Lisa Hopkins

Andrew Hiscock

David McInnis

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: Essays on the plays' critical and performance history A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play A selection of new essays by leading scholars A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online The blockbuster Tamburlaine plays (1587) instantly established Marlowe's reputation for experimenting with subversive, outrageous and immoral material. The plays follow the meteoric rise of a Scythian shepherd-turned-warlord, whose conquests of eastern emperors soon sees him established as the most powerful man in the world. The visual tableaux featured in the plays are iconic. He uses his enemy Bajazeth as a footstool, and has other emperors pull his chariot like horses. He burns the Qur'an on stage. The plays were memorable, too, for how they sounded: they showcased the power and variability of iambic pentameter, the meter that Shakespeare would go on to perfect. No history of Shakespeare's theatre is complete without understanding the influence and significance of Marlowe's Tamburlaine plays. Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader offers the definitive introduction to these plays and new perspectives on these seminal works. It provides an overview of their reception on stage and by critics, and offers fresh insights into the teaching of these plays in the classroom.

Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader

King Lear is one of Shakespeare's most performed and studied plays - seen as one of the most significant and universal tragedies of all time. This guide introduces the play's critical and performance history, including notable stage productions alongside TV, film and radio versions. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research.

A critical guide

King Lear

Domenico Lovascio

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: - Essays on the play's critical and performance history - A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play - A selection of new essays by leading scholars - A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online Antony and Cleopatra is among Shakespeare's most enduringly popular tragedies. A theatrical piece of extraordinary political power, it also features one of his most memorable couples. Both intellectually and emotionally challenging, Antony and Cleopatra also tests the boundaries of theatrical representation. This volume offers a stimulating and accessible guide to the play that takes stock of the past and current situation of scholarship while simultaneously opening up fresh, thought-provoking critical perspectives.

Antony and Cleopatra: A Critical Reader

Helen Wilcox

This pioneering Handbook offers a comprehensive consideration of the dynamic relationship between English literature and religion in the early modern period. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the most turbulent times in the history of the British church and, perhaps as a result, produced some of the greatest devotional poetry, sermons, polemics, and epics of literature in English. The early-modern interaction of rhetoric and faith is addressed in thirty-nine chapters of original research, divided into five sections. The first analyses the changes within the church from the Reformation to the establishment of the Church of England, the phenomenon of puritanism and the rise of non-conformity. The second section discusses ten genres in which faith was explored, including poetry, prophecy, drama, sermons, satire, and autobiographical writings. The middle section focuses on selected individual authors, among them Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, Lucy Hutchinson, and John Milton. Since authors never write in isolation, the fourth section examines a range of communities in which writers interpreted their faith: lay and religious households, sectarian groups including the Quakers, clusters of religious exiles, Jewish and Islamic communities, and those who settled in the new world. Finally, the fifth section considers some key topics and debates in early modern religious literature, ranging from ideas of authority and the relationship of body and soul, to death, judgment, and eternity. The Handbook is framed by a succinct introduction, a chronology of religious and literary landmarks, a guide for new researchers in this field, and a full bibliography of primary and secondary texts relating to early modern English literature and religion.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion

This pioneering Handbook offers a comprehensive consideration of the dynamic relationship between English literature and religion in the early modern period. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the most turbulent times in the history of the British church - and, perhaps as a result, produced some of the greatest devotional poetry, sermons, polemics, and epics of literature in English. The early-modern interaction of rhetoric and faith is addressed in thirty-nine chapters of original research, divided into five sections. The first analyses the changes within the church from the Reformation to the establishment of the Church of England, the phenomenon of puritanism and the rise of non-conformity. The second section discusses ten genres in which faith was explored, including poetry, prophecy, drama, sermons, satire, and autobiographical writings. The middle section focuses on selected individual authors, among them Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, Lucy Hutchinson, and John Milton. Since authors never write in isolation, the fourth section examines a range of communities in which writers interpreted their faith: lay and religious households, sectarian groups including the Quakers, clusters of religious exiles, Jewish and Islamic communities, and those who settled in the new world. Finally, the fifth section considers some key topics and debates in early modern religious literature, ranging from ideas of authority and the relationship of body and soul, to death, judgment, and eternity. The Handbook is framed by a succinct introduction, a chronology of religious and literary landmarks, a guide for new researchers in this field, and a full bibliography of primary and secondary texts relating to early modern English literature and religion.

Deborah Cartmell

Peter J. Smith

This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Shakespearean comedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourke's film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSC's recent rebranding of it as a sequel. Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives, including contemporary directors' deployment of older actors within the lead roles, the play's relationship to Love's Labour's Lost, its presence on Youtube and the ways in which tales and ruses in the play belong to a wider concern with varieties of crime. The volume finishes with a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further research.

Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader

Stefano Jossa

Jane E. Everson

Marking the fifth centenary of the publication of the first edition of the Italian masterpiece, Ariosto, the Orlando Furioso and English Culture, 1516-2016 brings together an international team of Renaissance scholars from a wide variety of disciplines to analyse in detail the diffuse impact which the epic poem had upon English culture from the Tudor century to the present day. Translated into English in the 1590s by Sir John Harington, godson of Elizabeth I, the influence of Ariosto's poem can be traced in literature, music and the visual arts, from Spenser and Milton to modern media adaptations. In addition, the collection reflects upon the ways in which successive editions and translations, examples of critical reception, rewritings and adaptations in different media (in particular opera) all shaped the rich and evolving understanding of the adventures of Orlando, Angelica, Medoro, Olympia, and Sacripante in the cultural and artistic production of England across the centuries.

Ariosto, the Orlando Furioso and English Culture

Efterpi Mitsi

Troilus and Cressida: A Critical Reader offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this complex problem play, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. Considering its generic ambiguity and experimentalism, it also provides a uniquely detailed and up-to-date history of the play's stage performance from Dryden's rewriting up to Mark Ravenhill and Elizabeth LeCompte's controversial 2012 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Wooster Group. Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives on the play's iconoclastic nature and its key themes, ranging from issues of gender and sexuality to Elizabethan politics, from the uses of antiquity to questions of cultural translation, with particular attention paid on Troilus' “Greekness”. The volume finishes with a helpful guide to critical and web-based resources. Discussing the ways in which this challenging and acerbic play can be brought to life in the classroom, it suggests performance-based strategies, designed to engage with the dramaturgical and theatrical dimensions of the text; close-reading exercises with an emphasis on rhetoric, metaphor and the practice of “troping”; and a series of tools designed to situate the play in a range of contexts, including its classical and critical frameworks.

Troilus and Cressida: A Critical Reader

Lina Perkins Wilder

The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Memory introduces this vibrant field of study to students and scholars, whilst defining and extending critical debates in the area. The book begins with a series of "Critical Introductions" offering an overview of memory in particular areas of Shakespeare such as theatre, print culture, visual arts, post-colonial adaptation and new media. These essays both introduce the topic but also explore specific areas such as the way in which Shakespeare’s representation in the visual arts created a national and then a global poet. The entries then develop into more specific studies of the genre of Shakespeare, with sections on Tragedy, History, Comedy and Poetry, which include insightful readings of specific key plays. The book ends with a state of the art review of the area, charting major contributions to the debate, and illuminating areas for further study. The international range of contributors explore the nature of memory in religious, political, emotional and economic terms which are not only relevant to Shakespearean times, but to the way we think and read now.

The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Memory

Focusing on the lively debate of memory, this book maps how radical cultural and political changes shaped early modern England.

Reading Memory in Early Modern Literature

A comprehensive introduction to Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women - introducing its critical history, performance history, the current critical landscape and new directions in research.

Women Beware Women

Sarah Hatchuel

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: - Essays on the play's critical and performance history - A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play - A selection of new essays by leading scholars A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice has often been labelled a 'problem play', and throughout the ages it has been an object of both fascination and repulsion. Without neglecting the socio-political and religious issues that are at the heart of the play, this collection of critical essays invites readers to rediscover the variety of approaches that this multifaceted work calls for, exploring its gender aspects, its rich mythological background, its legal matters and the ways in which it has been adapted to the screen. Essays consider the play in relation to its sources, genre and religion, historical and socio-political context and its critical reception and performance history.

Andrew Hiscock

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