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In Revising Shakespeare Grace Ioppolo addresses the question of Shakespeare's integrity. Through analysis of variant texts spanning the history of the plays, she arrives at an interpretation of Shakespeare as author and reviser. Ioppolo stars with the physical text. As textual studies of King Lear have shown, the text of Shakespeare is not as given. The text is nearly always a revision of another text. Critics can no longer evaluate plots, structure, and themes, nor can scholars debate what constitutes (or how to establish) a copy-text that stands as the most authoritative version of a Shakespeare play, without reconsidering the implications of revision for traditional and modern interpretations.
The late William Ringler, Jr. and James Ogden examine the theatrical tradition from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century. The history of literary criticism to Bradley and beyond is sketched in the introduction, and recent criticism is described in more detail by Richard Levin. Carol Rutter's essay on the women characters in the play is inspired partly by feminist criticism and partly by recent productions. The productions of the last thirty years are covered by theater critic Benedict Nightingale, and the major film versions by Anthony Davies and Stephen Phillips. Finally, Stuart Sillars presents a "visual history," an account of artistic responses that suggests further possibilities for both research and teaching.
The distinguished annual in interdisciplinary textual studies
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf described fictions as 'grossly material things', rooted in their physical and economic contexts. This book takes Woolf's brief hint as its starting point, asking who made the books of the English Renaissance, and what the material circumstances were in which they did so. It charts a new history of making and use, recovering the ways in which women shaped and altered the books of this crucial period, as co-authors, editors, translators, patrons, printers, booksellers, and readers. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of sources, including court records, letters, diaries, medical texts, and the books themselves, 'Grossly Material Things' moves between th...
Questioning whether the impulse to adapt Shakespeare has changed over time, Lynne Bradley argues for restoring a sense of historicity to the study of adaptation. Bradley compares Nahum Tate's History of King Lear (1681), adaptations by David Garrick in the mid-eighteenth century, and nineteenth-century Shakespeare burlesques to twentieth-century theatrical rewritings of King Lear, and suggests latter-day adaptations should be viewed as a unique genre that allows playwrights to express modern subject positions with regard to their literary heritage while also participating in broader debates about art and society. In identifying and relocating different adaptive gestures within this historica...
In fourteen specially commissioned chapters by leading Shakespeare scholars from around the globe, Late Shakespeare, 1608–1613 provides an essential reappraisal of the final phase of Shakespeare's writing life. Arranged for the first time in the best-established chronological sequence, Shakespeare's last seven extant plays are discussed in detail in dedicated chapters, from Pericles to the other late co-authored works, King Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The plays are situated in the context of Shakespeare's financial investments, his focus on the practice of reading, the changing nature of his acting company and the pressing issues of contemporary politics and urban life. The book also goes on to explore the relationship between Shakespeare and his audience and considers the dominant themes in his final works. Analysing and responding to the latest criticism in the field, this volume brings to light a vital re-examination of what it means to discuss 'late Shakespeare'.
"In this major contribution to theater history and cultural studies, authors Lawrence Manley and Sally-Beth MacLean paint a lively portrait of Lord Strange's Men, a daring company of players that dominated the London stage for a brief period in the late Elizabethan era. During their short theatrical reign, Lord Strange's Men helped to define the dramaturgy of the era, performing the works of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and others in a distinctive and spectacular style, exploring innovative new modes of impersonation while intentionally courting political and religious controversy"--
This book argues for editing Shakespeare's plays in a new way, without pretending to distinguish authorial from theatrical versions.
This year's volume is devoted to the theme of Shakespeare and the Globe, including the original Globe, playhouse of Shakespeare's time, the new Globe Theatre on Bankside and the notion of a global Shakespeare.
Contains forty original essays.