This eighth volume of The Shakespearean International Yearbook presents a special section on 'European Shakespeares', proceeding from the claim that Shakespeare's literary craft was not just native English or British, but was filtered and fashioned through a Renaissance awareness that needs to be recognized as European, and that has had effects and afterlives across the Continent. Guest editors Ton Hoenselaars and Clara Calvo have constructed this section to highlight both how the spread of 'Shakespeare' throughout Europe has brought together the energies of a wide variety of European cultures across several centuries, and how the inclusion of Shakespeare in European culture has been not only a European but also a world affair. The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Spain, Switzerland and South Africa, Canada, The Netherlands, India, Portugal, Greece, France, and Hungary. In addition to the section on European Shakespeares, this volume includes essays on the genre of romance, issues of character, and other topics.

The theoretical ferment which has affected literary studies over the last decade has called into question traditional ways of thinking about, classifying and interpreting texts. Shakespeare has been not just the focus of a variety of divergent critical movements within recent years, but also increasingly the locus of emerging debates within, and with, theory itself. This collection of essays, written by distinguished and powerful critics in the fields of literary theory and Shakespeare studies, is intended both for those interested in Shakespeare and for those interested more generally in the emerging debates within contemporary criticism and theory.

A collection that includes a lengthy introduction describing historical trends in critical interpretations and theatrical performances of Shakespeare's play; 20 essays on the play, including two written especially for this volume (by Maurice Hunt and David Bergeron).

In this useful guide, Leah Scragg indicates some of the ways in which meaning is generated in Shakespearian drama and the kinds of approaches that might lead to a fuller understanding of the plays. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of the dramatic composition, such as verse and prose, imagery and spectacle, and the use of soliloquy, and explores how this contributes to the overall meaning. Written in a clear and helpful style, Discovering Shakespearian Meaning enables students to discover the meaning for themselves.

Originally published in 1995. In three parts - introduction, criticism and reviews - this volume examines the goriest of Shakespeare's works. The editor's exhaustive introduction runs through the pattern of changing scholarship and commentary, introducing the key interests in the play, from its authorship to its language, rhetoric and performance. Early commentaries focused on arguing about whether the play was truly Shakespeare's. A selection of the most important of these are included here followed by later investigations looking at myriad topics and characters - revenge, violence, race, Aaron, women, tragedy and Tamora. The large section of reviews of stage performances, arranged chronologically, ranges from 1857 to 1990. Two final pieces interestingly survey stage history of Titus in Japan and in Germany.

Originally published in 1986. Among the most frequently performed and high admired of Shakespeare's plays, Twelfth Night is examined here in this collection of writings from well-known essayists and scholars. The chapters present to the modern reader discussions of the play to enhance understanding and study of both the text and performances. Opening essays address individual characters; then some accounts of its potential and theatrical reviews are included; finally followed by critical studies looking at various parts and themes. The editor's introduction explains the usefulness of each chapter and gives an overview of the selection.

Originally published in 1995. Providing the most influential historical criticism, but also some contemporary pieces written for the volume, this collection includes the most essential study and reviews of this tragic play. The first part contains critical articles arranged chronologically while the second part presents reviews of stage performances from 1901 to 1988 from a variety of sources. Chapters chosen are representative of their given age and critical approach and therefore show the changing responses and the topics that interested critics in the play through the years. Coriolanus is an unsympathetic character and the play has been traditionally less popular than other tragedies - a comprehensive introduction by the editor discusses these attitudes to the play and the reasons behind them.

Originally published in 1991. Collecting together commentary and critique on 'the Scottish play', this book showcases varied discussions of the text and the theatrical productions. From Samuel Johnson's brief 1765 comment to the editor's own piece on the Porter's scene, the texts included here are popular important accounts of thoughts and scholarship on the play over the years. Some pieces address the most famous early Lady Macbeth - Mrs Siddons, while others look at a theme or specific issue such as Lady Macbeth's children. This is a great sample of the voluminous body of work looking at the tragedy, considering its images, symbols, meanings and its challenges for the stage.

Originally published in 1991. Essays here are arranged chronologically within sections: 'The Play as Text', 'Shylock' and 'The Play in the Theatre.' Collecting previously published important commentaries and scholarly articles, this volume in the Shakespearean Criticism set looks at one of the Bard's most disturbing plays. These historical critical pieces give witness to the changing attitudes to the play and the characters and provide readers with a wide range of material relating both to performances and to textual readings.

In the reincarnation myth in Book X of Plato's Republic, the unnamed first soul, who has lived a good life and has been rewarded in the afterlife, chooses a new life and fate, and chooses catastrophically badly. He finds himself fated to eat his own children. Despite being warned to blame only himself, he wails and blames anything and everything else in his conviction that his fate is undeserved. Though he should not be shocked because he has made this choice himself, he is incredulous because he has completely misunderstood the nature of his choice. Starting with Plato's myth, this book looks at the errors this soul has made and considers these errors through both the Republic and a series of paired Shakespeare plays. Reading the Republic along with Othello and The Comedy of Errors, the first section focuses on the misreading of comedy and tragedy in the life of the individual; returning to the Republic and using The Merchant of Venice and Pericles, Part II focuses on the broadened context of the misuse of political and economic forces; returning again to the Republic and reading Timon of Athens and Measure for Measure, Part III focuses on the broadest context, the misunderstanding of the inseparability of birth and infinite debt. The hope of the text, and the hope of human life, is to help us avoid choosing lives that devour what we most love.

This is the first collection of critical essays devoted exclusively to Shakespeare's first published work, his long narrative poem Venus and Adonis which established his reputation as the literary darling of London and the heir of Ovid. Particularly important is the book's coverage of the little-known presence of Venus and Adonis on stage.A substantial introduction of 65 pagessurveys the history of criticism about the poem and its significance, and addresses such issues as the burdens of readership and the poem as a staged production. Following are 19 reprinted works from the 18th to late 20th centuries and seven original essays by leading scholars that examine the poem from a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives-Lacanian desire, semiotics and Elizabethan wardship, female readership, mythology, aesthetics and art history. An extensive chronological bibliography of scholarship, editions, and theatrical and literary reviews makes this volume indispensable.

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.

This is the first fully annotated modern-spelling edition of King Henry VIII to appear for over a decade and includes up-to-date scholarship on all aspects of the play including its stage history. The editor accepts the view that the play is a collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher. Unique to this edition is the frequent reference to Cavendish's biography of Wolsey, neglected in earlier editions.

Of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays, fifteen include queens. This collection gives these characters their due as powerful early modern women and agents of change, bringing together new perspectives from scholars of literature, history, theater, and the fine arts. Essays span Shakespeare's career and cover a range of famous and lesser-known queens, from the furious Margaret of Anjou in the Henry VI plays to the quietly powerful Hermione in The Winter's Tale; from vengeful Tamora in Titus Andronicus to Lady Macbeth. Early chapters situate readers in the critical concerns underpinning any discussion of Shakespeare and queenship: the ambiguous figure of Elizabeth I, and the knotty issue of gender presentation. The focus then moves to analysis of issues such as motherhood, intertextuality, and contemporary political contexts; close readings of individual plays; and investigations of rhetoric and theatricality. Featuring twenty-five chapters with a rich variety of themes and methodologies, this handbook is an invaluable reference for students and scholars, and a unique addition to the fields of Shakespeare and queenship studies. Winner of the 2020 Royal Studies Journal book prize

(Applause Books). This Applause edtiion allows the reader and student to look beyond the scholarly reading text to the more sensuous, more collaborative, more malleable performance text which emerges in conjunction with the commentary and notes. Readers and students are faced with real theatrical choices in each speech as the editors point out the challenges and opportunities to the actor and director at each juncture. Readers will not only discover an enlivened Shakespeare, they will be empowered to rehearse and direct their own productions of the imagination in the process.

Yeats, Shakespeare, and Irish Cultural Nationalism examines Yeats's writing on Shakespeare in the context of his work on behalf of the Irish Literary Revival. While Shakespeare's verse drama provides a source of inspiration for Yeats's poetry and plays, Yeats also writes about Shakespeare in essays and articles promoting the ideals of the Revival, and on behalf of Irish literary nationalism. These prose pieces reveal Yeats thinking about Shakespeare's art and times throughout his career, and taken together they offer a new perspective on the contours of Yeats's cultural politics. This book identifies three stages of Yeats's cultural nationalism, each of which appropriates England's national poet in an idiosyncratic manner, while reflecting contemporary trends in Shakespeare reception. Thus Yeats's fin-de-siecle Shakespeare is a symbolist poet and folk-artist whose pre-modern sensibility detaches him from contemporary English culture and aligns him with the inhabitants of Ireland's rural margins. Next, in the opening decade of the twentieth century, following his visit to Stratford to see the Benson history cycle, Yeats's work for the Irish National Theatre adopts an avant-garde, occultist stagecraft to develop an Irish dramatic repertoire capable of unifying its audience in a shared sense of nationhood. Yeats writes frequently about Shakespeare during this period, locating on the Elizabethan stage the kind of transformational emotional affect he sought to recover in the Abbey Theatre. Finally, as Ireland moves towards political independence, Yeats turns again to Shakespeare to register his disappointment with the social and cultural direction of the nascent Irish state. In each case, Yeats's thinking about Shakespeare responds to the remarkable conflation of aesthetic and religious philosophies constituting his cultural nationalism, thus making a unique case of Shakespearean reception. Taken together, Yeats's writings deracinate Shakespeare, and so contribute significantly to the process by which Shakespeare has come to be seen as a global artist, rather than a specifically English possession.

First published in 1957. This edition reprints the second edition of 1962. The originality, vitality and variety of Shakespeare's comedies do not suggest a writer at ease with a formula which works to his own satisfaction and the pleasure of his audience; against first impressions they suggest an artist seeking to express an idea which is always eluding a completely developed presentation. The second edition of this book contains an extensive new chapter on Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest.

Originally published in 1986. This volume points to the rich variety of critical responses to the Henry IV plays and their complexity. It includes selections from characteristic thought of the neoclassical age, character criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, historical and new criticism, theatrical interpretation and other pieces by the likes of Samuel Johnson and W. H. Auden. The editor's introduction explains the collection's relevance and puts the pieces in context. Several chapters look at the character of Falstaff and the changing response and critique through time. Organised chronologically, the collection then ends with two pieces of theatrical criticism.

Originally published in 1988. Selections here are organised chronologically looking at both theatrical commentary and literary criticism. The organisation brings out the shifts in emphasis as each generation reinvents Shakespeare, and Othello, by the questions asked, those not asked, and the answers given. Chapters cover the theme of heroic action, Iago's motivation, guilt and jealousy, and obsession. Some entries from the world of theatre delve into the portrayal of the Moor, Desdemona and Iago from the 1940s on. Authors include A. C. Bradley, William Hazlitt, Ellen Terry, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Helen Gardner and Edward A. Snow.

This major reference book for Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers is the second part of the story of 'the greatest book' in the English language. Listing 228 copies of the First Folio, the Census gives concise descriptions of each, covering condition, special features, provenance, and binding. It traces the search for copies, deals with doubtful identifications, describes the tests for inclusion, and presents details of missing copies.

Hillman explores English tragedy in relation to France with a frank concentration on Shakespeare. He sets out to theorise more abstract tragic qualities (such as nostalgia, futility and heroism) with reference to specific French texts and contexts. Three manifestations of the 'Shakespearean tragic' are singled out: Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra and All's Well That Ends Well, a comedy with melancholic overtones whose French setting is shown to be richly significant. Hillman brings to bear on each of these central works a cluster of French intertextual echoes, sometimes literary in origin (whether dramatic or otherwise), sometimes involving historical texts, memoirs or contemporary political documents which have no obvious connection with the plays but prove capable of enriching interpretation of them Now available in paperback this study will be of interest not only to scholars specialising in early modern English theatre, but also to both specialists and students concerned with the circulation of information and the production of meaning within early modern European culture. -- .

Double Shakespeares examines contemporary performances of Shakespeare plays that employ the "emotional realist" traditions of acting that were codified by Stanislavski over a century ago. These performances recognize the inescapable doubleness of realism: that the actor may aspire to be the character but can never fully do so. This doubleness troubled the late-nineteenth-century actors and theorists who first formulated realist modes of acting; and it equally troubles theorists and theatre practitioners today. The book first looks at contemporary performances that foreground the doubleness of the actor's body, particularly through cross-dressing. It then examines narratives of Shakespearean rehearsal-both fictional representations of rehearsal in film and video, and eye-witness narratives of actual rehearsals-and how they show us the process by which the actor does or does not "become" the character. And, finally, it looks at modern performances that "frame" Shakespeare's play as a play-within-a-play, showing the audience both the character in the Shakespeare play-within and the actor in the frame-play acting that character.

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.

Although he is considered to be the world's greatest dramatist, Shakespeare seems to have escaped the detection of thinkers on politics and the philosophic tradition of thought on man. Shakespeare's 'King Lear' with 'The Tempest' is Mark McDonald's inquiry into the political philosophy of William Shakespeare through a reading of King Lear with reference to The Tempest. McDonald follows an argument connecting King Lear to the question of natural right and to changes in the orders of the western world at the beginnings of modernity.

In both feminist theory and Shakespearean criticism, questions of sexuality have consistently been conflated with questions of gender. First published in 1992, this book details the intersections and contradictions between sexuality and gender in the early modern period. Valerie Traub argues that desire and anxiety together constitute the erotic in Shakespearean drama circulating throughout the dramatic texts, traversing masculine and feminine sites, eliciting and expressing heterosexual and homoerotic fantasies, embodiments, and fears. This is the first book to present a non-normalizing account of the unconscious and the institutional prerogatives that comprise the erotics of Shakespearean drama. Employing feminist, psychoanalytic, and new historical methods, and using each to interrogate the other, the book synthesises the psychic and the social, the individual and the institutional."