Shakespeare is a major influence on poets writing in English, but the dynamics of that influence in the twentieth century have never been as closely analysed as they are in this important study. More than an account of the ways in which Shakespeare is figured in both the poetry and the critical prose of modern poets, this book presents a provocative new view of poetic interrelationship. Focusing on W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Neil Corcoran uncovers the relationships - combative as well as sympathetic - between these poets themselves as they are intertwined in their engagements with Shakespeare. Corcoran offers many enlightening close readings, fully alert to contemporary theoretical debates. This original study of influence and reception beautifully displays the nature of poetic influence - both of Shakespeare on the twentieth century, and among modern poets as they respond to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is everywhere in contemporary media culture. This book explores the reasons for this dissemination and reassemblage. Ranging widely over American TV drama, it discusses the use of citations in Westworld and The Wire, demonstrating how they tap into but also transform Shakespeare's preferred themes and concerns. It then examines the presentation of female presidents in shows such as Commander in Chief and House of Cards, revealing how they are modelled on figures of female sovereignty from his plays. Finally, it analyses the specifically Shakespearean dramaturgy of Deadwood and The Americans. Ultimately, the book brings into focus the way serial TV drama appropriates Shakespeare in order to give voice to the unfinished business of the American cultural imaginary. -- .

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.

These essays are concerned with aspects of dramatic form, such as plot construction and characterisation, in works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. They focus in detail on the plays' texts, at the same time seeking to establish around them the dramatists' view of their world. Leo Salingar examines six plays by Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Twelfth Night, Hamlet and King Lear) and five leading works by other Jacobean playwrights (Volpone, The Silent Woman, Bartholomew Fair, The Revenger's Tragedy and The Changeling). There is also a study of Cervantes' Don Quixote, and two general essays on drama in the light of Elizabethan usage of the key words art and wit. Each study considers its subject from a perspective that takes account of social history, stage conditions, the history of ideas, or critical theory. The collection provides a coherent survey of the dramatic forms in Shakespeare's time.

For educated poets and readers in the Renaissance, classical literature was as familiar and accessible as the work of their compatriots and contemporaries - often more so. This volume seeks to recapture that sense of intimacy and immediacy, as scholars from both sides of the modern disciplinary divide come together to eavesdrop on the conversations conducted through allusion and intertextual play in works from Petrarch to Milton and beyond. The essays include discussions of Ariosto, Spenser, Du Bellay, Marlowe, the anonymous drama Caesars Revenge, Shakespeare and Marvell, and look forward to the grand retrospect of Shelley's Adonais. Together, they help us to understand how poets across the ages have thought about their relation to their predecessors, and about their own contributions to what Shelley would call 'that great poem, which all poets...have built up since the beginning of the world'. -- .

Shakespeare has been a central figure in German literature and theatre. This book tells the story of Shakespeare in the German-speaking theatre against the background of German culture and politics in the twentieth century. It follows the earlier volume by Simon Williams on the reception of Shakespeare during the previous 300 years (Shakespeare on the German Stage, 1586-1914). Hortmann concentrates on the two most important and fruitful periods: the years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and the turbulent decades of the sixties and seventies, when the German theatre was revitalised by a stormy marriage of avant-garde art and revolutionary politics. A section by Maik Hamburger covers developments in the theatres of the German Democratic Republic. Hortmann focuses on the most representative and colourful directors and actors, describing and illustrating individual productions as examples of particular trends or movements.

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820 1889) was an enthusiastic collector of books on Shakespeare (including nearly all the pre-1660 editions) and a respected and prolific scholar of Elizabethan literature. His extensive collection is now housed at Edinburgh University Library. This volume contains a selection of his early writings and includes: 'A catalogue of the early editions of Shakespeare's plays and of the commentaries and other publications illustrative of his works' (1841); 'An account of the only known manuscript of Shakespeare's plays, comprising some important variations and corrections in the Merry Wives of Windsor' (1843); 'An introduction to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream' (1841); 'On the character of Sir John Falstaff, as originally exhibited by Shakespeare in the two parts of King Henry IV' (1841); 'Curiosities of Modern Shakespearian Criticism' (1853); 'Observations on some of the manuscript emendations of the text of Shakespeare and are they copyright?' (1853).

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

Characteristics of Women (1832) by Anna Jameson was the first attempt by a woman to analyse the characteristics of twenty-three heroines of Shakespeare's plays. In this book, Jameson, an English writer, feminist, and art historian, addresses problems of women's education and participation in public life while providing insightful and original readings of Shakespeare's women. Jameson classifies the heroines into four categories, two of which - characters of affection and historical characters - are presented in Volume 2. Hermione, Desdemona, Imogen, and Cordelia are the characters in whom moral sentiments and affections predominate, while Cleopatra, Octavia, Volumnia, Constance of Bretagne, Elinor of Guienne, Blanche of Castile, Margaret of Anjou, Katherine of Arragon, and Lady Macbeth are examples of historical characters. Illustrated with fifty attractive etchings made by the author herself, this eloquent book is a must-have for Shakespeare collectors, students of women's studies and others interested in nineteenth-century literary criticism.

'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750 1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754 1825), who devoted his time to prison reform and chess, as well as the sanitising of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750 1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754 1825), whose other enthusiasms were prison reform and chess. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains Love's Labour's Lost, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, All's Well that Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale and The Comedy of Errors.

'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750 1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754 1825), who devoted his time to prison reform and chess, as well as the sanitising of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains Macbeth, King John, King Richard II, King Henry IV, Part 1, King Henry IV, Part 2, and King Henry V.

'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750 1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754 1825), who devoted his time to prison reform and chess, as well as the sanitising of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains King Henry VI, Part 1, King Henry VI, Part 2, King Henry VI, Part 3, King Richard III, King Henry VIII and Timon of Athens.

'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750 1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754 1825), who devoted his time to prison reform and chess, as well as the sanitising of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline.

'The Family Shakspeare: in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family.' These words on the title pages of this edition gave rise to the verb 'to bowdlerise' - to remove or modify text considered vulgar or objectionable. Although the first edition was in fact created by Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750 1830) and published in 1807, the many subsequent editions were published under the name of her brother Thomas (1754 1825), who devoted his time to prison reform and chess, as well as the sanitising of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' work became enormously popular as the scandal-ridden Regency gave way to Victorian respectability. This volume, from the 1853 edition, contains Titus Andronicus, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello.

Henry Irving, the influential and controversial Victorian actor, was closely involved in the publication of this distinctive Shakespeare edition. As an actor, his concern was largely with the intellectual project of seeing each play as a unified work, rather than with producing strong emotional effects in the audience. In the words of his obituary in The Times, he appealed to scholars 'by his reverent and often acute treatment of the text', and accustomed playgoers to look for 'more than empty amusement'. To the edition, he brought a sense of the plays in performance which has never been equalled before or since. Addressing a general readership, he both included notes on cuts used by professional companies and suggested others that would facilitate amateur performances. Gordon Browne's illustrations, which suggest the contemporary styles of stage costume, are another attractive feature of this edition, which will appeal to Shakespearians and theatre historians alike.

Henry Irving, the influential and controversial Victorian actor, was closely involved in the publication of this distinctive Shakespeare edition. As an actor, his concern was largely with the intellectual project of seeing each play as a unified work, rather than with producing strong emotional effects in the audience. In the words of his obituary in The Times, he appealed to scholars 'by his reverent and often acute treatment of the text', and accustomed playgoers to look for 'more than empty amusement'. To the edition, he brought a sense of the plays in performance which has never been equalled before or since. Addressing a general readership, he both included notes on cuts used by professional companies and suggested others that would facilitate amateur performances. Gordon Browne's illustrations, which suggest the contemporary styles of stage costume, are another attractive feature of this edition, which will appeal to Shakespearians and theatre historians alike.

Henry Irving, the influential and controversial Victorian actor, was closely involved in the publication of this distinctive Shakespeare edition. As an actor, his concern was largely with the intellectual project of seeing each play as a unified work, rather than with producing strong emotional effects in the audience. In the words of his obituary in The Times, he appealed to scholars 'by his reverent and often acute treatment of the text', and accustomed playgoers to look for 'more than empty amusement'. To the edition, he brought a sense of the plays in performance which has never been equalled before or since. Addressing a general readership, he both included notes on cuts used by professional companies and suggested others that would facilitate amateur performances. Gordon Browne's illustrations, which suggest the contemporary styles of stage costume, are another attractive feature of this edition, which will appeal to Shakespearians and theatre historians alike.