In this handbook for Macbeth, Alistair McCallum guides readers through the difficulties of plot and language, leaving them free to enjoy the depth, beauty, and vitality of Shakespeare's work. It is a superb introduction to the play.

Who really wrote the Shakespeare plays? This important literary and cultural controversy is livelier and more widely discussed than ever before. Here, nine leading experts offer their version of who wrote the plays. Why does this issue matter? Because a full understanding of the author can make a huge difference to our wider appreciation of the life and times, the literature, and the culture of the period. William Shakespeare is universally regarded as the greatest writer who ever lived. Every year sees vast amounts of critical, philosophical and contextual interpretations of his works. There is endless biographical analyses of his life in relation to this work. And yet, despite this vast output, Shakespeare remains an enigmatic figure. He remains a man who seems to have understood humanity so well but whose life as a writer is absent in records of the time. This truth has led to many questions about the real author behind the title-pages, the real nature of Shakespeare the man, and how this nature relates to Shakespeare the writer. In new essays especially written for this book nine leading 'Shakespearean' authors present their version of the man. Ros Barber, Barry Clarke, John Casson with William Rubinstein & David Ewald, William Leahy, Alan H. Nelson, Diana Price, Alexander Waugh and Robin Williams each offer their ideas. Each essay is founded in scholarly research and provides a positive case for why the Shakespeare Authorship Controversy needs to be taken seriously. These versions of Shakespeare are realistic and compelling. Each in its turn will provoke the reader to see various aspects of Shakespeare in a different light. And they will help us understand the enigmatic fascination that Shakespeare (and the authorship question) continues to generate.

In the 1990s it is no longer "news" that families do not operate independently from other social organizations and institutions. Instead, it is generally recognized that families are embedded in a complex set of relationships with other institutions and contexts outside the family. In spite of this recognition, a great deal remains to be discovered about the ways in which families are influenced by these outside agencies or how families influence the functioning of children and adults in these extra-familial settings--school, work, day-care, or peer group contexts. Moreover, little is known about the nature of the processes that account for this mutual influence between families and other societal institutions and settings. The goal of this volume is to present examples from a series of ongoing research programs that are beginning to provide some tentative answers to these questions. The result of a summer workshop characterized by lively exchanges not only between speakers and the audience, but among participants in small group discussions as well, this volume attempts to communicate some of the dynamism and excitement that was evident at the conference. In the final analysis, this book should stimulate further theoretical and empirical advances in understanding how families relate to other contexts.

Published in the year 1964, On Hamlet is a valuable contribution to the field of Performance.

Literary works, through their very personal means of characterization, reveal the direct effect of politics on individuals in a way a political treatise cannot. The distinguished contributors to this volume share the belief that Shakespeare is the author who most effectively sets forth the multifarious pageant of politics. Shakespeare's rich canon presents monarchy and republic, tyrant and king, thinker and soldier, and Christian and pagan. The twelve essays in Shakespeare's Political Pageant discuss a broad range of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry from the perspective of the political theorist. This innovative book demonstrates the immense value of seeing Shakespeare's plays in the context of political philosophy. It will be an important source for students and scholars of both political science and literature.

Marjorie Garber examines the rites of passage and maturation patterns--"coming of age"--in Shakespeare's plays. Citing examples from virtually the entire Shakespeare canon, she pays particular attention to the way his characters grow and change at points of personal crisis. Among the crises Garber discusses are: separation from parent or sibling in preparation for sexual love and the choice of husband or wife; the use of names and nicknames as a sign of individual exploits or status; virginity, sexual initiation and the acceptance of sexual maturity, childbearing and parenthood; and, finally, attitudes toward death and dying.

For historians of the Wars of the Roses William Shakespeare is both a curse and a blessing: a curse because he immortalized Tudor spin on fifteenth-century civil wars that helped justify Elizabeth I's occupation of the English throne; a blessing because, without Shakespeare's 8 -play Plantagenet history cycle, hardly anyone beyond specialists in the history of the period would know of their existence. Moreover, no mere historian will ever paint a more compelling and dramatic picture of England's Lancastrian and Yorkist kings, and the Wars of the Roses, than William Shakespeare.The book begins with an examination of the context, content and significance of each of the plays from Richard 2nd to Richard 3rd, and then considers the contemporary, near-contemporary and Tudor sources on which Shakespeare drew; how such authors chose to present 15th Century kings, politics and society; and in what ways historians since Shakespeare have sought to reinterpret the Wars of the Roses era. The book ends with a retrospective assessment of Shakespeare's Plantagenet plays, both in performance and as a result of their impact on historical writing.The Plays: Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts I1, 2 and 3 and Richard III.

What does it mean to study Shakespeare within a multicultural society? And who has the power to transform Shakespeare? The Diverse Bard explores how Shakespeare has been adapted by artists born on the margins of the Empire, and how actors of Asian and African-Caribbean origin are being cast by white mainstream directors. It examines how notions of 'race' define the contemporary British experience, including the demands of traditional theatre, and it looks at both the playtexts themselves and contemporary productions. Editor Delia Jarrett-Macauley assembles a stunning collection of classic texts and new scholarship by leading critics and practitioners, to provide the first comprehensive critical and practical analysis of this field.

Addressing for the first time Shakespeare's place in counter-cultural cinema, this book examines and theorizes counter-hegemonic, postmodern, and post-punk Shakespeare in late 20th and early 21st century film. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, Grant Ferguson presents an interdisciplinary approach that offers new theories on the nature and application of Shakespearean appropriations in the light of postmodern modes of representation. The book considers the nature of the Shakespearean inter-text in subcultural political contexts concerning the politicized aesthetics of a Shakespearean 'body in pieces,' the carnivalesque, and notions of Shakespeare as counter-hegemonic weapon or source of empowerment. Representative films use Shakespeare (and his accompanying cultural capital) to challenge notions of capitalist globalization, dominant socio-cultural ideologies, and hegemonic modes of expression. In response to a post-modern culture saturated with logos and semiotic abbreviations, many such films play with the emblematic imagery and references of Shakespeare's texts. These curious appropriations have much to reveal about the elusive nature of intertextuality in late postmodern culture and the battle for cultural ownership of Shakespeare. As there has yet to be a study that isolates and theorizes modes of Shakespearean production that specifically demonstrate resistance to the social, political, ideological, aesthetic, and cinematic norms of the Western world, this book expands the dialogue around such texts and interprets their patterns of appropriation, adaptation, and representation of Shakespeare.

In this handbook for Hamlet, Alistair McCallum guides readers through the difficulties of plot and language, leaving them free to enjoy the depth, beauty, and vitality of Shakespeare's work. It is a superb introduction to the play.

What does it mean to study Shakespeare within a multicultural society? And who has the power to transform Shakespeare? The Diverse Bard explores how Shakespeare has been adapted by artists born on the margins of the Empire, and how actors of Asian and African-Caribbean origin are being cast by white mainstream directors. It examines how notions of 'race' define the contemporary British experience, including the demands of traditional theatre, and it looks at both the playtexts themselves and contemporary productions. Editor Delia Jarrett-Macauley assembles a stunning collection of classic texts and new scholarship by leading critics and practitioners, to provide the first comprehensive critical and practical analysis of this field.

This volume documents the course of Shakespeare criticism on King John, from the earliest items of recorded criticism to the beginnings of the modern period around 1920. The introduction traces the history of the play.

Music permeates Shakespeare's plays. This comprehensive study explores the variety of its theatrical functions, situating them in the context of the Early Modern period's understanding of music.From the trumpet calls which animate the battle scenes of the histories and tragedies to the songs which inflect the moods of the comedies and romances, Shakespeare experiments throughout his career with music's potential to contribute to the effect of his dramas. David Lindley sets the musical scene of Shakespeare's England, outlining the period's theoretical understanding of music and discussing the experience of music heard in the streets, alehouses, private residences, courts and theatres, which an audience brought with them to the Globe and Blackfriars. Music could be praised as a symbol of divine and political harmony, or vilified as an incitement to lust and effeminacy; it could heal and cure, or fuel drunken rebellion. Focusing throughout on the plays as theatrical events, this work analyzes Shakespeare's dramatic and thematic exploitation of these conflicting perceptions of music.

.cs95E872D0{text-align: left;text-indent:0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt} .cs5EFED22F{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; } .csA62DFD6A{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; } The hundreds of biblical references in Shakespeare's plays give ample evidence that he was well acquainted with Scripture. Not only is the range of his biblical references impressive, but also the aptness with which he makes them. Hamlet and Othello each have more than fifty biblical references. No study of Shakespeare's plays is complete that ignores Shakespeare's use of scripture. The Bibles that Shakespeare knew, however, were not those that are in use today. By the time the King James Bible appeared in 1611, Shakespeare's career was all but over, and the Anglican liturgy that is evident in his plays is likewise one that few persons are acquainted with. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of the English Bibles of Shakespeare's day, notes their similarities and differences, and indicates which version the playwright knew best.The thorny question of what constitutes a valid biblical reference is also discussed. This study of Shakespeare's biblical references is not based on secondary sources. The author owned one of the world's largest collections of early English bibles, including over one hundred copies of the Geneva bible and numerous editions of other Bibles, prayer books, and books of homilies of Shakespeare's day. To be of real worth, a study of Shakespeare's biblical references should also enable the reader to determine which references Shakespeare borrowed from his plot sources and which he added from his own memory as part of his design for the play. The author studies every source that Shakespeare is known to have read or consulted before writing each play and has examined the biblical references in those sources. Shaheen then points out which biblical references in his literary sources Shakespeare accepted, and how he adapted them in his plays. This information is especially valuable when assessing the theological meanings that are sometimes imposed on his plays, meanings that often go beyond what Shakespeare intended or what his audience must have understood.Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays is considerably broader in scope than any other study of its kind and provides the scholarly checks and balances in dealing with the subject that previous stud

An original reading of Shakespeare's plays illuminating his negotiations with mothers, present and absent, and tracing the genesis of Shakespearean tragedy and romance to a psychologized version of the Fall.

Attention is often given to the performance of a text, but not to the shaping process behind that performance. The question of rehearsal is seldom confronted directly, though important textual moments - like revision - are often attributed to it. This is the first history of the subject, from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. It examines the nature and changing content of rehearsal, drawing on a mass of autobiographical, textual, and journalistic sources, and in so doing throws new light on textual revision and transforms accepted notions of Renaissance, Restoration, and eighteenth-century theatrical practice.

Shakespeare's history plays have been performed in recent years more than ever before throughout Britain, North America, and Europe. This volume is an accessible introduction to Shakespeare's historical and classical plays. Comprehensive in scope, it offers chapters on the individual plays and accounts of the genre of the history play, Renaissance theories of history, and masques and pageants. It compares them with other European history plays, and includes an account of women's roles, genealogical tables and a list of principal and recurrent characters.

Even the most explicitly political contemporary approaches to Shakespeare have been uninterested by his tyrants as such. But for Shakespeare, rather than a historical curiosity or psychological aberration, tyranny is a perpetual political and human problem. Mary Ann McGrail's recovery of the playwright's perspective challenges the grounds of this modern critical silence. She locates Shakespeare's expansive definition of tyranny between the definitions accepted by classical and modern political philosophy. Is tyranny always the worst of all possible political regimes, as Aristotle argues in his Politics? Or is disguised tyranny, as Machiavelli proposes, potentially the best regime possible? These competing conceptions were practiced and debated in Renaissance thought, given expression by such political actors and thinkers as Elizabeth I, James I, Henrie Bullinger, Bodin, and others. McGrail focuses on Shakespeare's exploration of the conflicting and contradictory passions that make up the tyrant and finds that Shakespeare's dramas of tyranny rest somewhere between Aristotle's reticence and Machiavelli's forthrightness. Literature and politics intersect in Tyranny in Shakespeare, which will fascinate students and scholars of both.

The purpose of this series is to promote the study of writing in the English language. It does this through the introduction of the major figures writing in English throughout the ages. Each book is written by an expert of the major writer concerned. In this study, the author sheds fresh light on two very different groups of Shakespeare's non-dramatic poems: the early and controversial "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece", and the highly personal "Sonnets". He explains the genesis of the first two in the genre of Ovidian narrative poetry, in which a young Elizabethan man of letters was expected to excel, and which was extremely popular. In the "Sonnets" he traces the mental journey of a man going through an acute psychological crisis as he faces up to the truth about his own unconventional sexuality. It is a study which confronts these "disagreeables" in the "Sonnets" which most critics have ignored.

`Professor Mahood's book has established itself as a classic in the field, not so much because of the ingenuity with which she reads Shakespeare's quibbles, but because her elucidation of pun and wordplay is intelligently related both to textual readings and dramatic significance.' - Revue des Langues Vivantes

"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion..." In an extended commentary on this passage this book offers a rationale for the excellence and primacy of this play among the tragedies. Throughout, emphasis is placed on Hamlet's fantasies and imaginations rather than on ethical criteria, and on the depiction of Hamlet as a revenge play through an exploration of its dark and mysterious aspects. The book stresses the importance of Passion and Its Fictions in the play and attempts to explore the very Pirandellian topic of Hamlet's passion and dream of passion. It goes on to examine the organization of dramatic energies in the play - the use Shakespeare makes of analogy and infinite regress and of scene rows, broken scenes and impacted scenes, and the significance of the exact middle of Hamlet. The final section is devoted to conventions of style, imagery, and genre in the play - what is the stage situation of asides, soliloguies, and offstage speech? How is the imagery of skin disease and sealing distinctive? In what sense is Hamlet a comedy, or does it use comedy significantly?

This volume focuses on hospitality as a theoretically and historically crucial phenomenon in Shakespeare's work with ramifications for contemporary thought and practice. Drawing a multifaceted picture of Shakespeare's scenes of hospitality-with their numerous scenes of greeting, feeding, entertaining, and sheltering-the collection demonstrates how hospitality provides a compelling frame for the core ethical, political, theological, and ecological questions of Shakespeare's time and our own. By reading Shakespeare's plays in conjunction with contemporary theory as well as early modern texts and objects-including almanacs, recipe books, husbandry manuals, and religious tracts - this book reimagines Shakespeare's playworld as one charged with the risks of hosting (rape and seduction, war and betrayal, enchantment and disenchantment) and the limits of generosity (how much can or should one give the guest, with what attitude or comportment, and under what circumstances?). This substantial volume maps the terrain of Shakespearean hospitality in its rich complexity, demonstrating the importance of historical, rhetorical, and phenomenological approaches to this diverse subject.

First published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Here, essays use the latest theories in postcolonialism, globalization, and post-nationalism to explore how world cinema and theatre respond to Bollywood's representation of Shakespeare. In this collection, Shakespeare is both part of an elite Western tradition and a window into a vibrant post-national identity founded by a global consumer culture.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss, provides a thorough reconsideration of what was probably Shakespeare's last tragedy. In the introduction, Bliss situates the play within its contemporary social and political contexts and pays particular attention to Shakespeare's manipulation of his primary source in Plutarch's Lives. The edition is alert to the play's theatrical potential, while the stage history also attends to the politics of performance from the 1680s onwards, including European productions following the Second World War. A new introductory section by Bridget Escolme accounts for recent theatrical productions as well as scholarly criticism of the last decade, with particular emphasis on gender and politics.