Author: David Lucking
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039112265
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book comprises ten essays on Shakespearean drama, the majority of which focus on the problem of language and more particularly on issues pertaining to names and their meanings. Four of these essays deal specifically with Romeo and Juliet, and examine the work in different sets of terms: as a reply to the aspersions against Shakespeare contained in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, as a representative site for a kind of archaeology of meaning, as an experiment in the poetics of identity, and as a meditation on the interrelation between rival conceptions of time. Other works subjected to extended analyses in independent essays are Richard II, Julius Caesar and Macbeth, all of which are interpreted as tragedies of language in which the paradoxes inherent in names and naming are enacted in the personal dilemmas of the protagonists. The final two essays in the volume, comparative rather than exegetical in approach, explore the intricate web of allusion linking The Tempest with Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Jonson's The Alchemist, and consider the contribution that all three plays make to the Renaissance exploration of the role played by art and knowledge in human life.

Author: Margo Anderson
Publisher: Untreed Reads
ISBN: 1611871786
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 667

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Book Description
The debate over the true author of the Shakespeare canon has raged for centuries. Astonishingly little evidence supports the traditional belief that Will Shakespeare, the actor and businessman from Stratford-upon-Avon, was the author. Legendary figures such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Sigmund Freud have all expressed grave doubts that an uneducated man who apparently owned no books and never left England wrote plays and poems that consistently reflect a learned and well-traveled insider's perspective on royal courts and the ancient feudal nobility. Recent scholarship has turned to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford-an Elizabethan court playwright known to have written in secret and who had ample means, motive and opportunity to in fact have assumed the "Shakespeare" disguise. "Shakespeare" by Another Name is the literary biography of Edward de Vere as "Shakespeare." This groundbreaking book tells the story of de Vere's action-packed life-as Renaissance man, spendthrift, courtier, wit, student, scoundrel, patron, military adventurer, and, above all, prolific ghostwriter-finding in it the background material for all of The Bard's works. Biographer Mark Anderson incorporates a wealth of new evidence, including de Vere's personal copy of the Bible (in which de Vere underlines scores of passages that are also prominent Shakespearean biblical references).

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

Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Author: David Rhys Williams
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806530154
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Who was William Shakespeare? Many scholars have speculated over the mystery of Shakespeare's identity. Was he really just a man--a poet, playwright, and favorite of the Queen? Was he a collective of writers creating the lasting works of art under this pen name? Or was he someone else entirely? The discussion of Shakespeare's true identity remains a topic of debate to this day, and scholars have claimed again and again that the famous bard was simply a pen name. But for whom? Author David Rhys Williams weighs in with his controversial book Shakespeare Thy Name is Marlowe. Rhys Williams summarizes the evidence and arguments that have led many contemporary scholars of the Elizabethan period to the conclusion that the man known as William Shakespeare was none other than Christopher Marlowe. One of the highlights of Rhys Williams's study is his explanation of how the charge of heresy that was leveled against Marlowe in 1593 probably led to his appropriation of the pseudonym "William Shakespeare" as a protective device--one which permitted him to escape death at the stake and to continue the writing of poems and plays. Williams consults multiple sources and Marlovian scholars on the subject, and comes to his shocking conclusion: that Shakespeare's friend and contemporary, the poet and dramatist Christopher Marlowe, may have written Shakespeare's tremendous and far more famous oeuvre. Discover the truth for yourself in this probing and thorough essay. David Rhys Williams, in addition to being a Marlovian scholar, was an American Congregational and Unitarian minister. He published widely on religion, theism, and nonviolence, including three books, World Religions and the Hope for Peace, Faith Beyond Humanism, and Shakespeare, Thy name is Marlowe.

Author: Jess Winfield
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0446537675
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
“Utterly delicious, original, witty, hilarious and brilliant. Shakespeare in Love on magic mushrooms. The Bard has never been this much fun.” —Christopher Buckley, New York Times-bestselling author A tale of two Shakespeares . . . Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of . . . Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard’s life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome . . . This, at a time when adherents of the “Old Faith” are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors. Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the “Shakespeare” each is destined to become . . . but the very course of history itself. “Hilarious, fascinating . . . a cunningly witty, frolicsome, time-warping bildungsroman . . . Winfield slings bucketfuls of double-entendres and wily puns, and he slips in hilarious variations on Shakespeare’s best-known lines . . . Winfield’s high-spirited tribute is a celebration of the power of language and story.” —Los Angeles Times

Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Author: William Hazlitt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Author: Katherine Chiljan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780982940556
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Non-fiction research book about Shakespeare, the man and his works, based on contemporary evidence. This evidence conflicts with the orthodox view; for example, contemporary evidence shows that ?William Shakespeare? was a pen name, and that his plays were written far earlier than believed. The book also deconstructs the case of the Stratford Man as Shakespeare, and presents a theory how and why the two different identities were later confused. 2nd edition, 448 pages, footnotes, plates.

Author: Grant W. Smith
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648892701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
'Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies' presents a comprehensive study of names in Shakespeare’s comedies. Although names are used in daily speech as simple designators, often with minimal regard for semantic or phonological suggestiveness, their coinage is always based on analogy. They are words (i.e., signs) borrowed from previous referents and contexts, and applied to new referents. Thus, in the literary use of language, names are figurative inventions and have measurable thematic significance: they evoke an association of attributes between two or more referents, contextualize each work of literature within its time, and reflect the artistic development of the writer. In the introduction, Smith describes the literary use of names as creative choices that show the indebtedness of authors to previous literature, as well as their imaginative descriptions (etymologically and phonologically) of memorable character types, and their references to cultural phenomena that make their names meaningful to their contemporary readers and audience. This book presents fourteen essays demonstrating the analytical models explained in the introduction. These essays focus on Shakespeare’s comedies as presented in the First Folio. They do not follow the chronological order of their composition; instead, the individual essays give special attention to differences between the plays that suggest Shakespeare’s artistic development, including the varied sources of his borrowings, the differences between his etymological and phonological coinages, the frequency and types of his topical references, and his use of epithets and generics. This book will appeal to Shakespeare students and scholars at all levels, particularly those who are keen on studying his comedies. This study will also be relevant for researchers and graduate students interested in onomastics. He can be reached at [email protected].