Cited today as the first historian of the English, the Venerable Bede (ca. 673-735) was known in his own time primarily as a commentator on Holy Scripture. Taking seriously the insights of both ancient schools of biblical exegesis, the Antiochene and he Alexandrian, Bede was as proficient at explaining the plain sense of difficult scriptural texts as he was at discerning the figurative or allegorical significance.

This volume contains six of Bede's shorter biblical writings, most of which appear here in translation for the first time. Taken together, they reveal his amazing versatility. On Tobias shows his skill as an allegorist, while On the Resting Places, Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings, and On Eight Questions reveal his fascination with the logical puzzles posed by Scripture's literal sense. On the Holy Places is an exegetical tool conveying information about the geography of the Holy Land that Bede considered indispensable for an adequate understanding of biblical revelation. In a letter On What Isaiah Says, Bede refutes a heretical understanding of Scripture in an attempt to build up the faith of the Church.

This volume contains the first English translation of Bede's allegorical commentary on the tabernacle of Moses, which he interpreted as a symbolic figure of the Christian Church. Written in the early 720s at the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria, On the Tabernacle (De tabernaculo) was the first Christian literary work devoted entirely to this topic and the first verse-by-verse commentary on the relevant portions of the Book of Exodus. On the Tabernacle was one of Bede's most popular works, appearing in a great many manuscripts from every period of the Middle Ages.

Explores dramatic, narrative and polemical versions of the 'taming of the shrew' story, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration, in light of recent historical work on the position of early modern women in society. Its essays address shrew narratives as an extended cultural dialogue debating issues of gender and sexual politics.

This book examines six plays by Shakespeare (Love's Labour's Lost, Hamlet, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest) as dramatizations of the Renaissance court in its developing history - a history searched by Shakespeare to disclose its most characteristic gains and losses. For these plays do not simply celebrate Tudor and Stuart rule: they scrutinize it too, in the centre of its institutional theatre of power, the court. This book shows how, if the plays came into the court, the court also came into the plays, with its most salient features - its competitiveness, its inner tensions and its contradictions, its language, its cultural life and its entertainments - exposed to the scrutiny of an art-form that proved itself to be a new mode of historical understanding.

This book examines six plays by Shakespeare ("Love's Labour's Lost", "Hamlet", "As You Like It", "Twelfth Night", "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest") as dramatizations of the Renaissance Court in its developing history - a history searched by Shakespeare to disclose its most characteristic gains and losses. For these plays do not simply celebrate Tudor and Stuart rule: they scrutinize it too, in the centre of its institutional theatre of power, the Court. This book shows how, if the plays came into Court, the Court also came into the plays, with its most salient features - its competitiveness, its inner tensions and its contradictions, its language, its cultural life and its entertainments - exposed to the scrutiny of an art-form that proved itself to be a new mode of historical understanding.