Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800 Books
Penguin Books Ltd Soul of the Age
Book SynopsisJonathan Bate''s Soul of the Age brings us closer than ever to understanding what being Shakespeare was actually like.How did plague turn Shakespeare from a jobbing hack into a courtly poet? How did Bottom''s dream rewrite the Bible? How did Shakespeare''s plays lead to the deaths of an earl and a king? And why was he the one dramatist of his generation never to be imprisoned?Weaving a dazzling tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and obsessions, private passions and political intrigues, Soul of the Age leads us on an exhilarating tour of the extraordinary, colourful and often violent world that shaped and informed Shakespeare''s thinking. Written by one of the world''s leading experts, it combines almost everything there is to know about the man and his work in one sensational narrative.''Bate probably knows as much as any single person can know about Shakespeare ... Surprising, fresh, exhilarating, brilliant'', Guardian''Intensely enjoyable ... you find yourself gasping with pleasure'' John Carey, Sunday TimesJonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick, chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works and the author of many books, including most recently John Clare: A Biography, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. A Fellow of the British Academy, he was awarded a CBE in 2006.Trade Review'An excellent writer ! he achieves a resonant and complex portrait, constantly alert to new lines of enquiry and unexpected conclusions ... A triumph of precision, learning and intelligent innovation' - Charles Nicholl, Sunday Telegraph, Book of the Week 'Bate probably knows as much as any single person can know about Shakespeare ... Surprising, fresh, exhilarating, brilliant' - Richard Eyre, Guardian 'Wholehearted applause for Bate's portrayal of Shakespeare's world ... it is pure pleasure ... I defy any reader, no matter how saturated in Shakespeare, not to find something new here' Independent on Sunday
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd Shakespeare and Co.
Book SynopsisStanley Wells has devoted most of life to teaching, editing and writing about Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Honorary Governor Emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, he is also Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham. He is General Editor of the Penguin and Oxford editions of Shakespeare and co-editor of the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. His recent account of Shakespeare and his after-life, Shakespeare For All Time, was described as the best book about Shakespeare for a generation.
£11.69
Oxford University Press The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Book SynopsisThe Oxford ShakespeareGeneral Editor: Stanley WellsThe Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers.- A new, modern-spelling text, collated and edited from all existing printings- Wide-ranging introduction explores the lyrical language with which Shakespeare dramatizes competing kinds of love- Detailed performance history designed to meet the needs of theatre professionals- On-page commentary and notes explain language, word-play, and staging- the only edition to provide a setting of the song ''Who is Silvia?'' , taken from an Elizabethan source- Illustrated with production photographs and related art- Full index to introduction and commentary- Durable sewn binding for lasting use''not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare'' ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each afforTrade ReviewRoger Warren's edition of the play in the excellent Oxford series is emphatically performance-orientated throughout. * Ruth Morse, Times Literary Supplement *
£7.59
Oxford University Press Timon of Athens The Oxford Shakespeare
Book SynopsisThe Oxford ShakespeareGeneral Editor: Stanley WellsThe Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers- A new, modern-spelling text, collated and edited from all existing printings- On-page commentary and notes explain meaning, staging, language, and allusions- Detailed introduction provides a full account of the play''s performance history and explores issues of gender, gift-theory, and ecology- Appendices include source materials and a chronology of major productions worldwide- Illustrated with production photographs and related art- Full index to introduction and commentary- Durable sewn binding for lasting use''not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship.''ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volTrade Review...highly recommended * Dieter Mehl, Archiv *
£14.09
Oxford University Press The Rover and Other Plays
Book SynopsisAphra Behn (1640-89) was both successful and controversial in her own lifetime; her achievements are now recognized less equivocally and her plays, often revived, demonstrate wit, compassion and remarkable range. This edition brings together her most important comedies in a single volume: The Rover, her best-known play; The Feigned Courtesans, a lively comedy of intrigue; The Lucky Chance, a comedy with a bitter edge, which takes a satirical look at marriage customs; and the dazzling and popular farce, The Emperor of the Moon. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. Detailed annotation helps the reader to visualize the plays in performance and the Introduction argues for the importance of Behn''s skilful stagecraft and her great success as an entertainer. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of litTable of ContentsThe Rover ; The Feigned Courtesans ; The Lucky Chance ; The Emperor of the Moon
£8.54
John Murray Press The Impact of God
Book SynopsisSt John of the Cross testifies to a God who longs to meet us in our deepest need. Whilst rejection and imprisonment played their part in the life of this sixteenth-century Spanish friar, John''s poetry and prose reveal the beauty and power of a wondrous God. It gives us courage to believe in the possibility of change in our own lives, however unlikely or impossible this may seem. Father Iain Matthew uses this classic inspirational Christian writing as his starting point, and offers five interpretations which make its richness relevant to the modern reader.Trade ReviewThis impressive book introduces us to the beautiful, painful world of John of the Cross, who is still our surest guide into the mystery of God's love. * Abbott Christopher Jamieson *
£10.44
University of Pennsylvania Press Wits Treasury
Book SynopsisAs England entered the Renaissance and as humanism, with its focus on classical literature and philosophy, informed the educational system, English intellectuals engaged in a concerted effort to remake the culture, language, mannersindeed, the whole national stylethrough adapting the classics. But how could English literature, art, and culture, become classical, not only in imitating the ancients, but in the sense subsequently applied to music: classical as opposed to popular, as formal, serious, and therefore as good?For several decades in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Stephen Orgel writes, the return to the classics held out the promise of refinement and civility. Poetry was to be modeled on Greek and Roman examples rather than on the great English medieval works, which though admirable, lacked correctness. More than poetry was at stake, however, and the transition would not be easy. Classical rules seemed the wave of the future, rescuing England from what was seen aTrade ReviewReading a book by Stephen Orgel is always an intellectual pleasure. His clear, intelligent, and acute writing leads the reader through the reconstruction of a past literary and cultural tradition, by showing how seemingly small events can have a remarkable meaning when compared with, or set in relation to, a larger panorama...In Wit’s Treasury Orgel exquisitely show[s] the complexity of creating a cultural identity and of becoming 'classics.' * SKENÈ Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies *Stephen Orgel’s Wit’s Treasury advances a concise and compelling exploration of how early modern writers, artists, and printers employed ancient exempla to self-authorize early English work products...Orgel does much to make 'the classics' accessible by demonumentalizing them, by exposing their essential malleability, and by reiterating that 'nothing in the past is safely in the past, and the dark side of how productive classical models were was how dangerously pertinent—how alive—they could also be.' Overall, Wit’s Treasury convincingly demonstrates that they still can be. * Renaissance and Reformation *Steven Orgel offers a unique, engaged exploration of classical influences on the written and visual arts in the early modern period...This study is brief, yet comprehensive, [and] offers well-chosen, detailed examples, and his book is a valuable contribution for scholars of early modern literature. * Choice *There are many other books on aspects of sixteenth-century classicism in the arts, literature, education, and the sciences, but none with the combination of erudition, direct engagement with visual and textual material, brevity, and accessibility that Stephen Orgel brings to Wit's Treasury. Orgel is a scholar of unique standing in his field. This is a book to be welcomed wherever Renaissance literature is taught and enjoyed. * Greg Walker, University of Edinburgh *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments A Note on Quotations Chapter 1. Classicizing England Chapter 2. The Uses of Prosody Chapter 3. The Sound of Classical Chapter 4. What Classical Looks Like Chapter 5. From Black Letter to Roman Chapter 6. Staging the Classical Chapter 7. Looking Backward Coda Notes Bibliography Index
£24.80
Spark The Comedy of Errors
Book SynopsisNo Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of The Comedy of Errors on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right.
£7.99
Union Square & Co. Twelfth Night No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student
Book SynopsisAge range 14+ Shakespeare everyone can understand - now in new DELUXE editions!
£9.49
Johns Hopkins University Press Downward Mobility
Book SynopsisHow do the stories we tell about money shape our economies?Beginning in the late eighteenth century, as constant growth became the economic norm throughout Europe, fictional stories involving money were overwhelmingly about loss. Novel after novel tells the tale of bankruptcy and financial failure, of people losing everything and ending up in debtor's prison, of inheritances lost and daughters left orphaned and poor. In Downward Mobility, Katherine Binhammer argues that these stories of ruin are not simple tales about the losers of capitalism but narratives that help manage speculation of capital's inevitable collapse. Bringing together contemporary critical finance studies with eighteenth-century literary history, Binhammer demonstrates the centrality of the myth of downward mobility to the cultural history of capitalismand to the emergence of the novel in Britain. Deftly weaving economic history and formal analysis, Binhammer reveals how capitalism requires the novel's complex techTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Fictitious Capital and the Social History of Debt 2. Leveraging Fiction: When Debt Becomes Equity 3. Narrative Exchange: The Value of Stories-within-Stories 4. The Plot of Capital I: Cecilia and Risk Management 5. The Plot of Capital II: Camilla, Closure, and the Realization of Capital Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
£22.88
Manchester University Press Five Elizabethan Progress Entertainments
Book SynopsisDesigned to introduce the student or general reader to a largely unfamiliar area of Elizabethan theatrical activity, Five Elizabethan progress entertainments focuses on a group of entertainments mounted for the monarch in the closing years of her reign. Richly annotated, and prefaced by a substantial introduction, the texts enable an understanding of the motives underlying not only the progress itself, but the choice of locations the monarch elected to visit and the personal and political preoccupations of those with whom she determined to stay. Selected for their diversity, the entertainments exhibit the tensions underlying some royal visits, the lavish expenditure entailed for the monarch’s hosts and the overlap in terms of both material and authorship between the progress entertainments and the more widely studied products of the sixteenth-century stage.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION: THE ROYAL PROGRESS THE ENTERTAINMENT AT COWDRAYIntroductionText THE ENTERTAINMENT AT ELVETHAMIntroductionText THE ENTERTAINMENT AT BISHAMIntroductionText THE ENTERTAINMENT AT MITCHAM IntroductionTextAppendixTHE ENTERTAINMENT AT CHISWICKIntroductionTextINDEX
£15.19
The New York Review of Books, Inc Shakespeare's Montaigne
Book SynopsisAn NYRB Classics OriginalShakespeare, Nietzsche wrote, was Montaigne’s best reader—a typically brilliant Nietzschean insight, capturing the intimate relationship between Montaigne’s ever-changing record of the self and Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic register of human character. And there is no doubt that Shakespeare read Montaigne—though how extensively remains a matter of debate—and that the translation he read him in was that of John Florio, a fascinating polymath, man-about-town, and dazzlingly inventive writer himself.Florio’s Montaigne is in fact one of the masterpieces of English prose, with a stylistic range and felicity and passages of deep lingering music that make it comparable to Sir Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and the works of Sir Thomas Browne. This new edition of this seminal work, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Peter G. Platt, features an adroitly modernized text, an essay in which Greenblatt discusses both the resemblances and real tensions between Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s visions of the world, and Platt’s introduction to the life and times of the extraordinary Florio. Altogether, this book provides a remarkable new experience of not just two but three great writers who ushered in the modern world.
£17.85
Canongate Books Hamlet: Poem Unlimited
Book SynopsisIn the bestselling Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom showed us how Shakespeare shaped human consciousness, and addressed the question of authorship in Hamlet. In Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, America's most celebrated critic turns his attention to a reading of the play itself and to Shakespeare's most enigmatic and memorable character.This is Bloom's attempt to uncover the mystery of both Prince Hamlet and the play, how both prince and drama are able to break through the conventions of theatrical mimesis and the representation of character, making us question the very nature of theatrical illusion. Hamlet: Poem Unlimited is a hugely insightful and yet highly accessible exploration of Shakespeare's crowning achievement by a critic who is seen by many as his greatest living champion.
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC King Henry VIII: Third Series
Book SynopsisKing Henry VIII has one of the fullest theatrical histories of any play in the Shakespeare canon, yet has been consistently misrepresented, both in performance and in criticism. This edition offers a new perspective on this ironic, multi-layered, collaborative play, revealing it as a complex meditation on the progress of Reformation which sees English life since Henry VIII's day as a series of bewildering changes in national and personal allegiance and represents 'history' as the product of varied and contradictory testimony. McMullan makes a powerful claim for the rehabilitation of Henry VIII, providing the fullest performance history of any edition to date and reading the work not as a marginal 'late' Shakespeare play but as a play which is paradigmatic of the achievement of Renaissance drama as a whole.'This is a staggeringly brilliant, captivating edition that will undoubtedly occasion a huge surge of critical interest in this neglected play. For those of use who have never taken Henry VIII very seriously ' perhaps dismissing it as a late collaborative play of no consequence or as conservative propaganda ' McMullan's introduction is genuinely revelatory.' Eric Rasmussen, University of Nevada at Reno, Shakespeare Survey
£11.99
Penguin Books Ltd Faust Part I
Book SynopsisTrade Review" One of those great works of literature into which a writer has been able to combine his ranging preoccupations and understanding as he worked." -A. S. Byatt, from the Preface
£9.49
Cambridge University Press All the Sonnets of Shakespeare
Book SynopsisIntended for all readers of Shakespeare, this beautiful and ground-breaking book arranges Shakespeare's sonnets printed in 1609 in chronological order and intersperses the sonnets from the plays among them. A lively introduction provides essential background, while explanatory notes and modern English paraphrases illuminate the sonnets' meanings.Trade Review'What a fresh and lovely idea! I've been speaking the sonnets for most of my life. They are such wonderful training for an actor, and the notes and paraphrases in this book are just what we all need to guide us through them.' Judi Dench'This new arrangement of Shakespeare's sonnets is a revelation. Paul Edmondson, and Stanley Wells have truly illuminated the author's themes, preoccupations and obsessions. In so doing the poems have a fresh, and startlingly clear narrative progression. Thanks to their scholarship I found myself experiencing this work as never before. There is a directness, simplicity, and humanity, which shines from the page. It was an honour to read them in this form. I hope a large audience will enjoy seeing (and hearing), this new light shone on a great literary treasure.' Kenneth Branagh'Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells have done something daring, controversial, and richly illuminating. To the 154 poems collected in the celebrated volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets they have conjoined the sonnets that appear in the plays – such as the famous lines shared by Romeo and Juliet. To these they have added a number of passages from the plays that are in effect close relations to the conventional sonnet form. The result is to break down the walls and set Shakespeare's famous sequence in a much expanded field of poetic making. But that is not all: jettisoning the order in which the sonnets first appeared in print, Edmondson and Wells arrange them in what they take to be their chronological order of composition. The result is something radical and unsettling. To make these deeply familiar poems seem unexpected and new is a significant achievement.' Stephen Greenblatt, Author of Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics and The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve'A marvellously refreshing new look at Shakespeare's devotion to the sonnet form, expanding our understanding of the published sonnets by adding those he included in the plays. The single sentence description of each sonnet is also immensely useful and helpful to even the most seasoned reader.' Gregory Doran, Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director'This is a book of clarity and love which shadows the mind in time of Shakespeare the poet and in so doing brings us closer than ever before to his own awareness of the reach of his genius.' Carol Ann Duffy'All the Sonnets of Shakespeare presents a wealth of valuable material and compelling interpretations in a clear, comprehensible, and convincing style that will hold appeal not only for Shakespeare scholars and students, but for all devotees of 'the supreme poet-dramatist' and his work.' Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts'A valuable project, and one which achieves what Shakespeare editions so often promise but so rarely deliver: which is to prompt a genuinely new way of looking at these familiar works.' Daniel Swift, The Spectator'What Edmondson and Wells have done is both groundbreaking and profoundly significant … whether dipping in for a brief encounter or wanting to fully immerse oneself in the entire Sonnet canon, with scholarly explication and guidance, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare is a one volume tour de force. 400 years after his death, Edmondson and Wells have breathed new life into our engagement with his poetic output and a revised understanding of the man, his motives and his responses to creative muses … I strongly recommend grabbing a copy of their book and rediscovering the Sonnets for yourself! The casual reader will be both enlightened and entertained and the scholar will be academically stimulated.' Paul Spalding-Mulcock, Yorkshire Times'… a model of editing, which scraps the conventional sentimentalities and lets us read the Sonnets as poems - explorations into worlds of possible feeling, speech and thought, rather than coded memoirs.' Rowan Williams, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2020'In putting Shakespeare's dramatic sonnets alongside the 1609 group, this edition exhibits the breadth with which he handles the form.' Molly Clark, Times Literary Supplement'This book is a gift to scholars and students … This study will prove valuable to all who specialize in Shakespearean topics.' M. H. Kealy, Choice'Exploring the sonnets hidden in some of Shakespeare's most revered plays gives a new flavour and dynamic to those characters. It draws our attention to the author's intention in each play, where he makes a character unexpectedly speak in poetry. It illuminates that moment and poses new questions. The detailed and extremely in-depth introduction strongly supports the original works and allows us to examine all of Shakespeare's sonnets in a new, exciting and precise way. I learned a lot from reading this. I hope you do too.' Lolita Chakrabarti'… this is a volume into which one can dip suggestively, creatively and repeatedly to find things new. It is, frankly, the most exciting reconception of the Sonnets since John Benson's Poems in 1640, and the same motive of making them 'serene, clear and elegantly plain' serves to intensify their drama, their diversity and their brilliance.' Jane Kingsley-Smith, Shakespeare SurveyTable of ContentsIntroduction Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells; About this Volume; Sonnets; Textual Notes, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare: Literal Paraphrases, Numerical Index of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), Index of First Lines.
£15.99
Faber & Faber 1606
Book Synopsis1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare''s life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear.1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.Following the biographical style of 1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come
£12.34
Oxford University Press Anthony and Cleopatra The Oxford Shakespeare
Book SynopsisIn its towering central characters, vast geographical and historical sweep, and its variety of style and mood, Anthony and Cleopatra is perhaps the most ambitious of Shakespeare''s designs. Yet the degree and nature of its success remain surprisingly contentious, and performances of the play have seldom matched the extravagant expectations of its admirers. Michael Neill''s wide-ranging introduction from a number of angles, including those of gender and race. He examines the sources and discusses the theatrical challenge presented by Shakespeare''s technique, with its extraordinary tensions between rhetoric and action. A full stage history further illustrates its theatrical fortunes; both here and in the extensive commentary this edition illuminates the play''s theatrical dimensions as well as the rich complexity of its poetic language. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable Trade Review'Stanley Wells' OUP Complete Works of Shakespeare is now eight years old and has spawned a new Oxford Shakespeare which appears now in splendidly affordable volumes in that nonpareil of libraries of good reading The World's Classics.' The Oxford Times
£8.54
Oxford University Press Loves Labours Lost The Oxford Shakespeare
Book SynopsisLove''s Labour''s Lost, now recognized as one of the most delightful and stageworthy of Shakespeare''s comedies, came into its own both on the stage and in critical esteem only during the 1930s and 1940s, after three hundred years of neglect by the theatre and undervaluation and misuse by critics. The Introduction to this new edition pays particular attention to this process of rehabilitation. The text, based on the quarto of 1598 and taking full account of the extensive scholarly study that text has received over recent years, rests on the hypothesis that the quarto goes back, probably by way of `lost'' quarto, to an authorial manuscript representing the play in a state prior to `fair copy''. If this is so, the quarto takes on a special significance because through it we can watch Shakespeare in the act of composition, improvising, changing his mind, and revising as his play develops under his hand. The editor offers a number of new readings of difficult and disputed passages, togetheTrade Review`Hibbard lucidly expounds the intricately patterned structure of his play ... and he dispatches the largely distracting question of its 'topicality' with heartening promptness.' English Studies, Volume 72, Number 6, December 1991`This Oxford text of Love's Labour's Lost is lucidly informative, scrupulous but concise,. and in general a model of restrained and level-headed editing.' Cedric Watts, University of Sussex, Review of English Studies, Vol. 43, 8/92'Stanley Wells' OUP Complete Works of Shakespeare is now eight years old and has spawned a new Oxford Shakespeare which appears now in splendidly affordable volumes in that nonpareil of libraries of good reading The World's Classics.' The Oxford TimesTable of ContentsList of illustrations; Introduction; The Play; The Date and `Sources'; The Text; Editorial Procedures; Abbreviations and references; Love's Labour's Lost; Appendix A: Two `False Starts'; Appendix B: Alterations to lineation; Appendix C: The music for `The Hit It'; Appendix D: The name of Armado's page; Index
£7.59
Oxford University Press Tis Pity Shes a Whore and Other Plays
Book SynopsisFord wrote darkly about sexual and political passion, thwarted ambition, and incest. This selection also shows his ability to portray the poignancy of love as well as write entertaining comedy and create convincing roles for women. Setting Ford's earliest surviving independently-written play, The Lover's Melancholy; alongside his three best-known works, this edition includes an introduction with sections on each play, addressing gender issues, modernrelevance, and staging possibilities. Includes: The Lover's Melancholy; The Broken Heart; `Tis Pity She's a Whore; Perkin Warbeck.Table of ContentsThe Lover's Melancholy ; The Broken Heart ; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore ; Perkin Warbeck
£9.49
Oxford University Press She Stoops to Conquer and Other Comedies
Book SynopsisThe Modern Husband * The Clandestine Marriage * She Stoops to Conquer * Wild OatsThis edition brings together four eighteenth-century comedies that illustrate the full variety of the century''s drama. Fielding''s The Modern Husband , written before the 1737 Licensing Act that restricted political and social comment, depicts wife-pandering and widespread social corruption. In Garrick and Colman''s The Clandestine Marriage two lovers marry in defiance of parental wishes and rue the consequences. She Stoops to Conquer explores the comic and not-so-comic consequences of mistaken identity, and in Wild Oats, the ''strolling player'' Rover is a beacon of hope at a time of unrest.Part of the Oxford English Drama series, this edition has modern-spelling texts, critical introduction, wide-ranging annotation and an informative bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Select Bibliography ; THE MODERN HUSBAND ; THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE ; SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER ; WILD OATS ; Explanatory Notes ; Glossary
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Four Tragedies Hamlet Othello King Lear Macbeth
Book SynopsisThe theme of the great Shakespearean tragedies is the fall from grace of a great man due to a flaw in his nature. Whether it is the ruthless ambition of Macbeth or the folly of Lear, the irresolution of Hamlet or the suspicion of Othello, the cause of the tragedy - even when it is the murder of a king - is trifling compared to the calamity that it unleashes. Despite his flawed nature, however, the tragic hero has a nobility that emphasizes the greatness of man. From this paradox the audience is brought to a greater understanding of - and sympathy with - suffering. The four tragedies in this collection are accompanied by notes and an introduction to each text, making this edition of particular value to students and theatre-goers.
£13.49
CONNELL PUBLISHING LTD The Connell Guide To Shakespeare's Antony and
Book Synopsis
£8.54
Union Square & Co. Tempest No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student
Book SynopsisShakespeare everyone can understandnow in new DELUXE editions! Why fear Shakespeare? By placing the words of the original play next to line-by-line translations in plain English, these popular guides make Shakespeare accessible to everyone. They introduce Shakespeare's world, significant plot points, and the key players. And now they feature expanded literature guide sections that help students study smarter, along with links to bonus content on the Sparknotes.com website. A Q&A, guided analysis of significant literary devices, and review of the play give students all the tools necessary for understanding, discussing, and writing about Tempest. The expanded content includes:Five Key Questions: Five frequently asked questions about major moments and characters in the play. What Does the Ending Mean?: Is the ending sad, celebratory, ironic . . . or ambivalent? Plot Analysis: What is the play about? How is the story told, and what are the main themes? Why do the characters behave
£9.49
CONNELL PUBLISHING LTD The Connell Guide To Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Book Synopsis
£8.54
Oxford University Press Shakespeares First Folio
Book SynopsisCelebrating the 400th Anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare''s First FolioThis is the biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare''s plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of their place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare''s reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare''s posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognize Shakespeare.Trade ReviewA fascinating and provocative book. * Daniel Swift, Spectator *Delightful. * Jerry Brotton, The Daily Telegraph *Her diligence in considering every aspect of the Folio's material existence is commendable. * Brian Vickers, Times Literary Supplement *This is a beautifully judged book about books, impeccably researched yet wry and affectionate. * Jerry Brotton, Financial Times *Smith's account of the Folio's distinguished career is very nicely written and consistently entertaining and informative... It is the modern equivalent of a magic book, and Smith's own book does justice to that magic. * Times Higher Education *Emma Smith's book comes as a welcome corrective to the fascination with Shakespeare the man ... as it is the "biography" of something far more interesting: a book. * Stuart Kelly, Independent *I've been looking forward to Emma Smith's Shakespeare's First Folio ever since I heard her give a paper that asked, "can you actually read the First Folio?" It's that sort of arresting question that wouldn't occur to many other people that makes her scholarship so inventive and absorbing. * Jem Bloomfield, Times Higher Education, Summer Reads 2016 *A charming, enlightening account, not so much of the origins, as of the fortunes over the years subsequently, of the great edition. * David Sexton, Evening Standard *Smith is one of the cleverest scholars around, but her academic weight is balanced with an accessible tone and wry humour. * Bristol Magazine *A marvelous bit of scholarship. Detailed without being dry, playful without being silly, it's a well-researched, thoroughly balanced account of this 'iconic book.' * The Oxford Culture Review *The book is well illustrated, and Smith writes with great style. * Ben Higgins, Review of English Studies *... offers a wealth of important information, fascinating episodes, and sophisticated critical insight. It will, therefore, be of great interest to a variety of scholars in different disciplines, with literary critics, cultural historians, and scholars of book history foremost among them. * José María Pérez Fernández, Bulletin of the Comediantes *[A] compassionate biography... a wonderful testimony to the 'worlds most expensive book' and the readers who keep it that way. * Charlotte Scott, Shakespeare Survey *This book is a very good read, a largely anecdotal but always entertaining account of copies of the Shakespeare First Folio from their production in 1623 to the present ... the pleasure and instruction this book will bring to the casual bibliophile or the Shakespeare enthusiast. * Alan H. Nelson, Renaissance Quarterly *Smith's second book, Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, picks up where The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio leaves off, tracing different ways of interacting with the Folio owning, reading, forging, acting, collecting, and studying from the seventeenth century to our own time, and from Europe and America to Africa and Asia. * Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *Thoroughly researched, and well-organized. * Anna Faktorovich, Pennsylvania Literary Journal *[An] excellent companion. * Camille Ralphs, Poetry Foundation *Authoritative, lively and accessible. * Rhodri Lewis, Prospect *Table of ContentsIntroduction Sir Edward Dering goes shopping 1: Owning 2: Reading 3: Decoding 4: Performing 5: Perfecting Conclusion Bibliography Index
£18.00
Oxford University Press Shakespeares Sonnets and Poems
Book SynopsisNot for nothing is William Shakespeare considered possibly the most famous writer in history; his works have had a lasting effect on culture, vocabularies, and art. His plays contain some of our most well-known lines (how often have you heard the phrase ''To be or not to be''?), yet whilst his poems may often feel less familiar than his plays they have also seeped into our cultural history (who has not heard of ''''Shall I compare thee to a summer''s day''?).In this Very Short Introduction Jonathan Post introduces all of Shakespeare''s poetry: the Sonnets; the two great narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece; A Lover''s Complaint; and The Phoenix and Turtle. Describing Shakespeare''s double identity as both poet and playwright, in conjunction with several of his contemporaries, Post evaluates the reciprocal advantages as well as the different strategies and strains that came with writing for the stage and the page. Tackling the debates surrounding the disputed authorship of Shakespeare''s poems, he also considers the printing history of Shakespeare''s canon, and the genres favoured by the bard. Exploring their reception, both with contemporary audiences and through the ages until today, Post explores the core themes of love and lust, and analyzes how the sonnets compare with other great love poetry of the English Renaissance.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewExpansive for a volume with so little page space, Johnathan F.S. Post's Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems: A Very Short Introduction is a valuable addition to the libraries of novices and experts alike. * Hannah Smith-Drelich, The Shakespeare Newsletter *This little gem achieves a great deal in very short compass, swiftly capturing the paradox at the sonnet's heart. * Katharine Craik, Times Literary Supplement *This elegant little book is more than an introduction to the greatest lyric poems in the English language; it is itself a finely crafted work of English prose, one that any admirer of these poems will want to savour. * James Longenbach *cover[s] an impressive amount of literary and historical ground, and convey[s] a suitably sizeable serving of Shakespeare knowledge. * Shakespeare Magazine *Table of ContentsFURTHER READING; INDEX
£9.49
Oxford University Press Henry IV Part 2 The Oxford Shakespeare
Book SynopsisThis new edition of one of Shakespeare's greatest history plays offers a freshly considered text fully alert to its intense theatrical aspects. A helpful Introduction discusses the play's structure, language, and performance history, and the notes provide an illuminating commentary on details of the text.Trade ReviewThe text pages clearly differentiate text, collation, and notes; the documentation is full but inconspicuous; and it has been well proof-read ... Dr Weis provides an economical but illuminating discussion of Shakespeare's sources ... The annotations throughout are lucid and economical, responsive to both levels of plot. ... Rene Weis's edition can be recommended as a thoughtful and sensitive response to the play, which ranks alongside the outstanding 1966 New Arden edition by R A Humphreys. * Brian Vickers, ROES, vol 50 no 200 (1999) *Table of ContentsLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS; INTRODUCTION; EDITORIAL PROCEDURES; TEXT; INDEX
£7.59
Oxford University Press The Two Noble Kinsmen
Book SynopsisThe Royal Shakespeare Company''s choice of The Two Noble Kinsmen to open the Swan Theatre in 1986 demonstrated that this long-neglected play has at last come into its own as a stageworthy, humorous, and moving dramatization of the conflicting claims of love and friendship. It was first published in 1634 as `by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher, and Mr William Shakespeare, Gent'' and was probably first performed soon after the wedding of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the company''s patron James I, to the Elector Palatine in February 1613. The exceptionally full introduction to this edition explains the relevance to the play of ideas of chivalry and of the classical idea of friendship. The edition (which is illuminatingly illustrated) also offers a discussion of the centuries-long debate about the play''s authorship and a clarification of its stage action.Trade Review'This is an important scholarly edition and will obviously be indispensable for advanced study of the play.' Ann Thompson, Liverpool University'The Oxford Shakespeare is an admirably scholarly edition, immaculately presented, offering close attention to possibilities of staging as well as meaning.' Dr D. Sedge, Exeter University'An excellent edition, with a good introduction.' Roger Prior, Queen's University, Belfast'Professional edition with introduction which states clearly the case for collaborative composition. R. N. Alexander, Queen Mary Westfield, London'Stanley Wells' OUP Complete Works of Shakespeare is now eight years old and has spawned a new Oxford Shakespeare which appears now in splendidly affordable volumes in that nonpareil of libraries of good reading The World's Classics.' The Oxford Times
£8.54
Oxford University Press Selected Poetry
Book SynopsisAlexander Pope (1688-1744) is regarded as the most important poet of the early eighteenth century. An invalid from infancy, Pope devoted his energies towards literature and achieved remarkable success with his first published work at the age of 21. A succession of brilliant poems followed, including An Essay on Criticism (1711), Windsor Forest (1713), and his masterpiece The Rape of the Lock (1712). A second period of great poetry was begun in 1728 with the appearance of the first Dunciad. All these works, which exhibit Pope''s astonishing human insight, his wide sympathies, and powers of social observation (displayed to greatest effect in his talent for satire), feature in this selection. In his introduction - an eloquent defence of Pope''s poetic practice - Pat Rogers argues that we must abandon our Romantic conception of poetry as a record of fleeting and subjective states if we are to understand Pope fully. Instead, we must see him as an accomplished practitioner of the poetry of
£8.65
Dorling Kindersley Ltd The Little Book of Shakespeare
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThese pocket-sized guides are ideal gifts for anyone whose thirst for knowledge knows no bounds * How it Works *
£9.49
Cambridge University Press King Richard III
Book SynopsisThis second edition of King Richard III features a new introductory section by Janis Lull, which focuses on contemporary stage and film productions as well as recent scholarly criticism. Lull stresses the importance of women in the play but shows how female roles are often side-lined on stage and screen.Table of ContentsIntroduction: History and meaning in Richard III; Richard III and Macbeth; Plot and language in Richard III; Richard III in performance; The audience in Richard III; Recent stage, film, and critical interpretations; Note on the text; List of characters; THE PLAY; Textual analysis; Appendix 1. The Q-only 'clock' passage; Appendix 2. The Plantagenet family tree; Reading list.
£12.29
Ebury Publishing In Search Of Shakespeare
Book SynopsisMichael Wood was born in Manchester and educated at Manchester Grammar School and Oriel College, Oxford, where he did post-graduate research in Anglo-Saxon history. A broadcaster and film-maker, he is the author of several highly praised books on English history, including In Search of the Dark Ages, Domesday and recently In Search of England. He has over eight documentary films to his name, including Art of the Western World, Legacy, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great and the highly acclaimed Conquistadors. The writer behind three BBC films about Shakespeare's early history plays, he was a contributor to Shakespearean Perspective (1985). Michael Wood is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.Trade ReviewWood's is an honest, well-organised account that will serve the reader well. * Independent on Sunday *Thanks to the author's gifts of story-teller, populariser and interpreter, Shakespeare's world is brought to life more vividly than in any other biography of him I have read. All the latest professional scholarship on the question on Shakespeare and Catholicism is effectively incorporated in the book, but where Wood has made genuine finds of his own is in the area of the dramatist's day-to-day life. * Sunday Telegraph *In this enthralling book Michael Wood evokes the physical and intellectual environment in which Shakespeare lived and worked with vivid and original immediacy. -- Professor Stanley Wells, Editor of The Oxford ShakespeareWood is a perceptive, entertaining and enthusiastic companion. * Sunday Times *Shakespeare emerges from the book as the master general he must have been. -- Clive James * Times Literary Supplement *
£15.29
James Clarke & Co Ltd A Time and a Place
Book SynopsisThe influence of Aldeburgh and the Suffolk Coast on the poet behind 'Peter Grimes'.Trade ReviewIt is fascinating to rediscover Crabbe - then and now. Beautifully researched, A Time and a Place takes us into the intimacy of Crabbe's life as he lived it and re-establishes him into the everyday life of all of us who love, live and work here. A triumph! Maggi Hambling, artist An insightful account of the life and psyche of George Crabbe, whose poetry inspired Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes and whose career was defined by a love-hate relationship with Aldeburgh. Anyone interested in the history of the town, or Suffolk generally, will find it fascinating. Blake Morrison, Poet, Novelist and Professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University Frances Gibb has vividly rolled back the centuries in the Suffolk landscape, bringing George Crabbe to life in the same hard streets, mud banks and sea slime that so inspired England's great pioneer poet of the poor. Peter Stothard, author of Alexandria and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement For at its heart A Time and a Place is an exercise in psychogeography, a study of Crabbe's poems that not only tethers them to the place in which they were written but emphasises the centrality of the location to their achievement. DJ Taylor, The Times, May 2022 A Time and a Place benefits greatly from Gibb's knowledge of and feeling for Aldeburgh, to which her family first came in the 1960s...Gibb's book evokes both the literal and psychological landscapes of the poet's life and work, notably those places of 'moral reckoning' to which his characters are brought...Gibb recognises that Britten has 'the bigger name, the louder voice', but her book is a useful reminder that it was Crabbe who had first claim on Aldeburgh, and that his poems provide an unsettling and enduring portrait of a time and a place and its people. Peter Parker, The Spectator, June 2022 Place is at the heart of the book, as it is central to Crabbe's poetry, and the author offers a perceptive account of his relationship to a region that both attracted him and repelled him...One is left with the impression of a complex man: a canny and sometimes ruthless operator, but someone who was also courteous, engaging and popular...her lucid, sympathetic and well-orchestrated account of Crabbe's life, which keeps looping back to Suffolk as his vital source of inspiration, will give her readers many reasons to seek him out for themselves. Susan Owens, Literary Review, Issue 510, August 2022Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Chronology Introduction A Local Habitation and a Name 1. George Crabbe's Aldeburgh California: Crabbe recalled Aldeburgh: A wild amphibious race Crabbes in East Anglia: Too obscure to possess a history Aldeburgh: That boy must be a fool Wickhambrook and Woodbridge: La! Here's our new 'prentice! Aldeburgh: The Leech Pond 2. Growing to Manhood: Love, London and Literary Success Parham: A young lady that would just suit you London: I have parted with my money, sold my wardrobe London: The hand that rescued him Aldeburgh revisited: A prophet is not without honour . 3. Domesticity and Botanising: Crabbe's Middle Years Belvoir and Stathern: Th e very happiest years in his life Parham and Glemham: A family walk through the green lanes Rendham: The final Suffolk years 4. Religion and Politics Crabbe and religion: Without a little Latin, we should have made nothing of you Crabbe and opium: His long and generally healthy life Crabbe and politics: We can do no good, or we would be among them 5. Character and Creation Aldeburgh: I hear those voices that will not be drowned Aldeburgh: Grimes on the beach Aldeburgh: Untouched by pity, unstung by remorse Crabbe and writing: What I thought I could best describe, that I have attempted Leaving Suffolk: The seat of joy, the source of pain 6. Endings and Beginnings Bath and London: I am something of a novelty Crabbe and women: Oh! For some Made-on-purpose-Creature Trowbridge: A few Sundays more Postscript Bibliography Index
£18.29
Northwestern University Press Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of
Book SynopsisArgues that Shakespeare's plays present secularization not only as a historical narrative of progress but also as a hermeneutic process that unleashes complex and often problematic transactions between sacred and secular. These transactions shape ideas about everything from pastoral government to wonder and the spatial imagination.
£33.71
Cambridge University Press Black Shakespeare
Book SynopsisIn his compelling new book Ian Smith addresses the pernicious influence of systemic whiteness on our interpretation of Shakespeare's plays. Unmissable reading for students and scholars of drama, cultural and early modern studies.Trade Review'Ian Smith's Black Shakespeare begins by asserting that lingering contemporary resistance to the evidence that people in the early modern world believed that race was real and that it mattered participates in a larger denial of the kinds of work that race performs in our own time. In a series of subtle and revelatory readings-I am thinking particularly of the dazzling chapter on Hamlet-Smith implicitly argues that learning to recognize race's subtle and extensive operations in Shakespeare can be an important first step toward our own achievement of what he calls 'racial literacy'. To see and to know, Smith believes, is to begin to be able to recognize and resist white supremacy's purchase in our field and in the culture that shapes it. Persuasively argued and deeply ethically engaged throughout, Black Shakespeare is the work of a mature scholar who believes that Shakespeare matters and who calls on us both to embrace and to question the conditions under which he has achieved his place in our world.' Joyce MacDonald, University of Kentucky'Ian Smith delivers an indisputable, learned and earth- shattering intervention into our habits and practices of reading the works of William Shakespeare. If, Smith is right that Shakespeare's plays are read, taught and interpreted on stage overwhelmingly through the lens of whiteness, then racial illiteracy informs our relationship with the Bard. To read Shakespeare rigorously, thoroughly and with intention, is to acknowledge what Smith calls our 'racial blindspots'. Smith's novel readings of Shakespeare's tragedies are unflinching as he asks us to confront what is actually before our eyes. Black Shakespeare is essential reading for all those studying, teaching and performing these works.' Farah Karim Cooper, Shakespeare's Globe and King's College London'In Black Shakespeare, Ian Smith trenchantly demonstrates how white epistemology and systemic whiteness cause readers to sanitize, distort, and elide key parts of Shakespeare's texts. Theoretically and historically grounded, Black Shakespeare also deploys dazzling acts of close reading to show exactly what a white reading practice misses or gets wrong. Throughout, Smith makes the stakes of his argument clear: readers must acquire an expanded racial literacy both to read Shakespeare well and also to become citizens fit for the demands of a democratic polity.' Jean E. Howard, Columbia University'Black Shakespeare is an important and timely study of how race affects reading and interpretation. Smith not only illuminates various functions of whiteness within Shakespeare's plays, but also demonstrates that whiteness has shaped the idea of Shakespeare in Shakespeare Studies. Beyond the brilliant insights that it offers about Shakespeare, Black Shakespeare requires literary scholars to reckon with how white supremacy is perpetuated through interpretive practices.' Dennis Britton, The University of British Columbia'Black Shakespeare is revelatory, stunning, and arresting! Crafting a disorienting tour de force, Ian Smith has written an essential book for all readers of Shakespeare that demonstrates not only how we have misread the plays, but also how we might rectify readings in the future. A requisite read!' Ayanna Thompson, Arizona State University'In an argument that is both elegant and forceful, Smith makes the obvious but heretofore underappreciated point that the act of 'reading historically' is itself saturated with a racial history that must be a subject of analysis. For putting this argument on the table, and for its convincing reappraisal of some of Shakespeare's best-known plays, Smith's study is destined to be a landmark in a field that continues to pose powerful, searching questions in the humanities.' Michael Witmore, Folger Shakespeare LibraryTable of ContentsIntroduction. Toward racial literacy; 1. The racialized reader; 2. Racial blind spots: Misreading bodies, misreading texts; 3. Antonio's 'Fair Flesh' and the property of whiteness; 4. Hamlet: Playing in the dark; 5. We are Othello; Epilogue. Forms of whiteness.
£28.49
Taylor & Francis African Landings
Book SynopsisThis book seeks to break free from Eurocentric historical perspectives of medieval-era travel through Egypt and Sinai by focusing on the testimonies of 4th to 15th-century travellers from the African continent, especially pilgrim diaries from the Arab Muslim Egyptian world.
£37.99
Cambridge University Press A History of Modern Irish Womens Literature
Book Synopsis
£37.99
Cambridge University Press Shakespeare Spectatorship and the Technologies of
Book SynopsisShakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance examines how rapid changes in performance technologies affect modes of spectatorship for early modern drama. It argues that seemingly disparate developments such as the revival of early modern architectural and lighting technologies, digital performance technologies and the hybrid medium of theatre broadcast are fundamentally related. How spectators experience performances is not only affected in medium-specific ways by particular technologies, but is also connected to the plays'' roots in early modern performance environments. Aebischer''s examples range from the use of candlelight and re-imagined early modern architecture, to set design, performance capture technologies, digital video, social media, hologram projection, biotechnologies and theatre broadcasts. This book argues that digital and analogue performance technologies alike activate modes of ethical spectatorship, requiring audiences to adopt an ethical standpoiTrade Review'This is a brilliant, timely and provocative work of criticism, and a delight to read. Pascale Aebischer is leading the conversation in this field, and she continues to blaze a trail for the rest of us. This book is exemplary performance scholarship: rigorously argued and theoretically-informed, yet written with such a readable style and attention to detail that the performances described really come alive in the mind of the reader.' Stephen Purcell, University of Warwick'… this book presents an exciting frame that could be applied to many others.' William N. West, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900Table of ContentsIntroduction. Shakespeare, spectatorship and technologies of performance; Part I. Candlelight and Architecture at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse: 1. Dominic Dromgoole's The Changeling (2015): social division and anamorphic vision; 2. Dominic Dromgoole's The Tempest (2016): labour, technology and the gender of theatrical magic; Part II. Digital Technologies and Early Modern Drama at the National Theatre and the RSC: 3. Stanislavski in the closet: Joe Hill-Gibbins' Edward II (National Theatre, 2013); 4. 'Tech-enabled' theatre at the RSC: digital performance and Gregory Doran's Tempest (RSC, 2016); Part III. 'Invisible' Technology and 'Liveness' in Digital Theatre Broadcasting: 5. Hamlet in parts: Robin Lough's RSC live cinema broadcast of Simon Godwin's Hamlet (8 June 2016); 6. Offstage dynamics and the virtual public sphere in Cheek by Jowl's live stream of Measure for Measure (2015); Concluding most obscenely: offstage technophelias.
£75.59
John Wiley & Sons Inc Studying Early Printed Books 14501800
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part 1 Overview 8 Getting Ready to Print 8 At the Press 16 Also at the Press 19 After Printing 20 The Economics of Printing 23 Part 2 Step-by-Step 26 Paper 26 Type 34 Format 42 Printing 55 Corrections and Changes 61 Illustrations 65 Binding 71 Part 3 On the Page 79 Advertisements 79 Alphabet and Abbreviations 80 Blanks 83 Dates 83 Imprint Statements 85 Edition, Impression, Issue, State, Copy 86 Initial Letters 88 Marginal Notes 90 Music 91 Pagination and Foliation 92 Preliminary Leaves 92 Press Figures 93 Printer's Devices 95 Printer's Ornaments 95 Privileges, Approbations, and Imprimaturs 96 Signature Marks 96 Title Pages 98 Volvelles and Movable Figures 100 Part 4 Looking at Books 102 Good Research Habits 103 Handling Books 104 Appearance 106 Contents 108 Page Features 111 Usage 113 Digitization 114 Part 5 The Afterlives of Books 118 Loss Rates 118 Catalog Records 120 Books in Hand 132 Books on Screen 139 Conclusion 149 Appendix 1: Further Reading 152 Appendix 2: Glossary 171 Index 180
£18.95
Taylor & Francis Ltd Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern
Book SynopsisWhile the relationships between parents and children have long been a staple of critical inquiry, bonds between siblings have received far less attention among early modern scholars. Indeed, until now, no single volume has focused specifically on relations between brothers and sisters during the early modern period, nor do many essays or monographs address the topic. The essays in Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World focus attention on this neglected area, exploring the sibling dynamics that shaped family relations from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Using an array of feminist and cultural studies approaches, prominent scholars consider sibling ties from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including art history, musicology, literary studies, and social history. By articulating some of the underlying paradigms according to which sibling relations were constructed, the collection seeks to stimulate fTrade ReviewPrize: Winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Award for a collaborative project published in 2006 'There is no biblical commandment to "love thy siblings" but there is rich and varied evidence-some of it newly brought to light in this valuable book-about how Renaissance women and men defined themselves in relation to those they called their sisters and brothers. Exploring a wide range of cultural documents, including manuscripts of uncensored letters from a Spanish nun to brothers helping her with her ambition to become a saint, crossing borders from Spain to Italy, France, Germany, and England, as well as dividing Protestants from Catholics, the essays collected in this well-edited interdisciplinary volume work together to create an original and complex picture of siblings interacting with each other. Love (including incest), competition, mutual support in activities from childbirth through musical performance to collaborative authorship: these are just a few of the topics analyzed and vividly illustrated in Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World.' Margaret Ferguson, Professor of English at the University of California-Davis ’Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh, already well-known for their volume on Maternal Measures (Ashgate, 2000), have once again assembled an interesting and stimulating cluster of essays by scholars from various disciplines... the authors have given voice to a wide spectrum of historical subjects and hence have allowed diverse forms of participation and expression to emerge. The editors should be commended for having historicized the relationships between siblings.’ Renaissance Quarterly'... an engaging book... a collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays... Ashgate's series, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World, contains some broad-reaching essay collections that expand our knowledge of gender in comparative contexts, to which this book is a welcome addition... this is an excellent book for scholars and their students.' Journal of British StudiesTable of ContentsContents: Introduction: Thicker than water: evaluating sibling relations in the early modern period, Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Divine Devotion: Making a Saint Out of a Sibling, Susan D. Laningham; Recusant sisters: English Catholic women and the bonds of learning, Kari Boyd McBride; Families, Convents, Music: The Power of Sisterhood, Craig A. Monson; 'Liebe Schwester...': Siblings, convents, and the Reformation, Merry Wiesner-Hanks. Ties That Bind: Resisting Henri IV: Catherine de Bourbon and her brother, Jane Couchman; Sister-subject/sister-queen: Elizabeth I among her siblings, Carole Levin; Mary Sidney's other brothers, Margaret P. Hannay. Drawing the Line: The Politics of Private Discourse: Familial Relations in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania, Sheila T. Cavanagh; When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte's Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro, Valeria Finucci; Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: musicians and sororal relations in later 16th-century Venice, Rebecca Edwards; The shame of siblings in David and Bethsabe, Stephen Guy-Bray; Sibling bonds and bondage in (and beyond) Shakespeare's The Tempest, Naomi J. Miller. Hand in Hand: Playing the game: sisterly relations in Sofonisba Anguissola's The Chess Game, Naomi Yavneh; 'My deare sister': sainted sisterhood in early modern England, Kathryn R. McPherson; Sisterly feelings in Cavendish and Brackley's drama, Alison Findlay; 'Thy passionately loving sister and faithfull friend': Anne Dormer's letters to her sister Lady Trumbull, Sara Mendelson and Mary O'Connor; Siblings, publications, and the transmission of memory: Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus, Almut Spalding; Thicker than blood: l'oltr'altra, Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Index.
£51.29
Cambridge University Press The Tragedy of King Lear
Book SynopsisFor this updated critical edition of King Lear, Lois Potter has written a completely new introduction, taking account of recent productions and reinterpretations of the play, with particular emphasis on its afterlife in global performance and adaptation. The edition retains the Textual Analysis of the previous editor, Jay L. Halio, shortened and with a new preface by Brian Gibbons. Professor Halio, accepting that we have two versions of equal authority, the one derived from Shakespeare''s rough drafts, the other from a manuscript used in the playhouses during the seventeenth century, chooses the Folio as the text for this edition. He explains the differences between the two versions and alerts the reader to the rival claims of the quarto by means of a sampling of parallel passages in the Introduction and by an appendix which contains annotated passages unique to the quarto.Trade Review'Only Lois Potter is capable of writing an introduction like this: she combines her vast experience of performance history with her unparalleled ability to read plays dramaturgically. As a result the introduction is as penetratingly astute on theme and structure as it is stimulating and eye-opening about theatre. No mere performance history, the introduction uses moments from production choices across the centuries to illustrate precise critical points, from the play's tragic crises to its general tone, from individual character to political atmosphere. Using her encyclopaedic knowledge of drama in performance, Lois Potter provides a brilliant hands-on guide to the play and an effortless introduction to theatre history.' Professor Laurie Maguire, University of Oxford'Lois Potter combines her unparalleled knowledge of Shakespeare in theatrical performance and her scrupulously scholarly attention to detail in the NCS King Lear. Her new introduction provides up-to-the-minute accounts of the play in performance while also offering a clear historical perspective. Potter describes the way productions of King Lear have changed over the course of the centuries and especially how current efforts to create more diverse theatrical casts have valuably added further dimension to the key issues of the play. Invaluably too, she provides an account of recent developments both critical, imaginative, and political, including eco-criticism and feminist criticism, re-writings of Shakespeare, as well as Lear in the global context. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the play.' Dympna C. Callaghan, University Professor and William L. Safire Professor in Modern Letters, Syracuse University'The updated New Cambridge critical edition of The Tragedy of King Lear provides a sensitive analysis of the afterlife of the play in a brand-new Introduction written by Lois Potter. There is … plenty in this Introduction to inspire new work on Lear … Potter's Introduction brings the edition and the play into the twenty-first century, and Gibbons' preface to Halio's 'Textual Analysis' helps to translate an edition ideal for graduate students and scholars of the play into an edition that will also appeal to readers approaching textual criticism for the first time.' Emma Depledge, Shakespeare SurveyTable of ContentsIntroduction; Textual Analysis; Preface by Brian Gibbons; Textual Analysis, Part 1; A Note on the Text; List of Characters; The Play; Textual Analysis, Part 2; Appendix: Passages Unique to the First Quarto; Reading List.
£12.29
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Queer Shakespeare
Book SynopsisNow available in paperback, Queer Shakespeare: Desire and Sexuality draws together 13 essays, which offer a major reassessment of the criticism of desire, body and sexuality in Shakespeare's drama and poetry. Bringing together some of the most prominent critics working at the intersection of Shakespeare criticism and queer theory, this collection demonstrates the vibrancy of queer Shakespeare studies. Taken together, these essays explore embodiment, desire, sexuality and gender as key objects of analyses, producing concepts and ideas that draw critical energy from focused studies of time, language and nature. The Afterword extends these inquiries by linking the Anthropocene and queer ecology with Shakespeare criticism. Works from Shakespeare's entire canon feature in essays which explore topics like glass, love, antitheatrical homophobia, size, narrative, sound, female same-sex desire and Petrarchism, weather, usury and sodomy, male femininity and male-to-female crossdressing, cTrade ReviewQueer Shakespeare engages with crucial yet subversive queerness throughout Shakespearean poetry and performance. Unifying past scholarship with vital queer theory, Stanivukovic’s collection reveals necessary insights into our evolving relationship with Shakespeare. -- Peter Kuling, University of Ottawa, CanadaTable of ContentsIntroduction: ‘Queer Shakespeare: Desire and Sexuality’, by Goran Stanivukovic, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada 1.‘Which is worthiest love’ in Two Gentlemen of Verona?, by David L. Orvis, Appalachan State University, USA 2. ‘Glass: The Sonnets’ Desiring Object’, by John Garrison, Carroll University USA 3. ‘The Sport of Asses: A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, by Kirk Quinsland, Fordham University, USA 4. ‘As You Like It or What You Will: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Beccadelli’s Hermaphroditus’, by Ian F. Moulton, Arizona State University, USA 5. ‘The Queer Language of Size in Love’s Labour’s Lost’, by Valerie Billing, Knox College, USA 6. ‘Locating Queerness in Cymbeline’, by Stephen Guy-Bray, University of British Columbia, Canada 7. ‘Desiring H: Much Ado About Nothing and the Sound of Women’s Desire’, by Holly Dugan, George Washington University, USA 8. ‘“Two lips, indifferent red:’ Queer Styles in Twelfth Night’, by Goran Stanivukovic, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada 9. ‘Queer Nature, or the Weather in Macbeth’, by Christine Varnado, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA 10. ‘Strange Insertions in The Merchant of Venice’, by Eliza Greenstadt, Portland State University, USA 11. ‘Male Femininity and Male-to-Female Crossdressing in Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems,’ by Simone Chess, Wayne State University, USA 12. ‘Held in Common: Romeo and Juliet and The Promiscuous Seductions of Plague’, by Kathryn Schwarz, Vanderbilt University, USA 13. ‘Antisocial Procreation in Measure for Measure’, by Melissa E. Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania, USA Afterword by Vin Nardizzi, University of British Columbia, Canada
£27.54
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC As You Like It Language and Writing
Book SynopsisAs You Like It: Language and Writing explores one of Shakespeare's best-known comedies. It considers the literary and theatrical contexts in which Shakespeare was writing; examines, in detail, the different forms of language used in the play and considers ways in which language and meaning have changed over time, and are affected by performance. Each chapter contains a ''Writing matters'' section which provides suggestions for activities that can further enhance a student's understanding of the play. This informative guide to Shakespeare''s popular comedy equips students with the critical skills to analyze its language, structure and themes and to expand and enrich their own responses to the play.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION DATING THE PLAY THE FIRST FOLIO AND ITS COPY THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE BLANK VERSE DRAMA THE CONVENTIONS OF PROSE A CLASSICAL EDUCATION 1) LANGUAGE IN CONTEXT GENRE FESTIVE COMEDY PASTORAL SOURCE AND SETTING CHARACTERS METATHEATRE MASQUE WRITING MATTERS 2) LANGUAGE: FORMS AND USES VERSE AND PROSE PERSONAL PRONOUNS ASIDES AND SOLILOQUIES RHETORIC WRITING MATTERS 3 LANGUAGE OVER TIME ISSUES OF INTERPRETATION CONTEMPORARY REFERENCES, CHANGING MEANINGS AND ARCHAIC LANGUAGE INTERPRETATION OF LANGUAGE ON THE MODERN STAGE AS YOU LIKE IT ON FILM: WHERE PICTURES DO THE WORK WRITING MATTERS 4) PERFORMING THE LANGUAGE PERFORMING METRE PERFORMING RHETORIC PERFORMING ‘YOU’ AND ‘THOU’ WRITING MATTERS Bibliography
£17.09
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Shakespeare and Textual Theory
Book SynopsisThere is no Shakespeare without text. Yet readers often do not realize that the words in the book they hold, like the dialogue they hear from the stage, has been revised, augmented and emended since Shakespeare's lifetime. An essential resource for the history of Shakespeare on the page, Shakespeare and Textual Theory traces the explanatory underpinnings of these changes through the centuries. After providing an introduction to early modern printing practices, Suzanne Gossett describes the original quartos and folios as well as the first collected editions. Subsequent sections summarize the work of the New Bibliographers' and the radical challenge to their technical analysis posed by poststructuralist theory, which undermined the presumed stability of author and text. Shakespeare and Textual Theory presents a balanced view of the current theoretical debates, which include the nature of the surviving texts we call Shakespeare's; the relationship of the author ShTable of ContentsSeries Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Part One: Textual Studies Before ‘Theory’ 1 Shakespeare’s Texts From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century The progress of an early modern play The First Folio Successive Folios Early editions Part Two: Twentieth-Century Theories 2 The New Bibliography 3 The Advent of Poststructuralism 4 Textual and Other Theories Part Three: Current Debates 5 Authorship, Agency, and Intentionality 6 Attribution and Collaboration External evidence Internal evidence Enlarging the canon Theoretical implications 7 The (In)Stability of the Text What if the printer went to lunch? Why are some texts bad? Why – and how and when – do some texts change? 8 Editing and Unediting Editing Shakespeare Editing collaborations Unediting Shakespeare Deciding on intervention 9 Book History and the Text Shakespeare as literary dramatist The creation of ‘Shakespeare’ through books Readers, commonplacers and collectors Women and Shakespeare books Two material texts 10 Performance and the Text Traces of early performance Editing for performance 11 Textual Theories and Difficult Cases: Hamlet and Pericles Shakespeare’s texts and early editions Enter the New Bibliography The challenge of post-structuralism, or authorship, authority, and intention Textual and other theories Attribution and collaboration Printing unstable texts Editing and unediting Book history and the text Performance and the text Coda: The Immaterial Text 12 Textual Studies After the Digital Turn References Index
£21.84
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Springboard Shakespeare King Lear
Book SynopsisKing Lear is a towering drama of personal and national tragedy. This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students. Springboard Shakespeare: King Lear has a three-part structure: whether you''re watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying King Lear.Trade ReviewHaving Crystal as a companion through the stickier parts of Hamlet and Macbeth is like going to the theatre with an intelligent friend. * The Independent *How different it might have been if we’d had Ben Crystal’s sparky little books to introduce us. My Shakespearean epiphany would have come much sooner...[the books] lead newcomers into the play in question in a gentle, upbeat, unpretentious way. Fresh and slim, they’re about as far as could be from dusty, dry study guides relating to school exams...much better than the average theatre programme...I’d like to see them on sale in theatre bookshops, and/or wherever there’s a production of one of these plays...I’d also recommend them for classroom use. -- Susan Elkin * The Independent on Sunday *A highly worthwhile series, which should prove to be valuable for directors, actors and students…This formula really works. As an experiment, your dedicated reviewer tried out Macbeth in preparation for and following on from the Eve Best production of the Globe. The experience was definitely improved, with some of the tips on words and language proving especially helpful and enlightening… These really are excellent little guides that will prove informative to almost anybody with an interest in the subject. -- Philip Fisher * British Theatre Guide *
£13.93
Spark Antony Cleopatra
Book SynopsisNo Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Antony and Cleopatra on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right.
£7.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Shakespearean Tragedy
Book SynopsisThis ground-breaking book reveals the prophetic, revolutionary vision that drives Shakespeare's tragedies, tracing its unbroken development from its beginnings in the Henry VI plays and Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, right through to his last, Coriolanus. The four full-length studies at the heart of the book focus in depth on Shakespeare's four greatest tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespearean Tragedy engages with each of these titanic masterpieces as a singular, complete work of dramatic art with its own distinctive concerns and critical challenges, but with the same unmistakably Shakespearean tragic vision at its core. Through compelling new readings of the plays, grounded in close analysis of their language and form, Kiernan Ryan shows how Shakespeare dramatizes the tragic realities of his world from the standpoint of the transfigured future that our world still awaits.Trade ReviewKiernan Ryan approaches Shakespearean tragedy like a visitor from the future, to reveal how these centuries-old plays still ‘dream on things to come’ through the politics of time. He shows how the lovers are crossed by stars dead for millennia; and why the light that breaks in their day is a dawn that hasn’t yet arrived. But we are the future Hamlet awaits, in Ryan’s time frame; Cordelia’s ‘smiles and tears’ are our cues for ‘a better way’. So, this is truly a world turned upside-down, where the hero counts the ‘hours, days, years’ before ‘desolation begins to make a better life’. In short, Shakespearean Tragedy gives us a master-class in ‘the revolution of the times’. * Richard Wilson, Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Kingston University, UK *Kiernan Ryan has done more than anyone else to bring to light what he calls, in this splendid and beautifully written book, the “mutinous utopian logic” of Shakespeare’s drama—to show us that, as Shakespeare said, “Thought is free”, able to peer beyond a cabined, cribbed, confined present to an emancipated, more human, future. Shakespearean Tragedy is not only a masterwork of subtle, scrupulous, attentive criticism, written in admirably straightforward prose, it is also a major contribution to a leftist politics characterized above all by universalism and solidarity. Here is Shakespeare criticism for the 99%! * Peter Holbrook, Professor of English Literature, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia *This brilliantly written and consistently illuminating book presents a wholly original perspective on every one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and makes a compelling case for their importance now. With a refreshing range of reference across the breadth of the critical tradition, not to mention the whole scope of theory and philosophy, it thrillingly opens our ears to Shakespeare as ‘the prophetic soul of the wide world’. Thanks to Ryan, the most famous characters in literature come close and confess that they are haunted by their own fulfilled selves in the transfigured future to which Shakespeare is ushering us, even as they fall prey to their times. * Ewan Fernie, Chair and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK *Ryan’s chapters on Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, and King Lear, incomparable in their coverage, depth and reasonableness, should become obligatory reading for anyone interested in those plays … Shakespearean Tragedy is of incalculable value. * Sederi Yearbook *Table of ContentsPreface PART I 1 The Birth of Shakespearean Tragedy: 2 & 3 Henry VI The Quondam King The Wild Morisco The Upstart Crow The Devil’s Butcher PART II 2 Titus Andronicus: A Sympathy of Woe Prototypes and Precursors A Wilderness of Tigers This Fearful Slumber 3 Romeo and Juliet: Kissing by the Book Strange Love Grown Bold The Prison-House of Language Empowering the Audience 4 Julius Caesar: The Common Good An Icy Anatomy Scorning the Base Degrees The Foremost Man of All the World PART III 5 Hamlet: A Kind of Fighting The Stamp of One Defect Seeing Doubles That Within Which Passes Show Things Rank and Gross in Nature The Whips and Scorns of Time The Strong Confluence of Contending Forces A King of Infinite Space The Prophetic Soul of the Wide World 6 Othello: Thereby Hangs a Tail Expectation in Preference to Surprise Sinking Below Shakespeare True Colours The Green-Eyed Monster Who Hath Done This Deed? The Tragedy of the Handkerchief If Wives Do Fall Motiveless Malignity and the Curse of Service What You Know, You Know A Pageant to Keep Us in False Gaze 7 King Lear: Shakespeare’s Leviathan A Play Fit for a King Echoes and Anticipations (i) Echoes and Anticipations (ii) A Better Where to Find The Whoreson and the Plague of Custom The Fool and the King The Art of Known and Feeling Sorrows The King and the Beggar So Distribution Should Undo Excess A Whole Dead World Galloping Over the Living Earth 8 Macbeth: The Habit of Another Nature Embracing the Butcher Supernatural Soliciting Terrestrial Tragedy The Language of Complicity Vaster Powers Without: Mirroring Macbeth So Much More the Man Dispossession and Disavowal Pity, Like a Naked New-Born Babe Blood Will Have Blood Ere Humane Stature Purged the Gentle Weal PART IV9 Antony and Cleopatra: Making Defect Perfection Tragedy Travestied The Nobleness of Life Past the Size of Dreaming: Utopian Realism A Lass Unparalleled 10 Coriolanus: A World Elsewhere Antecedents and Affinities An Inventory to Particularize Their Abundance To Unbuild the City and to Lay All Flat A Kind of Nothing Works Cited Index
£71.25
