A Shakespeare Reader

by Richard Danson Brown (Editor), David Johnson (Editor)

Overview

A Shakespeare Reader: Sources and Criticism provides a rich collection of critical and secondary material selected to assist in the study of Shakespeare's plays. It includes a selection of sources and analogues Shakespeare drew upon in writing nine of his major works, a variety of widely divergent critical interpretations of the plays over the last sixty years - from the practical criticism of the 1930s to the theoretical approaches of the 1990s - and informative essays on Shakespeare's theatre and on the challenges of editing the Shakespeare text. This book represents an invaluable resource for students and teachers of Shakespeare, as well as for theatre practitioners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333913147
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/04/2000
Series:	Text and Performance , #3
Edition description:	1st ed. 2000
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

RICHARD DANSON BROWN and DAVID JOHNSON are both Lecturers in Literature at the Open University. Richard Brown is the author of The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spenser's Complaints and David Johnson is the author of Shakespeare and South Africa.
RICHARD DANSON BROWN and DAVID JOHNSON are both Lecturers in Literature at the Open University. Richard Brown is the author of The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spenser's Complaints and David Johnson is the author of Shakespeare and South Africa.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
PART ONE: SOURCES AND ANALOGUES
A Midsummer Night's Dream: from The Discoverie of Witchcraft; R. Scott
From Metamorphoses Book IV; Ovid
Richard II: from A Myrroure for Magistrates
Macbeth: from Chronicles; R. Holinshed
Antony and Cleopatra: from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Hamlet: from The Spanish Tragedy; T. Kyd
Of Revenge; F. Bacon
Twelfth Night: from Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession; B. Riche
Measure for Measure: from Hecatommithi; G.B. Giraldi Cinthio
King Lear: from The Faerie Queene; E. Spenser
From Arcadia; P. Sidney
The Tempest: from 'The Strachey Letter'
From Metamorphoses; Ovid
PART TWO: CRITICAL READINGS
The Imperial Votaress; L. Montrose
The Staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream; J. L. Halio
The Elizabethan Drama; R. Weimann
The Political Background of Shakespeare's Richard II and Henry IV; J. D. Wilson
Richard II; J. E. Howard and P. Rackin
How Many Children had Lady Macbeth?; L. C. Knights
Macbeth: History, Ideology and Intellectuals; A. Sinfield
Macbeth on Film: Politics; E. Pearlman
Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra; H. Neville Davies
Squeaking Cleopatras: Gender and Performance in Antony and Cleopatra; J. Dusinberre
Spatial Politics; A. Loomba
What is an Editor?; S. Orgel
Hamlet the Mona Lisa of Literature; J. Rose
Telmah; T. Hawkes
Testing Courtesy and Humanity in Twelfth Night; C. L. Barber
The Two Antonios and Same-Sex Love in Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice; J. Pequigney
Measure for Measure; F. R. Leavis
London; L. Marcus
From Hamlet to Lear; A. Kettle
The Absent Mother in King Lear; C. Kahn
Grigori Kozintsev's King Lear; A. Leggatt
'What Cares These Roarers for the Name of King?': Language and Utopia in The Tempest; D. Norbrook
African and Caribbean Appropriations of The Tempest; R. Nixon
PART THREE: CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS
The Present Tense; G. Taylor
The National Poet; J. Bate
New Ways to Play Old Texts: Discourses of the Past; S. Bennett
Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

...an excellent and varied collection of textual sources and critical material.' - Dr Julie Sanders, University of Keele

'Taken together, the trilogy attempts in some sense to 'manage' the study of Shakespeare by breaking his work down into task-specific ideas and categories...The breadth of what is possible in a university-level Shakespeare/ Renaissance literature course is the great merit of the trilogy, and many will be excited by its variety.' - Claire Preston, Times Higher Education Supplement