage, today it is performed with increasing frequency, both in Britain and America. It has been staged more often in the last fifty years than in the previous 350 years of its performance history, its bleak message clearly chiming in with the growing harshness, cruelty and violence of the modern world. Performing King Lear offers a very different and practical perspective from most studies of the play, being centred firmly on the reality of creation and performance. The book is based on Jonathan Croall's unique interviews with twenty of the most distinguished actors to have undertaken this daunting role during the last forty years, including Donald Sinden, Tim Pigott-Smith, Timothy West, Julian Glover, Oliver Ford Davies, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Plummer, Michael Pennington, Brian Cox and Simon Russell Beale. He has also talked to two dozen leading directors who have staged the play in London, Stratford and elsewhere. Among them are Nicholas Hytner, David Hare, Kenneth Branagh, Adrian Noble, Deborah Warner, Jonathan Miller and Dominic Dromgoole. Each reveals in precise and absorbing detail how they have dealt with the formidable challenge of interpreting and staging Shakespeare's great tragedy.

In this first substantive study of directing Shakespeare in the USA, Charles Ney compares and contrasts directors working at major companies across the country. Because of the complexities of directing Shakespeare for audiences today, a director's methods, values and biases are more readily perceptible in their work on Shakespeare than in more contemporary work. Directors disclose their interpretation of the text, their management of the various stages of production, how they go about supervising rehearsals and share tactics. This book will be useful to students wanting to develop skills, practitioners who want to learn from what other directors are doing, and scholars and students studying production practice and performance.

For teachers and lovers of Shakespeare, ShakesFear and How to Cure It provides a comprehensive approach to the challenge and rewards of teaching Shakespeare and gives teachers both an overview of each of Shakespeare's 38 plays and specific classroom tools for teaching it. Written by a celebrated teacher, scholar and director of Shakespeare, it shows teachers how to use the text to make the words and the moments come alive for their students. It refutes the idea that Shakespeare's language is difficult and provides a survey of the plays by someone who has lived intimately with them on the page and on the stage.

Shakespeare's Pictures is the first full-length study of visual objects in Shakespearean drama. In several plays (Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, among others) pictures are brought on stage - in the form of portraits or other images - as part of the dramatic action. Shakespeare's characters show, exchange and describe them. The pictures arouse in their beholders strong feelings, of desire, nostalgia or contempt, and sometimes even taking the place of the people they depict. The pictures presented in Shakespeare's work are part of the language of the drama, and they have a significant impact on theatrical performance, from Shakespeare's time to our own. Keir Elam pays close attention to the iconographic and literary contexts of Shakespeare's pictures while also exploring their role in performance history. Highly illustrated with 46 images, this volume examines the conflicted cooperation between the visual and the verbal.

Shakespeare's tragedies are among the greatest works of tragic art and have attracted a rich range of commentary and interpretation from leading creative and critical minds. This Reader's Guide offers a comprehensive survey of the key criticism on the tragedies, from the 17th century through to the present day. In this book, Nicolas Tredell: - Introduces essential concepts, themes and debates. - Relates Shakespeare's tragedies to fi elds of study including psychoanalysis, gender, race, ecology and philosophy. - Summarises major critical texts from Dryden and Dr Johnson to Janet Adelman and Julia Reinhard Lupton, and covers influential critical movements such as New Criticism, New Historicism and poststructuralism. - Demonstrates how key critical approaches work in practice, with close reference to Shakespeare's texts. Informed and incisive, this is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in how the category of Shakespeare's tragedies has been constructed, contested and changed over the years.

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Contributions from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making these books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: Essays on the play's critical and performance histories A keynote chapter reviewing current research and recent criticism of the play A selection of new essays by leading scholars A survey of learning and teaching resources for both instructors and students This volume offers a thought-provoking guide to Shakespeare's Richard II, surveying its critical heritage and the ways in which scholars, critics, and historians have approached the play, from the 17th to the 21st century. It provides a detailed, up-to-date account of the play's rich performance history on stage and screen, looking closely at some major British productions, as well as a guide to learning and teaching resources and how these might be integrated into effective pedagogic strategies in the classroom. Presenting four new critical essays, this collection opens up fresh perspectives on this much-studied drama, including explorations of: the play's profound preoccupation with earth, ground and land; Shakespeare's engagement with early modern sermon culture, 'mockery' and religion; a complex network of intertextual and cultural references activated by Richard's famous address to the looking-glass; and the long-overlooked importance to this profoundly philosophical drama of that most material of things: money.

The video-sharing platform YouTube signals exciting opportunities and challenges for Shakespeare studies. As patron, distributor and archive, YouTube occasions new forms of user-generated Shakespeares, yet a reduced Bard too, subject to the distractions of the contemporary networked mediascape. This book identifies the genres of YouTube Shakespeare, interpreting them through theories of remediation and media convergence and as indices of Shakespeare's shifting cultural meanings. Exploring the intersection of YouTube's participatory culture - its invitation to 'Broadcast Yourself' - with its corporate logic, the book argues that YouTube Shakespeare is a site of productive tension between new forms of self-expression and the homogenizing effects of mass culture. Stephen O'Neill""unfolds the range of YouTube's Bardic productions to elaborate on their potential as teaching and learning resources. The book importantly argues for a critical media literacy, one that attends to identity constructions and to the politics of race and gender as they emerge through Shakespeare's new media forms. "Shakespeare and YouTube" will be of interest to students and scholars of Shakespearean drama, poetry and adaptations, as well as to new media studies.

Hamlet is the most often produced play in the western literary canon, and a fertile global source for film adaptation. Samuel Crowl, a noted scholar of Shakespeare on film, unpacks the process of adapting from text to screen through concentrating on two sharply contrasting film versions of Hamlet by Laurence Olivier (1948) and Kenneth Branagh (1996). The films' socio-political contexts are explored, and the importance of their screenplay, film score, setting, cinematography and editing examined. Offering an analysis of two of the most important figures in the history of film adaptations of Shakespeare, this study seeks to understand a variety of cinematic approaches to translating Shakespeare's "words, words, words" into film's particular grammar and rhetoric

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is widely considered Shakespeare's greatest play. Hamlet is confronted by the ghost of his father, who tells him that Hamlet's uncle and mother conspired to poison him. Knowing that his uncle, who now sits upon the throne, and his mother, who has married his uncle and is now his queen, have murdered his father, Hamlet sets out to avenge his father's death and set things to right. But his plan could destroy the entire realm. To be, or not to be-that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die-to sleep- No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

For most of the twentieth century the exuberantfluency of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's art was not regarded as worthy ofserious attention. Even the evidence for the swiftness of her wit, thought andcomposition remains more impressionistic and anecdotal than firmly proven.Through close attention to original manuscript material, Josie Billingtonargues that Barrett Browning's fast, fine and excitedly vigorous and agileimaginative intelligence is Shakespearean, both in its power, and in thecreative drive and dynamic to which it gives rise. Billington contends that for Barrett Browning, asfor Shakespeare, writing was demonstrably a creative event not a second-orderrecord of experience, and that Barrett Browning's characteristic habits ofcomposition, and her creative procedure, resemble in significant ways those ofthe poet she valued most highly. A fascinating study of both writers' analogouscreative dispositions, minds and modes.>

Shakespeare's Villains--and Calumniators and Tyrants is a close reading of Shakespeare's plays to investiage the nature of evil. Charney closely considers the way that dramatic characters are developed in terms of language, imagery, and nonverbal stage effects. With chapters on Iago, Tarquin, Aaron, Richard Duke of Glaucester, Shylock, Claudius, Polonius, Macbeth, Edmund, Goneril, Regan, Angelo, Tybalt, Don John, Iachimo, Lucio, Julius Caesar, Leontes, and Duke Frederick, this book is the first comprehensive study of the villains in Shakespeare.