Exile defines the Shakespearean canon, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen . This book traces the influences on the drama of exile, examining the legal context of banishment (pursued against Catholics, gypsies and vagabonds) in early modern England; the self-consciousness of exile as an amatory trope; and the discourses by which exile could be reshaped into comedy or tragedy. Across genres, Shakespeare's plays reveal a fascination with exile as the source of linguistic crisis, shaped by the utterance of that word 'Banished'.
First published in 1980. This collection of essays by the first General Editor of the New Arden Shakespeare brings together the best of Ellis-Fermor's Shespearean criticism, in addition to outstanding essays on Coriolanus and Troilus and Cressida. Collected and edited by Kenneth Muir, the book is prefaced by an appreciation of Ellis-Fermor's work.
Oxford Shakespeare Topics provides students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide to further reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. The history of the genres, or kinds, of drama is one of contradictory traditions and complex cultural assumptions. The divisions established by the original edition of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (the First Folio, 1623) give shape to whole curricula; but, as Lawrence Danson reminds us in this lively book, there is nothing inevitable, and much unsatisfying, about that tripartite scheme. Yet students of Shakespeare cannot avoid thinking about questions of genre; often they are the unspoken reason why classrooms full of smart people fail to agree on basic interpretative issues. Danson's guide to the kinds of Shakespearian drama provides an accessible account of genre-theory in Shakespeare's day, an overview of the genres on the Elizabethan stage, and a provocative look at the full range of Shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies.
Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink
Most of Shakespeare’s tragedies have a family drama at their heart. This book brings these relationships to life, offering a radical new perspective on the tragic heroes and their dilemmas. Family Dramas: Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeare's Tragedies focusses on the interactions and dialogues between people on stage, linking their intimate emotional worlds to wider social and political contexts. Since family relationships absorb and enact social ideologies, their conflicts often expose the conflicts that all ideologies contain. The complexities, contradictions and ambiguities of Shakespeare’s portrayals of individuals and their relationships are brought to life, while wider power structures and social discourses are shown to reach into the heart of intimate relationships and personal identity. Surveying relevant literature from Shakespeare studies, the book introduces the ideas behind the family systems approach to literary criticism. Explorations of gender relationships feature particularly strongly in the analysis since it is within gender that intimacy and power most compellingly intersect and frequently collide. For Shakespeare lovers and psychotherapists alike, this application of systemic theory opens a new perspective on familiar literary territory.
This volume presents for the first time in English a selection of seminal studies, originally published in Italian, on the dramatic potential of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, providing a crucial contribution to a recently revived debate on their inherent dramatic dimension. These studies long antedate the recent attention internationally dedicated to the formal and semiotic functions of the communicative structure of the sonnets, providing the basis for a new perception of their peculiar capacity to perform speech acts within dramatically defined situations. The first, longest, section, is dedicated to a discussion of the so-called ‘Sonnets of Immortality’ where the poet struggles with Time over the future of the fair youth, providing the argumentative premise upon which issues of mortality and loss, running through the whole collection, are defined in the agonistic terms of human defiance of Time’s destructive power. There follow two essays devoted to Sonnets 33 and 29, and to the last sonnets for the young friend, respectively. Here the poet abandons the battlefield of human mortality and engages with the tensions and conflicts of affection and moral duty against the backdrop of an intrinsically conflicting world model, showing a medieval symbolic universe traversed by incipient, yet radical, sceptical stances. These poems interlace fictionality and biography, constructing a lyrical drama where the I/poet features as an extraordinarily artificial, yet all too real, voice.
Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.
To begin with, Shakespeare had a complete grammar school education, and Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes were assigned reading!! This book presents voluminous, striking, unmediated textual correspondences between the Greek and Shakespearean plays, and illuminating historical background. Not only should this prove the Shakespeare-Greek Drama connection, but that William Shakespeare became “Shakespeare” because of his mastery of the ancient Greek treasury of Drama. 3. “Pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums” Many of us associate Lady Macbeth’s special temper with some of the most blood-curdling lines in literature: I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me; I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this. Shakespeare’s precise action image appears in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, from verses spoken by Clytemnestra. She says to Agamemnon: It was not of my own free will but by force that Thou didst take and wed me, after slaying Tantalus, My former husband, and dashing my babe on the ground alive, When thou hadst torn him from my breast with brutal violence. The derivation of Lady Macbeth’s dashing image cannot be in doubt.
