Download or read book Shakespeare s Stories of the English Middle Ages written by Peter Whisson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-09-24 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dynastic turmoil in 15th Century England? No thanks! For many people Shakespeare's histories rank a distant third behind his tragedies and comedies. Obscure lords and long-forgotten battles. So the image goes. Yet some of these same plays tell superb stories, and contain scenes and characters that are among the liveliest and most memorable in all literature.Here, four of the very best, Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth Parts One and Two, and Henry the Fifth are presented as 'productions for the page'-consecutive stories for the modern reader. Be bemused no longer by endless kings, dukes and earls, acting out their arguments in iambic verse. Follow instead, as if in the midst of events, Shakespeare's masterly unfolding of a classic pattern of revolution, suppression of enemies, and conquest abroad.
Download or read book Medieval Shakespeare written by Ruth Morse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives readers the opportunity to appreciate Shakespeare from the perspectives of the late-medieval European traditions that surrounded him.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Kings written by John Julius Norwich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-03-13 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares the historical kings with their portrayal in Shakespeare's plays.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Middle Ages written by Martha W. Driver and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every generation reinvents Shakespeare for its own needs, imagining through its particular choices and emphases the Shakespeare that it values. The man himself was deeply involved in his own kind of historical reimagining. This collection of essays examines the playwright's medieval sources and inspiration, and how they shaped his works. With a foreword by Michael Almereyda (director of the Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke) and dramaturge Dakin Matthews, these thirteen essays analyze the ways in which our modern understanding of medieval life has been influenced by our appreciation of Shakespeare's plays.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Middle Ages written by Curtis Perry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare and the Middle Ages brings together a distinguished, multidisciplinary group of scholars to rethink the medieval origins of modernity. Shakespeare provides them with the perfect focus, since his works turn back to the Middle Ages as decisively as they anticipate the modern world: almost all of the histories depict events during the Hundred Years War, and King John glances even further back to the thirteenth-century Angevins; several of the comedies, tragedies, and romances rest on medieval sources; and there are important medieval antecedents for some of the poetic modes in which he worked as well. Several of the essays reread Shakespeare by recovering aspects of his works that are derived from medieval traditions and whose significance has been obscured by the desire to read Shakespeare as the origin of the modern. These essays, taken cumulatively, challenge the idea of any decisive break between the medieval period and early modernity by demonstrating continuities of form and imagination that clearly bridge the gap. Other essays explore the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries constructed or imagined relationships between past and present. Attending to the way these writers thought about their relationship to the past makes it possible, in turn, to read against the grain of our own teleological investment in the idea of early modernity. A third group of essays reads texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries as documents participating in social-cultural transformation from within. This means attending to the way they themselves grapples with the problem of change, attempting to respond to new conditions and pressures while holding onto customary habits of thought and imagination. Taken together, the essays in this volume revisit the very idea of transition in a refreshingly non-teleological way.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Medieval World written by Helen Cooper and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-26 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Cooper's unique study examines how continuations of medieval culture into the early modern period, forged Shakespeare's development as a dramatist and poet. Medieval culture pervaded his life and work, from his childhood, spent within reach of the last performances of the Coventry Corpus Christi plays, to his dramatisation of Chaucer in The Two Noble Kinsmen three years before his death. The world he lived in was still largely a medieval one, in its topography and its institutions. The language he spoke had been forged over the centuries since the Norman Conquest. The genres in which he wrote, not least historical tragedy, love-comedy and romance, were medieval inventions. A high proportion of his plays have medieval origins and he kept returning to Chaucer, acknowledged as the greatest poet in the English language. Above all, he grew up with an English tradition of drama developed during the Middle Ages that assumed that it was possible to stage anything - all time, all space. Shakespeare and the Medieval World provides a panoramic overview that opens up new vistas within his work and uncovers the richness of his inheritance.
Download or read book Shakespeare s English Kings written by Peter Saccio and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far more than any professional historian, Shakespeare is responsible for whatever notions most of us possess about English medieval history. Anyone who appreciates the dramatic action of Shakespeare's history plays but is confused by much of the historical detail will welcome this guide to the Richards, Edwards, Henrys, Warwicks and Norfolks who ruled and fought across Shakespeare's page and stage. Not only theater-goers and students, but today's film-goers who want to enrich their understanding of film adaptations of plays such as Richard III and Henry V will find this revised edition of Shakespeare's English Kings to be an essential companion. Saccio's engaging narrative weaves together three threads: medieval English history according to the Tudor chroniclers who provided Shakespeare with his material, that history as understood by modern scholars, and the action of the plays themselves. Including a new preface, a revised further reading list, genealogical charts, an appendix of names and titles, and an index, the second edition of Shakespeare's English Kings offers excellent background reading for all of the ten history plays.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Stories of the English Kings written by Thomas Carter and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Medieval Tradition written by J. Paul McRoberts and published by Scholarly Title. This book was released on 1985 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness written by Sarah Beckwith and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-08 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare lived at a time when England was undergoing the revolution in ritual theory and practice we know as the English Reformation. With it came an unprecedented transformation in the language of religious life. Whereas priests had once acted as mediators between God and men through sacramental rites, Reformed theology declared the priesthood of all believers. What ensued was not the tidy replacement of one doctrine by another but a long and messy conversation about the conventions of religious life and practice. In this brilliant and strikingly original book, Sarah Beckwith traces the fortunes of this conversation in Shakespeare’s theater. Beckwith focuses on the sacrament of penance, which in the Middle Ages stood as the very basis of Christian community and human relations. With the elimination of this sacrament, the words of penance and repentance—"confess," "forgive," "absolve" —no longer meant (no longer could mean) what they once did. In tracing the changing speech patterns of confession and absolution, both in Shakespeare’s work and Elizabethan and Jacobean culture more broadly, Beckwith reveals Shakespeare’s profound understanding of the importance of language as the fragile basis of our relations with others. In particular, she shows that the post-tragic plays, especially Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, are explorations of the new regimes and communities of forgiveness. Drawing on the work of J. L. Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stanley Cavell, Beckwith enables us to see these plays in an entirely new light, skillfully guiding us through some of the deepest questions that Shakespeare poses to his audiences.
Download or read book Bard of Avon written by Diane Stanley and published by . This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrate 400 years of Shakespeare's legacy with this repackage of award-winning author Diane Stanley's tribute to the world-famous playwright William Shakespeare. Nobody knows exactly when or why William Shakespeare left his boyhood home of Stratfor
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Middle Ages written by Curtis Perry and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare and the Middle Ages brings together a distinguished, multidisciplinary group of scholars to rethink the medieval origins of modernity. Shakespeare provides them with the perfect focus, since his works turn back to the Middle Ages as decisively as they anticipate the modern world: almost all of the histories depict events during the Hundred Years War, and King John glances even further back to the thirteenth-century Angevins; several of the comedies, tragedies, and romances rest on medieval sources; and there are important medieval antecedents for some of the poetic modes in which he worked as well. Several of the essays reread Shakespeare by recovering aspects of his works that are derived from medieval traditions and whose significance has been obscured by the desire to read Shakespeare as the origin of the modern. These essays, taken cumulatively, challenge the idea of any decisive break between the medieval period and early modernity by demonstrating continuities of form and imagination that clearly bridge the gap. Other essays explore the ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries constructed or imagined relationships between past and present. Attending to the way these writers thought about their relationship to the past makes it possible, in turn, to read against the grain of our own teleological investment in the idea of early modernity. A third group of essays reads texts by Shakespeare and his contemporaries as documents participating in social-cultural transformation from within. This means attending to the way they themselves grapples with the problem of change, attempting to respond to new conditions and pressures while holding onto customary habits of thought and imagination. Taken together, the essays in this volume revisit the very idea of transition in a refreshingly non-teleological way.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Dramatic Heritage written by Glynne Wickham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare's Dramatic Heritage shows that the drama of Elizabethan and Jacobean England is deeply indebted to the religious drama of the Middle Ages and represents a climax, in secular guise, to mediaeval experiment and achievement rather than a new beginning. This is fully examined in terms of dramatic literature as well as in terms of theatres, stages and production conventions. The plays studied include: Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale and Marlowe's King Edward II.
Download or read book The Middle Ages Comedian written by William Shakespeare and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-07-29 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies, though today many scholars recognize a fourth category, romance, to describe the specific types of comedies that appear as Shakespeare's later works. "Comedy," in its Elizabethan usage, had a very different meaning from modern comedy. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays. Patterns in the comedies include movement to a "green world," both internal and external conflicts, and a tension between Apollonian and Dionysian values. Shakespearean comedies tend to also include: - A greater emphasis on situations rather than characters (this numbs the audience's connection to the characters, so that when characters experience misfortune, the audience still finds it laughable) - A struggle of young lovers to may overcome difficulty, often presented by elders - Separation and re-unification - Deception of characters (especially mistaken identity)Several of Shakespeare's comedies, such as Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well, have an unusual tone with a difficult mix of humour and tragedy which has led them to be classified as problem plays. It is not clear whether the uneven nature of these dramas is due to an imperfect understanding of Elizabethan humour and society, a fault on Shakespeare's part, or a deliberate attempt by him to blend styles and subvert the audience's expectations. Marriage Comedies head towards marriage. This is a useful place to start thinking about the typical shape of comedies. Marriages conventionally represent the achievement of happiness and the promise of regeneration. So important to Shakespeare is the symbolic power of marriage that some end in more than one marriage. Both A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night end with three. In the final scene of As You Like It, Hymen, the god of marriage, takes the stage to preside over no fewer than four nuptial couplings and to celebrate 'High wedlock' in song. Misconception In Shakespearean comedies much that is funny arises from the misconceptions of lovers. In Much Ado about Nothing the friends of Benedick, whom we have seen mocking Beatrice and scorning love, arrange for him to overhear them talking about how desperately Beatrice in fact loves him. The trick is enjoyably justified when he next meets Beatrice and determinedly interprets her rudeness as concealed affection. Yet the trick takes us further. Once Beatrice has been deceived by her friends in similar fashion, these two characters, who both once disdained the follies of courtship, are on the path to love and marriage. All this deception would not be amusing if we could not feel confident that it will produce a happy resolution In the play's sub-plot, the deception of Claudio by Don John indicates how a deceived lover might, in another kind of play, be on his way to creating a tragedy. Interwoven with the plot of Benedick and Beatrice's love story is the drama of so-called 'love' (Claudio for Hero) turned into murderous hate. However satisfying the former courtship, it is shadowed by the vengefulness of the untrusting Claudio.
Download or read book The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare written by Irving Ribner and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognized as one of the leading books in its field, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare presents the most comprehensive account available of the English historical drama from its beginning to the closing of the theatres in 1642.
Download or read book King Lear written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: KENT I thought the king had more affected the Duke ofAlbany than Cornwall.GLOUCESTER It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety.KENT Is not this your son, my lord?GLOUCESTER His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it.KENT I cannot conceive you.GLOUCESTER Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?KENT I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.GLOUCESTER But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?
Download or read book Gesta Romanorum written by Wynnard Hooper and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
