This ground breaking and accessible study explores the connections between the English Reformation's impact on the belief in eternal salvation and how it affected ways of believing in the plays of Shakespeare. Claire McEachern examines the new and better faith that Protestantism imagined for itself, a faith in which scepticism did not erode belief, but worked to substantiate it in ways that were both affectively positive and empirically positivist. Concluding with in-depth readings of Richard II, King Lear and The Tempest, the book represents a markedly fresh intervention in the topic of Shakespeare and religion. With great originality, McEachern argues that the English reception of the Calvinist imperative to 'know with' God allowed the very nature of literary involvement to change, transforming feeling for a character into feeling with one.

The Poetics of English Nationhood is a study of the formation of English national identity during the early modern period. Claire McEachern argues for the role of Reformation religious culture in the shaping of a Tudor-Stuart nation, and examines its presence in the writings of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Drayton. She shows how in their work the concept of nationality is always fluid; it crucially depends on a sense of intimacy that seeps across and above hierarchies and boundaries. McEachern shows how different kinds of language - literary, exegetical, parliamentary - personify power, thereby sealing the intimacy which binds the nation as an imagined community. The representation of faith, motherland, and crown in Tudor-Stuart texts, she argues, continually personified English political institutions, promoting both social order and collective unity. By focusing on the rhetorical forms of cultural unity in the Reformation era, McEachern traces a profound shift from a monarchically defined Englishness to a system based within the cultural institution of the common law.

Much Ado About Nothing boasts one of Shakespeare's most delightful heroines, most dancing wordplay, and the endearing spectacle of intellectual and social self-importance bested by the desire to love and be loved in return. It offers both the dancing wit of the "merry war" between the sexes, and a sobering vision of the costs of that combat for both men and women. Shakespeare dramatizes a social world in all of its vibrant particulars, in which characters are shaped by the relations between social convention and individual choice. This edition of the play offers in its introduction and commentary an extensive discussion of the materials that informed Shakespeare's compositional choices, both those conventional sources and other contexts, from cuckold jokes to conduct books, which inform the ideas and identities of this play. Particular attention is devoted to Renaissance understandings of gender identity and social rank, as well as to the social valences of Shakespeare's stylistic choices. A treatment of staging possibilities offers illustrations drawn from the earliest and recent theatrical practices, and a critical history examines the fate of the play in the changing trends of academic scholarship. "The text is superb... the critical introduction is predictably smart and engaging, exactly the sort of essay one would recommend to students." Eric Rasmussen, Shakespeare Survey

"Much Ado About Nothing "presents a battle of the sexes in more ways than one: as both a lightning-fast skirmish of wits between two famously disputatious lovers, and a near-deadly conflict built on conventions of gender and male rivalry. Claire McEachern's new introduction brings this best-seller right up to date, analysing recent developments in criticism and the latest productions of this comedy.

Essays by leading historians and literary scholars investigate the role of religion in shaping political, social, and literary forms from the Reformation to the Civil Wars. Individual essays discuss the relationship between religion and culture, and explore how religion informs some of the central texts of English Renaissance literature, including work by Foxe, Hooker, Shakespeare, Donne, Lanyer, and Milton. The collection demonstrates the massive centrality of religion to early modern constructions of gender, subjectivity, and nationhood.

In this updated edition of King Richard II, Claire McEachern provides a fresh introductory section in which she discusses the most important productions and scholarly criticism of recent years. Paying particular attention to the focus on religion in contemporary interpretations of the play, McEachern also analyses the increasing number of performances on stage and screen. Andrew Gurr's acclaimed introduction guides the reader through the play's action and politics, providing a thorough and engaging grounding in its structure, language and staging. An updated reading list completes the edition.

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With definitive texts and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

This revised and updated Companion acquaints the student reader with the forms, contexts, critical and theatrical lives of the ten plays considered to be Shakespeare's tragedies. Thirteen essays, written by leading scholars in Britain and North America, address the ways in which Shakespearean tragedy originated, developed and diversified, as well as how it has fared on stage, as text and in criticism. Topics covered include the literary precursors of Shakespeare's tragedies, cultural backgrounds, sub-genres and receptions of the plays. The book examines the four major tragedies and, in addition, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Essays from the first edition have been fully revised to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship; the bibliography has been extensively updated; and four new chapters have been added, discussing Shakespearean form, Shakespeare and philosophy, Shakespeare's tragedies in performance, and Shakespeare and religion.

The Poetics of English Nationhood is a study of the formation of English national identity during the early modern period. Claire McEachern argues for the role of Reformation religious culture in the shaping of a Tudor-Stuart nation, and examines its presence in the writings of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Drayton. She shows how in their work the concept of nationality is always fluid; it crucially depends on a sense of intimacy that seeps across and above hierarchies and boundaries. McEachern shows how different kinds of language - literary, exegetical, parliamentary - personify power, thereby sealing the intimacy which binds the nation as an imagined community. The representation of faith, motherland, and crown in Tudor-Stuart texts, she argues, continually personified English political institutions, promoting both social order and collective unity. By focusing on the rhetorical forms of cultural unity in the Reformation era, McEachern traces a profound shift from a monarchically defined Englishness to a system based within the cultural institution of the common law.

These essays by leading historians and literary scholars investigate the role of religion in shaping political, social and literary forms, and their reciprocal role in shaping early modern religion, from the Reformation to the Civil Wars. Reflecting and rethinking the insights of new historicism and cultural studies, individual essays take up various aspects of the productive, if tense, relation between Tudor-Stuart Christianity and culture, and explore how religion informs some of the central texts of English Renaissance literature: the vernacular Bible, Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Hooker's Laws, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, the poems of John Donne, Amelia Lanyer and John Milton. The collection demonstrates the centrality of religion to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and its influence on early modern constructions of gender, subjectivity and nationhood.

In this updated edition of King Richard II, Claire McEachern provides a fresh introductory section in which she discusses the most important productions and scholarly criticism of recent years. Paying particular attention to the focus on religion in contemporary interpretations of the play, McEachern also analyses the increasing number of performances on stage and screen. Andrew Gurr's acclaimed introduction guides the reader through the play's action and politics, providing a thorough and engaging grounding in its structure, language and staging. An updated reading list completes the edition.

"Much Ado About Nothing "presents a battle of the sexes in more ways than one: as both a lightning-fast skirmish of wits between two famously disputatious lovers, and a near-deadly conflict built on conventions of gender and male rivalry. Claire McEachern's new introduction brings this best-seller right up to date, analysing recent developments in criticism and the latest productions of this comedy.

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With definitive texts and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. This edition of Henry IV, Part 1 is edited with an introduction by Claire McEachern. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

This revised and updated Companion acquaints the student reader with the forms, contexts, critical and theatrical lives of the ten plays considered to be Shakespeare's tragedies. Thirteen essays, written by leading scholars in Britain and North America, address the ways in which Shakespearean tragedy originated, developed and diversified, as well as how it has fared on stage, as text and in criticism. Topics covered include the literary precursors of Shakespeare's tragedies, cultural backgrounds, sub-genres and receptions of the plays. The book examines the four major tragedies and, in addition, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Essays from the first edition have been fully revised to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship; the bibliography has been extensively updated; and four new chapters have been added, discussing Shakespearean form, Shakespeare and philosophy, Shakespeare's tragedies in performance, and Shakespeare and religion.

With new editors who have incorporated the most up-to-date scholarship, this revised Pelican Shakespeare series will be the premiere choice for students, professors, and general readers well into the twenty-first century.

Each volume features:
* Authoritative, reliable texts
* High quality introductions and notes
* New, more readable trade trim size
* An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts