Dating Shakespeare's Plays

Dating Shakespeare's Plays PDF Author: Kevin Gilvary
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781898594864
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description

Dating Shakespeare's Plays

Dating Shakespeare's Plays PDF Author: Kevin Gilvary
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781898594864
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 508

Get Book Here

Book Description


Shakespeare on Love and Lust

Shakespeare on Love and Lust PDF Author: Maurice Charney
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231500068
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The complex and sometimes contradictory expressions of love in Shakespeare's works—ranging from the serious to the absurd and back again—arise primarily from his dramatic and theatrical flair rather than from a unified philosophy of love. Untangling his witty, bawdy (and ambiguous) treatment of love, sex, and desire requires a sharp eye and a steady hand. In Shakespeare on Love and Lust, noted scholar Maurice Charney delves deeply into Shakespeare's rhetorical and thematic development of this largest of subjects to reveal what makes his plays and poems resonate with contemporary audiences. The paradigmatic star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet, the comic confusions of couples wandering through the wood in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello's tragic jealousy, the homoerotic ways Shakespeare played with cross-dressing on the Elizabethan stage—Charney explores the world in which Shakespeare lived, and how it is reflected and transformed in the one he created. While focusing primarily on desire between young lovers, Charney also explores themes of love in marriage (Brutus and Portia) and in same-sex pairings (Antonio and Sebastian). Against the conventions of Renaissance literature, Shakespeare qualified the Platonic view that true love transcends the physical. Instead, as Charney demonstrates, love in Shakespeare's work is almost always sexual as well as spiritual, and the full range of desire's dramatic possibilities is displayed. Shakespeare on Love and Lust begins by considering the ways in which Shakespeare drew upon and satirized the conventions of Petrarchan Renaissance love poetry in plays like Romeo and Juliet, then explores how courtship is woven into the basic plot formula of the comedies. Next, Charney examines love in the tragedies and the enemies of love (Iago, for example). Later chapters cover the gender complications in such plays as Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew as well as the homoerotic themes woven into many of the poems and plays. Charney concludes with a lively discussion of paradoxes and ambivalences about love expressed by Shakespeare's word play and sexual innuendoes.

Antedating Shakespeare's Poems and Plays

Antedating Shakespeare's Poems and Plays PDF Author: Penny McCarthy
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036410048
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
The academic community treats the chronology of Shakespeare’s works as settled. He supposedly served an apprenticeship collaborating on plays in the 1580s, wrote two great poems in the early 90s, three plays a year from the mid-90s, some problem plays around the turn of the century, then his greatest tragedies, and finally some “romances” late in his career. This investigation highlights the flaws in the consensus view: over-reliance on precarious stylometrics, dubious identification of topical relevance, and unfounded conviction that composition preceded publication, performance, or first mention by only a short interval. Concentrating on his poems and six of his plays, the study ascribes parallels in others’ literary works to their authors’ imitation or parodying of Shakespeare, not vice versa. The importance of patronage circles rather than London theatre companies to writers, players, and printers is spelled out. The conclusion is that Shakespeare’s works must be radically antedated.

King Lear

King Lear PDF Author: Jeffrey Kahan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135973652
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
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

The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus

The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus PDF Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
"The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus" by William Shakespeare is a gripping and intense drama that explores themes of revenge, betrayal, and the destructive consequences of violence. Set in ancient Rome, the play follows the tragic downfall of the noble general Titus Andronicus and his family as they become embroiled in a cycle of vengeance and bloodshed. At the heart of the story is the brutal conflict between Titus Andronicus and Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose sons are executed by Titus as retribution for their crimes. In retaliation, Tamora and her lover, Aaron the Moor, orchestrate a series of heinous acts of revenge against Titus and his family, plunging them into a spiral of madness and despair. As the body count rises and the atrocities escalate, Titus is consumed by grief and rage, leading to a climactic showdown that culminates in a shocking and tragic conclusion. Along the way, Shakespeare explores themes of honor, justice, and the nature of humanity, offering a searing indictment of the cycle of violence and the capacity for cruelty that lies within us all.

Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays

Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays PDF Author: Naseeb Shaheen
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874136777
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 896

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Book Description
Analyzes the biblical references that Shakespeare makes in his plays, surveying the different English Bibles available to Shakespeare, and pointing out which of these he referred to most often (the King James version only appeared near the end of his career). Also examines biblical references found in literary source material used by Shakespeare to determine whether he used or adapted these or added others from his own memory; and what these allusions would have meant to audiences of the time.--From publisher description.

How to Read a Shakespeare Play

How to Read a Shakespeare Play PDF Author: David Bevington
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Designed for readers who want to know how to go about reading Shakespeare's works for pleasure, this work offers readings of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Henry IV Part I', 'Hamlet', 'King Lear' and 'The Tempest'. It also talks in theatrical terms about producing the plays on stage or screen.

This Is Shakespeare

This Is Shakespeare PDF Author: Emma Smith
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1524748552
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
An electrifying new study that investigates the challenges of the Bard’s inconsistencies and flaws, and focuses on revealing—not resolving—the ambiguities of the plays and their changing topicality A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn’t tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith—an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer—takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.

William Shakespeare × Chris Ofili: Othello

William Shakespeare × Chris Ofili: Othello PDF Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
ISBN: 1644230224
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Othello remains one of Shakespeare's most contemporary and moving plays, with its emphasis on race, revenge, murder, and lost love. Chris Ofili’s new edition highlight’s the tragedy of Othello’s plight in ways no other volume of this play has. In twelve etchings Ofili has produced to illustrate this play, Othello is depicted with tears in his eyes, which flow below various scenes visualized in his forehead. Ofili asks us to see in Othello the great injustices that still plague the world today. These images add feeling to Shakespeare’s words, and together they form their own hybrid object—something between a book and a visual retelling of the tragedy. With a foreword by the renowned critic Fred Moten, this edition is the first of its kind and puts Othello’s blackness and interiority front and center, forcing us to confront the complex world that ultimately dooms him. The first play in the Seeing Shakespeare Series, Othello is illustrated by English contemporary artist Chris Ofili. Future titles in the series include A Midsummer Night’s Dream illustrated by Marcel Dzama and The Merchant of Venice with images by Jordan Wolfson.

The Life of King Henry the Fifth

The Life of King Henry the Fifth PDF Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description