Rarely does a scholar single-handedly point Shakespeare study in a new direction. But in the 1950s, Marvin Rosenberg led the way to a wider perspective of the poet-playwright's genius. The essays in this collection, which span Rosenberg's entire career, reflect the remarkable diversity of the scholar's pursuit of his vision.
The true story of a self-taught sleuth's quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the world's most famous plays, taking readers inside the vibrant era of Elizabethan England as well as the contemporary scene of Shakespeare scholars and obsessives. What if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare . . . but someone else wrote him first? Acclaimed author of The Map Thief, Michael Blanding presents the twinning narratives of renegade scholar Dennis McCarthy and Elizabethan courtier Sir Thomas North. Unlike those who believe someone else secretly wrote Shakespeare, McCarthy argues that Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before. In Shakespeare's Shadow alternates between the enigmatic life of North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theater, and academic outsider McCarthy's attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a captivating drama, upending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his "singular genius." Winner of the 2021 International Book Award in Narrative Non-Fiction
"This book offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the liberal arts as catalysts for precision, invention, and empathy in today's world. The author, a professor of Shakespeare studies at a liberal arts college and a parent of school-age children, argues that high-stakes testing and a culture of assessment have altered how and what students are taught, as courses across the arts, humanities, and sciences increasingly are set aside to make room for joyless, mechanical reading and math instruction. Students have been robbed of a complete education, their imaginations stunted by this myopic focus on bare literacy and numeracy. Education is about thinking, Newstok argues, rather than the mastery of a set of rigidly defined skills, and the seemingly rigid pedagogy of the English Renaissance produced some of the most compelling and influential examples of liberated thinking. Each of the fourteen chapters explores an essential element of Shakespeare's world and work, aligns it with the ideas of other thinkers and writers in modern times, and suggests opportunities for further reading. Chapters on craft, technology, attention, freedom, and related topics combine past and present ideas about education to build a case for the value of the past, the pleasure of thinking, and the limitations of modern educational practices and prejudices"--
"In his analysis, Marvin Rosenberg sets out to steer a path between the "extremes" of Rome and Egypt and all they stand for: and to explore the relentless "to and back" confrontation of their different sets of values which leads ultimately to destruction."
Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948 Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of the previous year's textual and critical studies and of major British performances. The books are illustrated with a variety of Shakespearean images and production photographs. The current editor of Survey is Peter Holland. The first eighteen volumes were edited by Allardyce Nicoll, numbers 19-33 by Kenneth Muir and numbers 34-52 by Stanley Wells. The virtues of accessible scholarship and a keen interest in performance, from Shakespeare's time to our own, have characterised the journal from the start. Now backnumbers are gradually being reissued in paperback.
A history of the English language traces its evolution from a Germanic dialect around 500 A.D. to its modern form, noting the influence of such groups and individuals as early Anglo-Saxon tribes, Alfred the Great, and William Shakespeare.
