Over the last twenty five years, scholarship on Early Modern women writers has produced editions and criticisms, both on various groups and individual authors. The work on Mary Wroth has been particularly impressive at integrating her poetry, prose and drama into the canon. This in turn has led to comparative studies that link Wroth to a number of male and female writers, including of course, William Shakespeare. At the same time no single volume has attempted a comprehensive comparative analysis. This book sets out to explore the ways in which Wroth negotiated the discourses that are embedded in the Shakespearean canon in order to develop an understanding of her oeuvre based, not on influence and imitation, but on difference, originality and innovation.

Reading Shakespeare through Philosophy advocates that the beauty of Shakespearean drama is inseparable from its philosophical power. Shakespeare's plays make demands on us even beyond our linguistic attention and historical empathy: they require thinking, and the concepts of philosophy can provide us with tools to aid us in that thinking. This volume examines how philosophy can help us to re-imagine Shakespeare's treatment of individuality, character, and destiny, particularly at certain moments in a play when a character's relationship to space or time becomes an enigma to us. The author focuses on the dramatization of seemingly magical relationships between the individual and the cosmos, exploring and rethinking the meanings of 'individual', 'cosmos' and 'magic' through a conceptually acute reading of Shakespeare's plays. This book draws upon a variety of thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant, in search of a revitalized philosophical criticism of Julius Caesar, Love's Labor's Lost, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and Twelfth Night.

Shakespeare's Boys: A Cultural History is the first extensive exploration of boyhood in Shakespeare's plays. It examines a range of characters from Shakespeare's comedies, histories and tragedies in their original early modern contexts and surveys their performance histories on stage and screen from the Restoration until the present day. Focusing on the status of aristocratic boys, the transition from boyhood to manhood and methods of education, it argues that the varied and complex portrayal of boys in Shakespeare reflects the ambiguous and transitional status of boyhood in early modern England, and that the portrayal of these on-stage boys has been a crucial, and sometimes defining, factor in the performance history of Shakespeare's plays. This study embraces this idea of characters in flux, reading Shakespearean boyhood as a continuum in which each historical reincarnation depends upon and reacts against what came before, while influencing what is to come.

The Shakespeare Multiverse: Fandom as Literary Praxis argues that fandom offers new models for a twenty-first century reading practice that embraces affective pleasure and subjective self-positioning as a means of understanding a text. Part critical study, part source book, The Shakespeare Multiverse suggests that fannish contributions to the ongoing expansion of the object that we call Shakespeare is best imagined as a multiverse, encompassing different worlds that consolidate the various perspectives that different fans bring to Shakespeare. Our concept of the multiverse redefines 'Shakespeare' not as a singular body of work, but as space where a process of inquiry and cultural memory - memories in the making, and those already made - is influenced and shaped by the technologies available to the reader. Characteristic of fandom is an intertextual reading strategy that we term cyborg reading, an approach that accommodates the varied elements of identity, politics, culture, sexuality, and race that shape the ways that Shakespeare is explored and appropriated throughout fannish reading communities. The Shakespeare Multiverse intersects literary theory, fan studies, and popular culture as it traverses Shakespeare fandom from the 1623 Folio to the age of the Internet, exploring the different textures of fan affect, from those who firmly uphold fidelity to the text to those who sit on the very edge of the fandom, threatening to cross over into Shakespearean anti-fandom. By recognizing the literary value of fandom, The Shakespeare Multiverse offers a new approach to literary criticism that challenges the limits of hegemonic authority and recognizes the value of a joyfully speculative critical praxis.

Publishing its nineteenth volume, The Shakespearean International Yearbook surveys the present state of Shakespeare studies, addressing issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare's work and his time, across the whole spectrum of his literary output. Contributions are solicited from scholars across the field, from both hemispheres of the globe. New trends are evaluated from the point of view of established scholarship, and emerging work in the field is encouraged. Each issue includes a special section under the guidance of a specialist Guest Editor, along with coverage of the current state of the field in other aspects. An essential reference tool for scholars of early modern literature and culture, this annual publication captures, from year to year, current and developing thought in Shakespeare scholarship and theater practice worldwide. There is a particular emphasis on Shakespeare studies in global contexts.

Examining the changing reception of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries between 1870 and 1940, this follow-up volume to Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries focuses on the broad movements of national revivalism that took place around the turn of the century as Finland and Norway, and later Iceland, were gaining their independence. The first part of the book demonstrates how translations and productions of Shakespeare were key in such movements, as Shakespeare was appropriated for national and political purposes. The second part explores how the role of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries was partly transformed in the 1920s and 1930s as a new social system emerged, and then as the rise of fascism meant that European politics cast a long shadow on the Nordic countries and substantially affected the reception of Shakespeare. Contributors trace the impact of early translations of Shakespeare's works into Icelandic, the role of women in the early transmission of Shakespeare in Finland and the first Shakespeare production at the Finnish Theatre, and the productions of Shakespeare's plays at the Norwegian National Theatre between 1899 and the outbreak of the Great War. In Part Two, they examine the political overtones of the 1916 Shakespeare celebrations in Hamlet's 'hometown' of Elsinore, Henrik Rytter's translations of 23 Shakespeare plays into Norwegian to assess their role in his poetics and in Scandinavian literature, the importance of the 1937 production of Hamlet in Kronborg Castle starring Laurence Olivier, and the role of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular in Swedish Nobel laureate Eyvind Johnson's early work where it became a symbol of post-war passivity and rootlessness.

Taking a 'performance studies' perspective on Shakespearean theatre, W. B. Worthen argues that the theatrical event represents less an inquiry into the presumed meanings of the text than an effort to frame performance as a vehicle of cultural critique. Using contemporary performances as test cases, Worthen explores the interfaces between the origins of Shakespeare's writing as literature and as theatre, the modes of engagement with Shakespeare's plays for readers and spectators, and the function of changing performance technologies on our knowledge of Shakespeare. This book not only provides the material for performance analysis, but places important contemporary Shakespeare productions in dialogue with three influential areas of critical discourse: texts and authorship, the function of character in cognitive theatre studies, and the representation of theatre and performing in the digital humanities. This book will be vital reading for scholars and advanced students of Shakespeare and of Performance Studies.

This study aims at examining the contemporary stage adaptations of "Othello" by the four noteworthy contemporary playwrights Ann Marie MacDonald, Djanet Sears, Paula Vogel and Toni Morrison, while discussing their plays both within and outside the framework of Adaptation Studies. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist theories along with psychoanalytical theories and theories of adaptation, this book explores the adaptive levels, contexts and strategies of the four women playwrights in revising "Othello". The anxiety of canonization that the contemporary women playwrights experience, is also addressed as an issue parallel to their authorial relations with Shakespeare. In the hands of contemporary women playwrights, "Othello" thematically makes a call for new contemporary women's perspectives and technically provides an everlasting space for further feminist adaptations, already becoming a signifier of the signification process itself.

The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of Shakespeare's life and works focusing on oftern neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read, who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various collaborations may have affected his writing. * Written by an eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer * Pays particular attention to Shakespeare's theatrical contemporaries and the ways in which they influenced his writing * Offers an intriguing account of the life and work of the great poet-dramatist structured around the idea of memory * Explores often neglected literary and historical contexts that illuminate Shakespeare's life and works

A detailed comparison of Machiavelli with Shakespeare, grounded in their common use of rhetoric. Although the question of Machiavellian influence on Shakespeare has been thoroughly debated, this book represents the first attempt to compare the two authors in detail. The playwright and the political philosopher share a commonground, a fascination with the motives and morality of political action, which makes for remarkable similarities in their presentation of the subject. In his deploying of the argument, the author of Il Principe emerges as a dramatic writer, like his English counterpart. The book, while taking in an obvious "Machiavel" figure such as Richard III, considers Machiavelli in relation to Shakespeare's depiction of more conventionally noble princes such as HenryV, together with other monarchs from the Henriad - Richard II and Henry IV - as well as King John. Though the Shakespearean focus falls on the histories, tragic heroes such as Hamlet and Macbeth also receive attention. The study concludes with two chapters on the Roman plays and assesses Shakespeare's representation of the problem of conscience (Julius Caesar) and magnanimity (Antony and Cleopatra) in the light of Machiavelli's republicanism. JOHN ROE is Senior Lecturer at the University of York.

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.

First published in 1971.
This collection of essays discusses some of the central works and areas of literature in the Renaissance period of cultural history.
Contents include: Spenser and the Allegorists; The Faerie Queene, I and V; The Cave of Mammon; The Banquet of Sense; John Donne; The Patience of Shakespeare; Survival fo the Classic; Shakespeare's Learning; The Mature Comedies; The Final Plays.

Shakespeare's Sublime Ethos: Matter, Stage, Form breaks new ground in providing a sustained, demystifying treatment of its subject and looking for answers to basic questions regarding the creation, experience, aesthetics and philosophy of Shakespearean sublimity. More specifically, it explores how Shakespeare generates a sublime mood or ethos which predisposes audiences intellectually and emotionally for the full experience of sublime pathos, explored in the companion volume, Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos. To do so, it examines Shakespeare's invention of sublime matter, his exploitation of the special characteristics of the Elizabethan stage, and his dramaturgical and formal simulacra of absolute space and time. In the process, it considers Shakespeare's conception of the universe and man's place in it and uncovers the epistemological and existential implications of key aspects of his art. As the argument unfolds, a case is made for a transhistorically baroque Shakespeare whose "bastard art" enables the dramatic restoration of an original innocence where ignorance really is bliss. Taken together, Shakespeare's Sublime Ethos and Shakespeare's Sublime Pathos show how Shakespearean drama integrates matter and spirit on hierarchical planes of cognition and argue that, ultimately, his is an immanent sublimity of the here-and-now enfolding a transcendence which may be imagined, simulated or evoked, but never achieved.

This study explores more recent adaptations published in the last decade whereby women-either authors or their characters-talk back to Shakespeare in a variety of new ways. "Talking back to Shakespeare", a term common in intertextual discourse, is not a new phenomenon, particularly in literature. For centuries, women writers-novelists, playwrights, and poets-have responded to Shakespeare with inventive and often transgressive retellings of his work. Thus far, feminist scholarship has examined creative responses to Shakespeare by women writers through the late twentieth century. This book brings together the "then" of Shakespeare with the "now" of contemporary literature by examining how many of his plays have cultural currency in the present day. Adoption and surrogate childrearing; gender fluidity; global pandemics; imprisonment and criminal justice; the intersection of misogyny and racism-these are all pressing social and political concerns, but they are also issues that are central to Shakespeare's plays and the early modern period. By approaching material with a fresh interdisciplinary perspective, Women Talk Back to Shakespeare is an excellent tool for both scholars and students concerned with adaptation, women and gender, and intertextuality of Shakespeare's plays.

This study explores more recent adaptations published in the last decade whereby women-either authors or their characters-talk back to Shakespeare in a variety of new ways. "Talking back to Shakespeare", a term common in intertextual discourse, is not a new phenomenon, particularly in literature. For centuries, women writers-novelists, playwrights, and poets-have responded to Shakespeare with inventive and often transgressive retellings of his work. Thus far, feminist scholarship has examined creative responses to Shakespeare by women writers through the late twentieth century. This book brings together the "then" of Shakespeare with the "now" of contemporary literature by examining how many of his plays have cultural currency in the present day. Adoption and surrogate childrearing; gender fluidity; global pandemics; imprisonment and criminal justice; the intersection of misogyny and racism-these are all pressing social and political concerns, but they are also issues that are central to Shakespeare's plays and the early modern period. By approaching material with a fresh interdisciplinary perspective, Women Talk Back to Shakespeare is an excellent tool for both scholars and students concerned with adaptation, women and gender, and intertextuality of Shakespeare's plays.

In late November 1623, Edward Blount finally took delivery at his bookshop at the sign of the Black Bear near St Paul's of a book that had been long in the making. Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies was the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, appearing some seven years after their author's death in 1616. Its 950 folio pages included thirty-six plays, half of which had not previously been printed, divided under the three generic headings of the title. There was no fanfare at the book's arrival. There was nothing of the marketing overdrive that marks an important new publication in our own period: no advertising campaign, no reviews, interviews, endorsements or literary prizes, no queues in St Paul's Churchyard, no sales figures, price war, copycat publications or bestseller lists - in short, no sensation. Nevertheless, it is hard to overstate the importance of this literary, cultural and commercial moment. This book, generously illustrated with key pages from the publication and comparative works tells the human, artistic, economic and technical stories of the birth of the First Folio - and the emergence of Shakespeare's towering reputation.

1. First book aimed at a student or general market reading Shakespeare through the lens of anthropology - close study of several commonly-studied plays so will fit well on courses 2. Shakespeare is a popular topic in many subjects and this can function as a textbook on anthropology and social studies courses that look at literature 3. This book will appeal beyond the usual Shakespeare and literary studies market to anthropology and social sciences

1. First book aimed at a student or general market reading Shakespeare through the lens of anthropology - close study of several commonly-studied plays so will fit well on courses 2. Shakespeare is a popular topic in many subjects and this can function as a textbook on anthropology and social studies courses that look at literature 3. This book will appeal beyond the usual Shakespeare and literary studies market to anthropology and social sciences

The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Memory introduces this vibrant field of study to students and scholars, whilst defining and extending critical debates in the area. The book begins with a series of "Critical Introductions" offering an overview of memory in particular areas of Shakespeare such as theatre, print culture, visual arts, post-colonial adaptation and new media. These essays both introduce the topic but also explore specific areas such as the way in which Shakespeare's representation in the visual arts created a national and then a global poet. The entries then develop into more specific studies of the genre of Shakespeare, with sections on Tragedy, History, Comedy and Poetry, which include insightful readings of specific key plays. The book ends with a state of the art review of the area, charting major contributions to the debate, and illuminating areas for further study. The international range of contributors explore the nature of memory in religious, political, emotional and economic terms which are not only relevant to Shakespearean times, but to the way we think and read now.

By examining how female characters speak and act during coming of age, engagement, marriage, and intimacy, Consent in Shakespeare will enhance understanding about how and why women spoke, remained silent, or acted as they did in relation to their intimate partners in Early Modern and contemporary private and public situations in and around the Mediterranean. Consent in intimate relationships is front and center in today's conversations. This book re-examines the verbal and physical interactions of female-identified characters in Early Modern and contemporary cultures in Shakespeare's Mediterranean comedies and the sources from which he derived his plays. This re-examination of the words that women say or do not say, and actions that women do or do not take, in Shakespeare's Mediterranean plays and his probable sources sheds light on how Shakespeare's audiences might have perceived Mediterranean cultural mores and norms. Assessment of source materials for Shakespeare's comedies set in the Balkans, France, Italy, the Near East, North Africa, and Spain suggests how women of diverse backgrounds communicated in everyday life and peak life experiences in the Early Modern era. Given Shakespeare's impact worldwide, this initiative to shift the conversation about the power of consent of female protagonists and supporting characters in Shakespeare's Mediterranean plays will further transform conversations about consent in class, board and conference rooms, and the international stage.

Shakespeare's poetic-dramatic worlds are inescapably limited. There is always, in his poems and plays, a force (a contingent drive, a pre-textual undertow, a rational-critical momentum, an ironic stance, the deflections of error) coercing plot and meaning to their end. By examining the work of limits in the sonnets and in five of his plays, this book seeks not only to highlight the poet's steadfast commitment to critical rationality. It also aims to plead a case of hermeneutic continence. Present-day appraisals of Shakespeare's world-making and meaning-projecting potential are often overruled by a neo-romantic and phenomenological celebration of plenty. This pre-critical tendency unwittingly obtains epistemic legitimation from philosophical quarters inspired by Alain Badiou's derisive rejection of "the pathos of finitude". But finitude is much more than a modish, neo-existentialist, watchword. It is what is left of ontology when reason is done. And cool reason was already at work before Kant. In accounting for the way in which Shakespeare places limits to life (Romeo and Juliet), to experience (The Tempest), to love (the Sonnets), to time (Macbeth), to the world (Hamlet) and to knowledge (Othello), Limited Shakespeare: The Reason of Finitude aims to underscore the deeply mediated dimension of Shakespearean experience, always over-determined by the twin forces of contingency and textual determinism, and his meta-rational and virtually ironic taste for irrational, accidental, and error-driven limits (bonds, bounds, deaths).

Brian Gibbons presents the idea of multiplicity as a way of understanding the form and style of Shakespeare's plays: composed of many different codes, woven together in a unique pattern for each play, rather than variations on fixed notions of comedy or tragedy. Selecting from different phases of Shakespeare's career, the book's method is comparison, using an imaginative range of texts and new approaches; there is also lively discussion of modern staging. Comparison with major works by Spenser, Sidney and Marlowe is complemented by a demonstration of Shakespeare's re-use of his own previous plays and poems. Far from reducing the plays to a formula, Brian Gibbons shows how criticism articulates what popular audiences have always known, that the plays' sheer abundance and variety is their strength. This is an original book, scholarly yet straightforward, on an issue of central interest.

Essays on Arthurian themes, on Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespeare, and textual studies of Gower and others. These essays for Shunichi Noguchi, by scholars from Britain, the USA and Japan, reflect his approach to English studies and his wide range of interests from Beowulf to Ulysses. The principal focus, however, is on medieval and renaissance studies: nine of the essays are on Arthurian themes, to which Professor Noguchi has devoted his academic life. There are also essays on Beowulf, Chaucer, the York miracle plays, and Shakespeare, as well as textual studies of Gower, Wulfstan, Wycliffe and Caxton. Contributors: SHUICHI AITA, SHINSUKE ANDO, DEREK BREWER, ANTONY DICKINSON, P.J.C. FIELD, KAZUO FUKUDA, EIICHI HAYAKAWA, TADAHIRO IKEGAMI, MIKIKO ISHII, SOUJIIWASAKI, GREGORY K. JEMBER, TOMOMI KATO, EDWARD DONALD KENNEDY,TADAO KUBOUCHI, JOHN LAWLOR, KIYOKAZU MIZOBATA, GEORGE MOOR, TSUYOSHI MUKAI, YUJI NAKAO, FUMIKO OKA, YUZUYO OKUMURA, ISAMU SAITO, SHIRO SHIBA, JAN SIMKO, JUN SUDO, TAKASHI SUZUKI, TOSHIYUKI TAKAMIYA, RAYMOND P. TRIPP.

Courses on Shakespeare and Comedy are very popular so there is a ready market for this book Study of humour and comedy more generally is growing so there is a secondary market This book draws parallels between Shakespeare's time and today, which makes the book very relevant and understandable to readers Draws on a broad range of Shakespeare's plays so easy to slot onto courses Written in an engaging and accessible style for readers of all levels