Download or read book Shakespeare s Comic Commonwealths written by Camille Wells Slights and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the traditional view that Shakespeare's early comedies are about the experience of romantic love and constitute a genre called romantic comedy, Camille Wells Slights demonstrates that they dramatize individual action in the context of social dynamics, reflecting and commenting on the culture in which they originated. Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths sheds new light on ten Shakespearean comedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labor's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. In a diversity of comic forms - from rollicking farce to tragicomedy - these plays offer varying perspectives on the forces that make and mar human communities. Dramatizing tensions between savagery and civilization, autonomy and dependence, and isolation and community, Shakespeare's comedies both reflect and comment on the society that produces them. Slights eschews viewing these comedies as endorsements of the prevailing ideologies of sixteenth-century England or as subversions of that hierarchical, patriarchal culture. They can be most fruitfully understood as imaginative forms that present cultural practices, institutions and beliefs as human constructions susceptible to critical scrutiny. While exposing the injustice and brutality as well as the assurances and satisfactions of social experiences, Shakespeare's comedies represent people as inescapably social beings. By combining historical scholarship with formal analysis and incorporating insights from social anthropology and feminist theory, Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths offers new readings of Shakespeare's early comedies and analyses the interaction between the plays and the social structures and processes of early modern England.
Download or read book Beyond a Common Joy written by Paul A. Olson and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ?Soul of the age!? Ben Jonson eulogized Shakespeare, and in the next breath, ?He was not of an age but for all time.? That he was both ?of the age? and ?for all time? is, this book suggests, the key to Shakespeare?s comic genius. In this engaging introduction to the First Folio comedies, Paul A. Olson gives a persuasive and thoroughly engrossing account of the playwright?s comic transcendence, showing how Shakespeare, by taking on the great themes of his time, elevated comedy from a mere mid-level literary form to its own form of greatness?on par with epic and tragedy. Like the best tragic or epic writers, Shakespeare in his comedies goes beyond private and domestic matters in order to draw on the whole of the commonwealth. He examines how a ruler?s or a court?s community at the household and local levels shapes the politics of empire?existing or nascent empires such as England, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Venice, and the Ottoman Empire or part empires such as Rome and Athens?where all their suffering and silliness play into how they govern. In Olson?s work we also see how Shakespeare?s appropriation of his age?s ideas about classical myth and biblical scriptures bring to his comic action a sort of sacral profundity in keeping with notions of poetry as ?inspired? and comic endings as more than merely happy but as, in fact, uncommonly joyful.
Download or read book The Cartoon Illustrated Edition of The Tempest written by William Shakespeare and published by Shakespeare Comic Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tempest offers a skilfully edited version of Shakespeare's text with modern English translation. This dual text is presented in a highly illustrated, two colour cartoon style. Used by schools at Key Stages 1-5, (though primarily KS 2-4), this edition is also excellent for home study.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Theatre written by Hugh Macrae Richmond and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts, the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins>
Download or read book Shakespeare and Outsiders written by Marianne Novy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an engaging account of the portrayal of outsiders in Shakespeare's writings. It considers characters who are outsiders for an array of reasons including their race, religion, gender, psychology, and morality, and highlights the idea of otherness as a relative rather than fixed term.
Download or read book Worldly Shakespeare written by Wilson Richard Wilson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Worldly Shakespeare Richard Wilson proposes that the universalism proclaimed in the name of Shakespeare's playhouse was tempered by his own worldliness, the performative idea that runs through his plays, that if 'All the world's a stage', then 'all the men and women in it' are 'merely players'. Situating this playacting in the context of current concerns about the difference between globalization and mondialisation, the book considers how this drama offers itself as a model for a planet governed not according to universal toleration, but the right to offend: 'But with good will'. For when he asks us to think we 'have but slumbered' throughout his offensive plays, Wilson suggests, Shakespeare is presenting a drama without catharsis, which anticipates post-structuralist thinkers like Jacques Rancire and Slavoj A iA ek, who insist the essence of democracy is dissent, and 'the presence of two worlds in one'.Living out his scenario of the guest who destroys the host, by welcoming the religious terrorist, paranoid queen, veiled woman, papist diehard, or puritan fundamentalist into his play-world, Worldly Shakespeare concludes, the dramatist instead provides a pretext for our globalized communities in a time of Facebook and fatwa, as we also come to depend on the right to offend 'with our good will'.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation written by Dennis Taylor and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-07-18 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Reformation: Literary Negotiation of Religious Difference explores how Shakespeare’s plays dramatize key issues of the Elizabethan Reformation, the conflict between the sacred, the critical, and the disenchanted; alternatively, the Catholic, the Protestant, and the secular. Each play imagines their reconciliation or the failure of reconcilation. The Catholic sacred is shadowed by its degeneration into superstition, Protestant critique by its unintended (fissaparous) consequences, the secular ordinary by stark disenchantment. Shakespeare shows how all three perspectives are needed if society is to face its intractable problems, thus providing a powerful model for our own ecumenical dialogues. Shakespeare begins with history plays contrasting the saintly but impractical King Henry VI, whose assassination is the ”primal crime,” with the pragmatic and secular Henry IV, until imagining in the later 1590’s how Hal can reconnect with sacred sources. At the same time in his comedies, Shakespeare imagines cooperative ways of resolving the national ”comedy of errors,” of sorting out erotic and marital and contemplative confusions by applying his triple lens. His late Elizabethan comedies achieve a polished balance of wit and devotion, ordinary and the sacred, old and new orders. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s ultimate Elizabethan consideration of these issues, its so-called lack of objective correlation a response to the unsorted trauma of the Reformation.
Download or read book A Midsummer Night s Dream written by William Shakespeare and published by Shakespeare Comic Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Midsummer Night's Dream offers a skilfully edited version of Shakespeare's text with modern English translation. This dual text is presented in a highly illustrated, full colour cartoon style. Used by schools at Key Stages 1-5, (though primarily KS 2-4), this edition is also excellent for home study.
Download or read book Early Modern Spectatorship written by Ronald Huebert and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did it mean to be a spectator during the lifetime of Shakespeare or of Aphra Behn? In Early Modern Spectatorship contributors use the idea of spectatorship to reinterpret canonical early modern texts and bring visibility to relatively unknown works. While many early modern spectacles were designed to influence those who watched, the very presence of spectators and their behaviour could alter the conduct and the meaning of the event itself. In the case of public executions, for example, audiences could both observe and be observed by the executioner and the condemned. Drawing on work in the digital humanities and theories of cultural spectacle, these essays discuss subjects as various as the death of Desdemona in Othello, John Donne's religious orientation, Ned Ward's descriptions of London, and Louis Laguerre's murals painted for the residences of English aristocrats. A lucid exploration of subtle questions, Early Modern Spectatorship identifies, imagines, and describes the spectator's experience in early modern culture.
Download or read book Shakespeare in Theory written by Stephen Bretzius and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witty and engaging essays on the links between contemporary literary theory and Shakespearean theater
Download or read book The Shakespearean International Yearbook written by Tom Bishop and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Currently in its seventeenth year and formerly published by Ashgate, The Shakespearean International Yearbook surveys the present state of Shakespeare studies, addressing issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare's work and his time, across the whole spectrum of his literary output. Contributions are solicited from among the most active and insightful scholars in the field, from both hemispheres of the globe. New trends are evaluated from the point of view of established scholarship, and emerging work in the field encouraged, to present a view of what is happening all around the world. Each issue includes a special section under the guidance of a specialist Guest Editor, as well as a review of recent critical work in Shakespeare studies. An essential reference tool for scholars of early modern literature and culture, this annual captures, from year to year, current and developing thought in Shakespeare scholarship and theater practice worldwide.
Download or read book The Taming of the Shrew written by Harold Bloom and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of essays discussing aspects of William Shakespeare's comedy portraying the ageless battle between the sexes.
Download or read book A Place in the Story written by Linda Anderson and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the virtues Shakespeare made of the cultural necessities of servants and service. Although all of Shakespeare's plays feature servants as characters, and many of these characters play prominent roles, surprisingly little attention has been paid to them or to the concept of service. A Place in the Story is the first book-length overview of the uses Shakespeare makes of servant-characters and the early modern concept of service. Service was not only a fact of life in Shakespeare's era, but also a complex ideology. The book discusses service both as an ideal and an insult, examines how servants function in the plays, and explores the language of service. Other topics include loyalty, advice, messengers, conflict, disobedience, and violence. Servants were an intrinsic part of early modern life and Shakespeare found servant-characters and the concept of service useful in many different ways. Linda Anderson teaches at Virginia Polytechnic University.
Download or read book Women and Revenge in Shakespeare written by Marguerite A. Tassi and published by Susquehanna University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can there be a virtue in vengeance? Can revenge do ethical work? Can revenge be the obligation of women? This wide-ranging literary study looks at Shakespeare's women and finds bold answers to questions such as these. A surprising number of Shakespeare's female characters respond to moral outrages by expressing a strong desire for vengeance. This book's analysis of these characters and their circumstances offers incisive critical perceptions of feminine anger, ethics, and agency and challenges our assumptions about the role of gender in revenge. In this provocative book, Marguerite A. Tassi counters longstanding critical opinions on revenge: that it is the sole province of men in Western literature and culture, that it is a barbaric, morally depraved, irrational instinct, and that it is antithetical to justice. Countless examples have been mined from Shakespeare's dramas to reveal women's profound concerns with revenge and justice, honor and shame, crime and punishment. In placing the critical focus on avenging women, this book significantly redresses a gender imbalance in scholarly treatments of revenge, particularly in early modern literature.
Download or read book Hamlet written by William Shakespeare and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-06-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Signet Classics edition of William Shakespeare's incomparable tragic play. "To be, or not to be: that is the question" There is arguably no work of fiction quoted as often as William Shakespeare's Hamlet. This haunting tragedy of a troubled Danish prince devoted to avenging his father's death has captivated audiences for centuries. This title in the Signet Classics Shakespeare series includes: • An overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater • A special introduction to the play by the editor, Sylvan Barnet • A note on the sources from which Shakespeare derived Hamlet • Dramatic criticism from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A.C. Bradley, Maynard Mack, and others • A comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions of Hamlet • Text, notes, and commentaries printed in the clearest, most readable format • Recommended readings
Download or read book The Merry Wives of Windsor written by Evelyn Gajowski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Merry Wives of Windsor has recently experienced a resurgence of critical interest. At times considered one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays, it is often dismissed or marginalized; however, developments in feminist, ecocritical and new historicist criticism have opened up new perspectives and this collection of 18 essays by top Shakespeare scholars sheds fresh light on the play. The detailed introduction by Phyllis Rackin and Evelyn Gajowski provides a historical survey of the play and ties into an evolving critical and cultural context. The book’s sections look in turn at female community/female agency; theatrical alternatives; social and theatrical contexts; desire/sexuality; nature and performance to provide a contemporary critical analysis of the play.
Download or read book Emerson Melville James Berryman written by Peter Rawlings and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive analysis of the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors. This volume focuses on Shakespeare's reception by major American writers and poets.
