While over the past four hundred years numerous opinions have been voiced as to Shakespeare's identity, these eleven essays widen the scope of the investigation by regarding Shakespeare, his world, and his works in their interaction with one another. Instead of restricting the search for bits and pieces of evidence from his works that seem to match what he may have experienced, these essays focus on the contemporary milieu-political developments, social and theater history, and cultural and religious pressures-as well as the domestic conditions within Shakespeare's family that shaped his personality and are featured in his works. The authors of these essays, employing the tenets of critical theory and practice as well as intuitive and informed insight, endeavor to look behind the masks, thus challenging the reader to adjudicate among the possible, the probable, the likely, and the unlikely. With the exception of the editor's own piece on Hamlet, Shakespeare the Man: New Decipherings presents previously unpublished essays, inviting the reader to embark upon an intellectual adventure into the fascinating terrain of Shakespeare's mind and art.

While over the past four hundred years numerous opinions have been voiced as to Shakespeare's identity, these eleven essays widen the scope of the investigation by regarding Shakespeare, his world, and his works in their interaction with one another. Instead of restricting the search for bits and pieces of evidence from his works that seem to match what he may have experienced, these essays focus on the contemporary milieu-political developments, social and theater history, and cultural and religious pressures-as well as the domestic conditions within Shakespeare's family that shaped his personality and are featured in his works. The authors of these essays, employing the tenets of critical theory and practice as well as intuitive and informed insight, endeavor to look behind the masks, thus challenging the reader to adjudicate among the possible, the probable, the likely, and the unlikely. With the exception of the editor's own piece on Hamlet, Shakespeare the Man: New Decipherings presents previously unpublished essays, inviting the reader to embark upon an intellectual adventure into the fascinating terrain of Shakespeare's mind and art.

Celebrated Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges found Shakespeare's work so compelling that he not only fictively imagined the life of the playwright in two short stories, but also fashioned other stories and poems into adaptations of or meditations on Shakespeare's plays, wrote essays about Shakespeare, and discussed him frequently in interviews, university lectures, and public talks. In this volume, Grace Tiffany gathers together all these varied writings and conversations. A critical edition, Borges on Shakespeare contains a lengthy introduction by its editor; annotated Borges stories, poems, essays, and transcribed talks (including his famous tales "Everything and Nothing" and "Shakespeare's Memory"); essay contributions and one piece of fiction by Borges scholars; and a bibliography. Borges' "Shakespeare" material has heretofore been available to readers only in scattered sources. Combining them in one, Borges on Shakespeare directly addresses Borges' lifelong engagement with Shakespeare, an author of tremendous significance to his own work and thought, and renders some Borges works in English translation for the first time. Borges on Shakespeare will be useful to scholars of Shakespeare, Borges, and comparative literature and drama, as well as to the general reader who enjoys Shakespeare, Borges' fiction, or both.