Graham Holderness

Nine Lives of William Shakespeare

The Shakespearean novel is undergoing a renaissance as the long prose narrative form becomes reinvigorated through new forms of media such as television, film and the internet. Shakespeare and the Modern Novel explores the history of the novel as a literary form, suggesting that the form can trace its strongest roots beyond the eighteenth-century work of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson to Shakespeare’s plays. Within this collection, well-established Shakespeare critics demonstrate that the diversity and flexibility of interactions between Shakespeare and the modern novel are very much alive.

Shakespeare and the Modern Novel

This volume brings together a collection of Graham Holderness's writings on Shakespeare in film and television. Published in books and journals between 1984 and 1998, these essays constitute a resource for the study of Shakespeare in the media.

Essays in Film and Television

Visual Shakespeare

The Taming of the Shrew

Who's who in D. H. Lawrence

Graham Holderness explores the ways in which 20th Century writers and film-makers have recreated the life of Christ in their work.

Re-Writing Jesus: Christ in 20th-Century Fiction and Film

Though better known for his literary merits, Shakespeare made money, wrote about money and enabled money-making by countless others in his name. With chapters by leading scholars on the economic, financial and commercial ramifications of his work, this multifaceted volume connects the Bard to both early modern and contemporary economic conditions, revealing Shakespeare to have been a serious economist in his own right.

Shakespeare and Money

William Shakespeare

Bryan Loughrey

The first in a series on Shakespeare's original texts, including facsimile pages, this version of "Hamlet" is claimed to be, in some ways, the most authentic version of the play that we have. Included are an introduction, notes, and a theoretical, historical and contextual critique. This text has been rejected by scholars as a "bad Quarto" - corrupt and pirated text printed without the permission of the playwright or his company. Nonetheless, it was the first version of the play to be published and it has been produced in the modern theatre with success. This new edition of that Quarto seeks to acknowledge the play's distinctive poetic and dramatic qualities, instead of comparing them unfavourably to one of the other versions.

Hamlet - The First Quarto (Sos)

One of a series on Shakespeare's original texts, including facsimile pages, this version of "Henry V" is claimed to be, in some ways, the most authentic version of the play that we have. Included are an introduction, notes, and a theoretical, historical and contextual critique. The original text - or First Quarto - of "Henry V", published in 1600, is missing the Chorus, a dramatic device which recent criticism has used to suggest a strikingly modern view of history and politics. These and other significant changes mean that critics can no longer assume that the play presents a distanced, ironic perspective on its own political and military action. If Elizabethan audiences saw in performance something closer to the First Folio than the 1623 Folio text, then their dramatic engagement with history was of a kind very different from that of the play's 20th-century interpreters. This new edition makes available the original text of "Henry V", in all its theatrical simplicity and historical difference.

Henry V - The Quarto (Sos)

Almost everything of interest in Anglo-Saxon history is recorded in the poetry of the period: the historical and political, moral and ethical, theological and ecclesiastical, military and constitutional motives and preoccupations of that past culture are there to be read at the level of individual perception and personal experience. In this study Graham Holderness brings these Old English texts and the culture they embody within the reach of the general reader by providing powerful new translations of heroic, elegiac, religious and love verses, translations which span the corpus from Beowulf to The Wife's Lament and bridge the gap between the unfamiliar language of their original composition and the modern English in which they are subsequently discussed and lucidly explained. As a general introduction to the subject this book opens up the language, literature and life of Anglo-Saxon England to the non-specialist, ending with a line by line, sample translation and detailed annotation as an impetus t

Anglo-Saxon Verse

Acclaimed as the greatest dramatist of all time, William Shakespeare needs little introduction. Or does he? Going beyond Shakespeare the writer and actor, Graham Holderness explores the fact and fiction, tradition and myth, surrounding Shakespeare's life. Combining biography and fictional narrative, Holderness takes a fresh critical approach to the problem of piecing together a definitive account of Shakespeare's life and work from scant historical information. Instead, this study builds upon and examines the many theories that surround the life of this well-known, yet remarkably unknown man. Nine Shakespeares are presented: writer, player, butcher boy, businessman, husband, friend, lover, Catholic and portrait. By carefully critiquing these biographies and reimagining these nine men, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare creates a unique picture of how this playwright became Shakespeare as he is understood today. Shakespeare Now! is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source – the most living language imaginable – and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

Katherine Scheil

From Shakespeare’s religion to his wife to his competitors in the world of early modern theatre, biographers have approached the question of the Bard’s life from numerous angles. Shakespeare & Biography offers a fresh look at the biographical questions connected with the famous playwright’s life, through essays and reflections written by prominent international scholars and biographers.

Shakespeare and Biography

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Quarto of "Taming of a Shrew"

Taming of the Shrew

Contains essays on Shakespeare published in books and journals between 1985 and 1997.

Essays in the Shakespeare Myth

Cultural Shakespeare

The Shakespeare Myth

Shakespeare and Venice is the first book length study to describe and chronicle the mythology of Venice that was formulated in the Middle Ages and has persisted in fiction and film to the present day. Graham Holderness focuses specifically on how that mythology was employed by Shakespeare to explore themes of conversion, change, and metamorphosis. Identifying and outlining the materials having to do with Venice which might have been available to Shakespeare, Holderness provides a full historical account of past and present Venetian myths and of the city's relationship with both Judaism and Islam. Holderness also provides detailed readings of both The Merchant of Venice and of Othello against these mythical and historical dimensions, and concludes with discussion of Venice's relevance to both the modern world and to the past.

Shakespeare and Venice

Beginning at the end of the play, where the Norwegian prince Fortinbras takes over the empty throne of Denmark, it backtracks to the year of Hamlet's birth, and the great duel fought between his father King Amled and Fortinbras' father Prince Fortenbrasse. Then re-examining the relationship between Hamlet and Ofelia, and probing the circumstances of Ofelia's mysterious suicide, the novel goes on to imagine the possibility of a different plot, that does not end with the prince's murder, one in which the conflicts and alliances between ancient Viking chivalry, Renaissance realpolitik and Christian forgiveness are dramatically explored.

The Prince of Denmark

Presents the earliest known editions of Shakespeare's play, which differs substantially from the present versions, and argues that these are authentic

Graham Holderness

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