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For those who doubt that the actor from Stratford, William Shakspere, wrote the works of Shakespeare, the brilliant poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe has always been the professional candidate. In this book, which argues that a chronological approach is essential, Donna N. Murphy employs a variety of tools to document a Marlowe-Shakespeare continuum (with her proposed dates of first-version authorship) in The Taming of the Shrew, c. 1590; II and III Henry VI, c. 1590; Edward III c. 1590–1; Titus Andronicus c. 1591–3; Thomas of Woodstock c. 1593; Romeo and Juliet c. 1595–6; and I Henry IV, c. 1596–7. Her research firmly supports the theory that Christopher Marlowe, living on after he supposedly died, was the main hand behind the works of Shakespeare.
To understand comedy is to understand humanity, for the comic sense is central to what it means to be human. Nearly all the major issues with which human beings have exercised themselves are touched upon in some manner by the comic spirit. Yet education in the art of comedy and in comic appreciation is given little attention in most societies. The Spirituality of Comedy explores the wisdom of comedy and the comic answer to tragedy (in both popular and classical senses of the term). Tragedy is seen as a fundamental problem of human existence, while comedy is its counterweight and resolution.Conrad Hyers has taken a fresh look at comedy from the standpoint of comparative mythology and religion...
For more than twenty-five years, Karen Newman has brought her critical acumen tobear on early modern studies. In this collection of her essays on Shakespeare--some acknowledged classics and others never before published--Newman shows howchanging theoretical trends have shaped Shakespeare studies, from new historicism and gender studies to critical race studies and globalization.
This study of Shakespeares Falstaff versus Shakespeare Criticism takes a view of Falstaff that is critically unorthodox but which is supported by the text. This reading of the Falstaff plays sees the playwright basing his fiction on natural law, but bending natural law to present a world of personified natural phenomena. This reading is logically consistent, and conforms to all fictional requirements for necessity and probability, thus eliminating the supposed errors that criticism, which sees the plays as strictly realistic vehicles, appears to find in these plays.
The theme of this book is disinheriting a father. Appropriating Shylock's Jewishness into the broader field of Otherness, and using The Merchant of Venice as a point of departure and a pivot of its discourse, The Yoke of Love is an intellectual foray into many issues and areas of thought suggested by the Shakespearean text, from cultural history and folklore to medieval philosophy and theology, from politics of the theatre to literary theory, from Jewish history to early modern debates on property, usury, and slavery - all converging in the cultural and theatrical deployment of prophetic riddles in the play involving inspired caskets, intriguing legal bonds, and problematic tokens of love. Tracing the conceptual history of prophecy since ancient times and relating it to relevant concepts such as conscience, wisdom, and time, The Yoke of Love establishes the special standing of the prophetic in early modern discourse and English Renaissance drama.
Moving beyond traditional studies of sources and influence, Shakespeare's Marlowe analyzes the uncommonly powerful aesthetic bond between Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Not only does this study take into account recent ideas about intertextuality, but it also shows how the process of tracking Marlowe's influence itself prompts questions and reflections that illuminate the dramatists' connections. Further, after questioning the commonly held view of Marlowe and Shakespeare as rivals, the individual chapters suggest new possible interrelationships in the formation of Shakespeare's works. Such examination of Shakespeare's Marlovian inheritance enhances our understanding of the dra...
From What's Up, Tiger Lily? to Match Point, Woody Allen's work has generated substantial interest among scholars and professionals who have written extensively about the director. In The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays, Charles L.P. Silet brings together two-dozen scholarly articles that address the core of Allen's work from a variety of cultural and theoretical perspectives. With a special emphasis on his films of the 1980s, this collection includes both general essays that examine various themes and issues encompassed in Allen's repertoire, as well as discussions that focus on one or two specific films. General essays explore Allen's Jewish background as a religious and cultural face...
The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This third edition of Julius Caesar retains the text prepared by Marvin Spevak for the 1988 first edition and features a completely new introduction by Jeremy Lopez. Discussing in detail the play's strange and innovative form, Lopez explores the interpretive challenges Julius Caesar has presented to audiences, scholars and theatre companies from Shakespeare's time to our own. The textual commentary has been revised and updated with an eye, and ear, to the contemporary student reader, and the list of further readings has been updated to reflect the latest developments in scholarly criticism. The edition concludes with an Appendix containing relevant excerpts from Shakespeare's main source in Plutarch.