A wide-ranging survey of critical responses to Shakespeare's masterpiece. The Merchant of Venice has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. However, the critical tradition reveals sharply divided opinions, reflecting the tremendous capacity of the play to provoke discussion among its readers and audiences. This volume collects the work of over seventy commentators writing between 1775 and 1939 (when the first signs of Nazi anti-Semitism are noted). They include well-known critics and scholars, such as Hazlitt, Ruskin, Furnivall, Brandes, Moulton, Stoll, Spurgeon, Wilson Knight and Middleton Murry, but also little-known writers who addressed the Jewish issues in the play with some authority: George Farren, Israel Davis, Sidney Lee, Charles Salaman, 'El Seyonpi', F. S. Boas, Israel Gollancz, Gerald Friedlander, and Cecil Roth. In addition, reflecting the play's great popularity in the theatre, this collection documents four celebrated interpretations of Shylock (Macklin, Kean, Edwin Booth, and Henry Irving), and two of Portia (Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry).

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. "The Critical Heritage" is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

The Critical Heritage series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Critical Heritage is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

Series Information:
The Critical Heritage Series

The Critical Heritage series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Critical Heritage is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

This major new study asks the question, "how much do we know about Shakespeare's collaborations with other dramatists?", and sets out to provide a detailed evaluation of the claims made for Shakespeare's co-authorship of Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Through an examination of the processes of collaboration and the methods used in authorship studies since the early nineteenth century, Brian Vickers identifies a coherent tradition in attribution work on Shakespeare.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

First published in 1968. This re-issues the revised edition of 1979.
The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose is the first detailed study of the use of prose in the plays. It begins by defining the different dramatic and emotional functions which Shakespeare gave to prose and verse, and proceeds to analyse the recurrent stylistic devices used in his prose. The general and particular application of prose is then studied through all the plays, in roughly chronological order.

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

Returning to Shakespeare addresses two broad areas of Shakespeare criticism: the unity of form and meaning, and the history of the plays' reception. Originally published in 1989, the collection represents the best of Brian Vickers' work from the previous fifteen years, in a revised and expanded form. The first part of the book focuses on the connection between a work's structural or formal properties and our experience of it. A new study of the Sonnets shows how personal relationships are literally embodied in personal pronouns. An essay on Shakespeare's hypocrites (Richard III, Iago, Macbeth) analyses the uncomfortable intimacy established between them and the audience by means of soliloquies and asides. Another traces the interplay between politics and the family in Coriolanus, two forms of pressure which combine to push the hero outside society. In the second part Professor Vickers examines some key episodes in the history of Shakespeare criticism. One essay reviews the persistence of drastically altered adaptations of Shakespeare on the London stage from the 1690s to the 1830s, due to the conservatism of both theatre managers and audience. Another reconstructs the debate over Hamlet's character in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, in which the Romantic image of a hero lacking control of his faculties emerged for the first time. This is an important collection by an outstanding Shakespeare critic which will interest specialists and general readers alike.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

"The Critical Heritage" gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

First published in 1968. This re-issues the revised edition of 1979. The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose is the first detailed study of the use of prose in the plays. It begins by defining the different dramatic and emotional functions which Shakespeare gave to prose and verse, and proceeds to analyse the recurrent stylistic devices used in his prose. The general and particular application of prose is then studied through all the plays, in roughly chronological order.

Brian Vickers addresses the fundamental issues of what Shakespeare actually wrote, and how this is determined. In recent years Shakespeare's authorship has been claimed for two poems, the lyric "Shall I die?" and A Funerall Elegye. These attributions have been accepted into certain major editions of Shakespeare's works. Through a new examination of the evidence, Professor Vickers shows that neither poem has the stylistic and imaginative qualities we associate with Shakespeare. He identifies the poet and dramatist John Ford as the actual author of the Elegye.

The Critical Heritage series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from important essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Critical Heritage is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

"The Critical Heritage" series gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The selected sources range from essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. "The Critical Heritage" is available as a set of 67 volumes, as mini-sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) or as individual volumes.

This six volume set covers critical perspective on Shakespeare from 1623 throught to 1801. The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

The full study of Bacon as a writer, Dr Vickers takes into account the whole corpus of Bacon's work, in Latin as well as in English. His chief sources are the The Advancement of Learning and the Essays. His purpose is to reinstate Bacon as one of the supreme masters of English prose in a period which made rich use of all the expressive resources of the medium. The study is both analytical and historical: it isolates the major features of Bacon's style, and sets them in the context of Renaissance theory and practice. The features include the overall structure of Bacon's works, his important concept of the aphorism, and his use of the traditional patterns of syntax. Dr Vickers makes a challenging reassessment of the accepted view of Bacon as a 'Senecan' or 'anti-Ciceronian' prose writer. Particular attention is paid to imagery, in which Bacon's powers as an imaginative writer are greatest. There are two general chapters, the first being the problem of analysing style, the last on reactions to Bacon's style since the seventeenth century. This book also provides the basis for a fresh assessment of Renaissance prose.

When Shakespeare's Sonnets were published in 1609 a poem called A Lover's Complaint was included by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, who was notorious for several irregular publications. Many scholars have doubted its authenticity, but recent editions of the Sonnets have accepted it as Shakespeare's work. Now Vickers, in this text, the first full study of the poem, shows it to be un-Shakespearian both in its language and in its attitude to women. It is awkwardly constructed and uses archaic Spenserian diction, including many unusual words that never occur in Shakespeare. It frequently repeats stock phrases and rhymes, distorts normal word order far more often and more clumsily than Shakespeare did, while its attitude to female frailty is moralizing and misogynistic. By close analysis Vickers attributes the poem to John Davies of Hereford (1565-1618), a famous calligrapher and writing-master who was also a prolific poet. Vickers' book will re-define the Shakespeare canon.

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, studied and performed around the world. This new volume in Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition increases our knowledge of how Shakespeare's plays were received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. It traces the course of Hamlet criticism, from the earliest items of recorded criticism to the latter half of the Victorian period. The focus of the documentary material is from the late 18th century to the late 19th century. Thus the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century. The introduction constitutes an important chapter of literary history, tracing the entire critical career of Hamlet from the beginnings to the present day. The volume features criticism from leading literary figures, such as Henry James, Anna Jameson, Victor Hugo, Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Cowden Clarke. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, whereas the introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. Thus the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.

No issue in Shakespeare studies is more important than determining what he wrote. For over two centuries scholars have discussed the evidence that Shakespeare worked with co-authors on several plays, and have used a variety of methods to differentiate their contributions from his. In this wide-ranging study, Brian Vickers takes up and extends these discussions, presenting compelling evidence that Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus together with George Peele, Timon of Athens with Thomas Middleton, Pericles with George Wilkins, and Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher. In Part One Vickers reviews the standard processes of co-authorship as they can be reconstructed from documents connected with the Elizabethan stage, and shows that every major, and most minor dramatists in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline theatres collaborated in getting plays written and staged. This is combined with a survey of the types of methodology used since the early nineteenth century to identify co-authorship, and a critical evaluation of some 'stylometric' techniques. Part Two is devoted to detailed analyses of the five collaborative plays, discussing every significant case made for and against Shakespeare's co-authorship. Synthesizing two centuries of discussion, Vickers reveals a solidly based scholarly tradition, building on and extending previous work, identifying the co-authors' contributions in increasing detail. The range and quantity of close verbal analysis brought together in Shakespeare, Co-Author present a compelling case to counter those 'conservators' of Shakespeare who maintain that he is the sole author of his plays.