Shakespeare's history plays have always been pivotal to our understanding of his works. This collection renews attention to these crucial plays by exploring official and unofficial versions of the past, histories and counter-histories in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. By exploring the diversity of Shakespeare's engagement with history in all its forms, these contributors open up a range of new interpretive possibilities for understanding the way history 'plays' with the past. The book is divided into three sections: Memory and mourning, Counter-histories, Identity and performance. In each section, leading theorists, historicists and performance critics offer fresh perspectives on the key issues that are transforming our understanding of Shakespeare. These include: gender and violence, the mapping of Britain, cultural memory and religion. This collection will appeal to all critically engaged readers of Shakespeare. In particular it will command wide-ranging interest from undergraduates, postgraduates, academic researchers and students of early modern theatre, history and culture. -- .

The Henry VI plays are exciting, dark plays. In their day, they were among Shakespeare's most popular works, but they fell out of fashion - until the twentieth century, when the theatre rediscovered the plays' potency and their uncanny resonance with contemporary issues. In a story which stretches over thirty years, Shakespeare dramatises the fall of the House of Lancaster and creates some of his most compelling characters, among them the Queen Margaret and the wildly ambitious Richard, Duke of Gloucester (the future Richard III). With these plays, Shakespeare shows 'England bleeding'. This book, the first major study of the Henry VI plays in performance, focuses on the cultural context of modern British productions which have explored Shakespeare's troubling depiction of England in crisis. Chapters are devoted to full-length studies of the following productions: the Birmingham Rep's, staged during the Festival of Britain; Peter Hall and John Barton's landmark The Wars of the Roses; Terry Hands' Folio-text trilogy; Michael Bogdanov's 'punk' Shakespeare; Adrian Noble's dazzling The Plantagenets; Katie Mitchell's Bosnian Henry VI: Part Three; and Michael Boyd's award-winning cycle for the RSC. The plays have also been televised several times and we look at the rarely-seen series An Age of Kings and Jane Howell's celebrated productions for the BBC.

Peter Hall is one of the most significant and influential directors of Shakespeare’s work of modern times. Through both his own work and the management of two national theatre companies, the National Theatre and the RSC, Hall has promoted Shakespeare as a writer who can comment incisively on the modern world. His best productions exemplified this approach: Coriolanus (1959), The Wars of the Roses (1963) and Hamlet (1965) established his reputation as a director able to bring Shakespeare to the heart of contemporary politics. However, Hall’s career has been very varied, and sometimes his critical failures are as interesting as his successes. The book explores Hall’s work as a deliberate articulation of Shakespeare and national culture in the post-war years. The main focus is on his Shakespeare work, but critical attention is also given to non-Shakespearean productions, notably his 1955 Waiting for Godot (and his relationship with Samuel Beckett in general) and his 2000 Tantalus (and his work with John Barton), placing Hall’s work in its cultural and creative context. Setting Hall's work against the post-war development of national culture, the book explores how his work with other writers and artists (including Beckett, Pinter and Barton) informed his approach to directing as well as his rehearsal methods and his approach to Shakespeare’s text.

Peter Hall (1930-2017) is one of the most influential directors of Shakespeare's plays in the modern age. Under his direction, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre rediscovered Shakespeare as a writer who could comment incisively on the modern world. Productions such as Coriolanus, The Wars of the Roses and Hamlet established his reputation as a director able to bring Shakespeare to the heart of contemporary politics. He later cemented his reputation with epic productions of Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra at the National. With the Peter Hall Company, Hall continued to work intensively on Shakespeare, directing plays in the UK and America. Reviewing Hall's work in its cultural and creative context, this study explores his approach to directing and rehearsal. This is the first book to analyse all of Hall's professional Shakespeare productions in a historical context, from the Suez crisis to the 9/11 attacks and beyond.

"Measure for Measure" generates much debate and is strikingly modern in its treatment of justice, the limits of authority, surveillance, sexual politics and gender identity. This introductory guide to the play offers a scene-by-scene theatrically aware commentary, contextual documents, a brief history of the text and first performance, studies of outstanding and influential performances, a survey of film and TV adaptation, a wide sampling of critical opinion and annotated further reading.