Twenty-nine collected essays represent a critical history of Shakespeare's play as text and as theater, beginning with Samuel Johnson in 1765, and ending with a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1991. The criticism centers on three aspects of the play: the love/friendship debate.

A new source for Shakespeare's plays, only recently uncovered, is investigated here with a full edition and facsimile of the text. New sources for Shakespeare do not turn up every day... This is a truly significant one that has not heretofore been studied or published. The list of passages now traced back to this source is impressive. - David Bevington, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" is the only uniquely existent, unpublished manuscript that can be shown to have been a source for Shakespeare's plays. George North wrote the treatise in 1576 while at Kirtling Hall, the North family estate in Cambridgeshire. His manuscript, newly uncovered by the authors at the British Library, has many implications for our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. for example, not only does it bring clarity to the Fool's mysterious reference to Merlin in King Lear, but also upsets the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare invented the final hours of Jack Cade in 2 Henry VI. Linguistic and thematic correspondences between the North manuscript and Shakespeare's plays make it clear that the playwright borrowed from this document in other plays as well, including Richard III, 3 Henry VI, Henry V, King John, Macbeth, and Coriolanus. The opening chapters of the book investigate such connections; the volume also contains both a transcript and a facsimile of "A Brief Discourse", making this previously unknown document readily available. DENNIS MCCARTHY is an independent scholar; JUNE SCHLUETER is Charles A. Dana Professor Emerita of English at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.

Series Information:
Shakespeare Criticism

Thomas North's 1555 Travel Journal: From Italy to Shakespeare makes available a little known early modern journal kept by a member of Queen Mary's delegation to Rome, its purpose to win papal approval of England's return to Roman Catholicism. The book provides details of the six-month journey, a discussion of the manuscript, and an identification of the twenty-year-old Thomas North as its author. It also points to numerous connections between the journal and the plays of Shakespeare, extending the playwright's debt beyond North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and revealing how the journal served as a template for The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII. Both, the authors argue, were written by North during the Marian years (1554-58) and later adapted by Shakespeare. Like the authors' 2018 "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" by George North, this book presents original work using digital research tools, including massive databases and plagiarism software. The earlier book garnered worldwide attention, with a front-page story in The New York Times.

Thomas North's 1555 Travel Journal: From Italy to Shakespeare makes available a transcript of a previously unpublished early modern journal kept by a member of Queen Mary's delegation to Rome, its purpose to win papal approval of England's return to Roman Catholicism. The book provides details of the six-month journey, a discussion of the two extant copies of the manuscript, and an identification of the 20-year-old Thomas North as its author. The journal is of considerable interest in and of itself. But, in addition, the authors' research has revealed numerous connections with the plays of Shakespeare, connections that extend the playwright's debt beyond North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and reveal how entries in the journal served as a template for Henry VIII and The Winter's Tale. Both, the authors argue, were written by North during the Marian years (1554-58) and later adapted by Shakespeare. Like the authors' 2018 "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" by George North, this book presents original work using digital research tools, including massive databases and plagiarism software. The earlier book garnered worldwide attention, with a front-page story in TheNew York Times.

Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 1059-1133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.