Classic and pre-20th century plays

Why should we bother with Shakespeare today?

From the apparently simple adaptation of a text into film, theatre or a new literary work, to the more complex appropriation of style or meaning, it is arguable that all texts are somehow connected to a network of existing texts and art forms.

The year is 1402, and King Henry IV sits uneasily on the throne that he wrested from his predecessor, Richard II.

Despite the volume of work Shakespeare produced, surprisingly few of his plays directly concern money and the economic mindset.

This edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona offers a complete consideration of all aspects of the text.

The book, first published in 1988, examines the role of magic in Elizabethan and Shakespearean theatre.

Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the international contributors to Hamlet: New Critical Essays contribute major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of Hamlet.

Disregard for messages from the oracles and gods doesn't turn out well for characters in Greek stories, and Oedipus is no exception.

"e;Shakespeares works do not embody any doctrine or set of beliefs, as his critics have long been tempted to suggest, but they do stage encounters with certain kinds of thinking ethical, political, epistemological, even metaphysical that still concern us nowadays.

Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare's England offers a new approach to evaluating the psychological 'loss' of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England by illustrating how, in the wake of Mary's demotion, re-inscriptions of her roles and meanings only proliferated, seizing hold of national imagination and resulting in new configurations of masculinity.

This volume presents a contrastive study of the overlapping careers of Shakespeare and Caravaggio through the comparison of their strikingly similar conventional belief in symbol and the centrality of the subject, only to gradually open it up in an exaltation of multiplicity and the "e;indistinct regard"e; (Othello).

Impossible bequests of the soul; an outlawed younger son who rises to become justice of the king's forests; the artificially-preserved corpse of the heir to an empire; a medieval clerk kept awake at night by fears of falling; a seventeenth-century noblewoman who commissions copies upon copies of her genealogy; Elizabethan efforts to eradicate Irish customs of succession; thoughts of the legacy of sin bequeathed to mankind by our first parents, Adam and Eve.

Uncovers the importance of popular literature in promoting and shaping medieval nostalgia in early modern England.

This book is a study of four of Shakespeare's major tragedies - "e;Hamlet"e;, "e;Othello"e;, "e;King Lear"e; and "e;Macbeth"e;.

This text traces the changing theatrical and cultural identity of the History plays in the context of postwar social and political conflict, crisis and change.

Theatre Design involves everything seen on stage: not only scenery but costumes, wigs, makeup, properties, lighting, sound, even the shape and material of the stage itself.

This 1991 book takes account of discoveries concerning Shakespeare''s early career, paying particular attention to theatrical history.

This eye-opening study draws attention to the largely neglected form of the early modern prologue.

Performing the work of William Shakespeare can be daunting to new actors.

Few playwrights have been more slandered, abused or honoured in performance than William Shakespeare.

This edition provides a detailed history of the play in production, both on stage and on screen.

Impossible bequests of the soul; an outlawed younger son who rises to become justice of the king's forests; the artificially-preserved corpse of the heir to an empire; a medieval clerk kept awake at night by fears of falling; a seventeenth-century noblewoman who commissions copies upon copies of her genealogy; Elizabethan efforts to eradicate Irish customs of succession; thoughts of the legacy of sin bequeathed to mankind by our first parents, Adam and Eve.

Originally published in 1986.

A remarkable resurgence of interest has taken place over recent years in a biographical approach to the work of early modern poets and dramatists, in particular to the plays and poems of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson.

First published in 1951.

Shakespeare in the Present is a stunning collection of essays by Terence Hawkes, which engage with, explain, and explore 'presentism'.

A clear introduction to the idea of the canon, exploring the process by which certain works, and not others, receive high cultural status.

A revised edition of this intriguing and complex play, updated to cover recent critical thinking and stage history.

The second edition of Shakespeare''s most popular comedy with an updated introduction and reading list.

This selection comprises: "e;THE ADMIRABLE BASHVILLE"e; "e;HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND"e; "e;PASSION, POISON AND PETRIFACTION"e; "e;THE GLIMPSE OF REALITY"e; "e;THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS"e; "e;OVERRULED"e; "e;THE MUSIC-CURE"e; "e;GREAT CATHERINE"e; "e;THE INCA OF PERUSALEM"e; "e;O'FLAHERTY V.

Floating daggers, enchanted handkerchiefs, supernatural storms, and moving statues have tantalized Shakespeare's readers and audiences for centuries.

Second edition featuring a new section by Adam Hansen on recent interpretations of Shakespeare''s play.

This is a collection of original essays about how Shakespeare and how his plays are increasingly being used as a means of furthering literacy, language arts, creative and dramatic learning for children in and out of the classroom.

First published in 1958.

Described as one of Shakespeare's most intriguing plays, All's Well That Ends Well has only recently begun to receive the critical attention it deserves.

Shakespeare in the Present is a stunning collection of essays by Terence Hawkes, which engage with, explain, and explore 'presentism'.

Originally published in 1981.

This collection offers readers a timely encounter with the historical experience of people adapting to a pandemic emergency and the corresponding narrative representation of that crisis, as early modern writers transformed the plague into literature.

Repositioning Shakespeare offers an original assessment of a broad range of texts and cultural events that appropriate Shakespeare.

This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's AComedy of Errors.

Paying special attention to Sidney's Arcadia, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare's romances, this study engages in sustained examination of chiasmus in early modern English literature.

In Imaginary Performances in Shakespeare, visionary modernist theatre director Aureliu Manea analyses the theatrical possibilities of Shakespeare.

Offering the first sustained and comprehensive scholarly consideration of the dramatic potential of the blazon, this volume complicates what has become a standard reading of the Petrarchan convention of dismembering the beloved through poetic description.

During the Apartheid years in South Africa, a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare was smuggled around the prison on Robben Island.

Originally published in 1995.

This volume investigates the early modern understanding of twinship through new readings of plays, informed by discussions of twins appearing in such literature as anatomy tracts, midwifery manuals, monstrous birth broadsides, and chapbooks.

Engaging with fiction and history-and reading both genres as texts permeated with early modern anxieties, desires, and apprehensions-this collection scrutinizes the historical intersection of early modern European superstitions and English stage literature.

There has never been a retrospective on Christopher Marlowe as comprehensive, complete and up-to-date in appraising the Marlovian landscape.