 |
Shakepeare Criticism
 Shakespeare's Wife
Germaine Greer
Shakespeare's Wife is a compelling, insightful book that goes a long way toward righting the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare. Germaine Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions and opens new fields of investigation into this fascinating subject. Softcover, 406 pp. $36.99.
 Shakespeare
Johann Gottfried Herder
One of the most important and original works in the history of literary criticism, this passionate essay pioneered a new, historicist approach to cultural artifacts by arguing that they should be judged not by their conformity to a set of conventions imported from another time and place, but by the effectiveness of their response to their own historical and cultural context. Hardcover, 84 pp. $15.95.
 Think On My Words: Exploring Shakespeare's Language
David Crystal
David Crystal addresses many questions in this lively and original introduction to Shakespeare's language. Covering in turn the five main dimensions of language structure - writing system, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and conversational style - the book shows how examining these linguistic 'nuts and bolts' can help us achieve a greater appreciation of Shakespeare's linguistic creativity. Softcover, 254 pp. $20.95.
 Shakespeare
Jeremy Lemmon
William Shakespeare was born a tradesman's son in Stratford-upon-Avon and died one of the town's wealthiest and most respected citizens. This book, designed both for the student as well as the general reader, aims to consider Shakespeare's life and work - all his plays and major poems - within the context of his times. Softcover, 201 pp. $16.95.
 Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays
Colin McGinn
Shakespeare has always been celebrated for the depth of his themes, the vividness of his characters, and the beauty of his poetry. However, the philosophical nature of his ouevre has often been overlooked. Focusing on Shakespeare's six most regarded plays - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest - noted philosopher Colin McGinn provides a brilliant analysis of the major philosophical themes embedded in the Bard's work, including the nature and persistence of the self, the existence and nature of evil, and the power of language to influence and shape the human mind. Softcover, 230 pp. $16.50.
 This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance Then & Now
David Bevington
For generations, most readers have first encountered Shakespeare's plays in books, rather than on-stage. In schools, his works are primarily taught by professors of English, many of whom know little about the theater. Yet Shakespeare was a man of the stage - so what is lost when we leave Shakespeare the dramatist behind? What can we learn by thinking of his works in terms of performance? Here, David Bevington answers these questions, exploring productions of Shakespeare both in the playwright's own time, and in the succeeding centuries. Hardcover, 241 pp. $30.00.
 Filthy Shakespeare
Pauline Kiernan
Celebrating the Bard in all his bawdy glory, Filthy Shakespeare is a hilarious and insightful look into the down-and-dirty sexual puns lurking in Shakespeare's body of work. Hardcover, 303 pp. $24.00.
 Shakespeare & Co.
Stanley Wells
Shakespeare is one of the greatest of English figures, considered a genius for all time. Yet as this enthralling book shows, he was at heart a man of the theatre, one among a community of artists in the teeming world of Renaissance London - from the enigmmatic spy Christopher Marlowe to the self-aggrandizing Ben Jonson, from the actor Richard Burbage to the brilliant Thomas Middleton. By exploring Shakespeare's contemporaries, Shakespeare & Co. throws fresh new light on the man himself. Softcover, 286 pp. $21.00.
 The Tempest: Shakespeare Handbooks
R. Trevor Griffiths
The extended commentary in Trevor Griffiths's handbook The Tempest helps readers to see and hear The Tempest as they read, and explore its theatrical potential in terms of a variety of challenges. The handbook also includes coverage of key theatrical interpretations by figures such as Charles Kean, Beerbohm Tree, John Gielgud, Patrick Stewart and Simon Sussell Beale, as well as explorations of major film productions. The handbook is a stimulating resource, and an excellent guide to the 'rich and strange' life of one of Shakespeare's most enigmatic plays. Softcover, 160 pp. $21.00.
 To Be Or Not To Be: Shakespeare NOW!
Douglas Bruster
Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy is quoted more often than any other passage in Shakespeare. It is arguably the most famous speech in the Western world - though few of us can remember much about it. This book carefully unpacks the individual words, phrases and sentences of Hamlet's soliloquy in order to reveal how and why it has achieved its remarkable hold on our culture. Softcover, 109 pp. $20.95.
 Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned A Provincial Playwright Into The Bard
Jack Lynch
The author, a professor of English at Rutgers University and a Samuel Johnson scholar, takes the reader down the long, winding and fascinating posthumous road which the Bard's reputation has travelled.The book tells the story of how Shakespeare ascended, with the help of countless actors, editors, scholars, readers and teachers to the epicentre of English culture. Hardcover, 306 pp. $31.95.
 The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare On Film
Russell Jackson
This Companion is a collection of critical and historical essays on the films adapted from, and inspired by, Shakespeare's plays. The emphasis is on feature films for cinema, rather than television, with strong coverage of Hamlet, Richard III, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. A guide to further reading and a useful filmography are also included. Softcover, 349 pp. $28.95.
 Will & Me
Dominic Dromgoole
Shakespeare has always been a big part of Dominic Dromgoole's life. This is the story of how he has stumbled, shambled and occasionally glided through the years with the bard as his guide. Along the way he shows what Shakespeare's rough-and-ready genius can teach us about love, war, sex, death, drunkenness, friendship, and more. Softcover, 293 pp. $19.00.
 Shakespeare Thinking
Philip Davis
This book is about the almost physical effect Shakespeare has upon mind at its most primary level of excited existence. In search of that dramatic sense of mental activity, Philip Davis ranges from Renaissance writerss, such as Montaigne, to Romantic and Victorian writers on Shakespeare, such as Hazlitt, William James, and E.A. Abbott. Shakespeare Thinking recovers a lost form of dramatic mentality crucial to creative life. Softcover, 105 pp. $20.95.
 Godless Shakespeare
Eric S. Mallin
Godless Shakespeare is the first book to discuss Shakespeare's plays from an atheist perspective. Although it is clear that Shakespeare engaged with and deployed much of his culture's broadly religious interests - his language is shot through with biblical quotations, priestly sermonizing and Christian imagery - Mallin argues that there is a profound absence of or hostility to God in his plays. Softcover, 132 pp. $20.95.
 Shakespeare: The Basics
Sean McEvoy
The new edition of this guide, aimed quarely at the student new to Shakespeare, is based on the new approaches shaping Shakespeare studies. Sean McEvoy illustrates how interpretations of Shakespeare are linked to cultural and political contexts and provides readings of the most frequently studied plays in the light of contemporary critical thought. Softcover, 289 pp. $22.50.
 Shakespeare and the American Popular Stage
Frances Teague
This study changes our understanding of Shakespeare's presence in American
life. The book looks at how Shakespeare came to America just before
the Revolutionary War. Teague re-examines P.T. Barnum's attempt to
buy Shakespeare's birthplace, the Astor Place Riot in which twenty-three
people died, and the way both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth
regarded Shakespeare. With discussion of over twenty Shakespearean
musicals, this study demonstrates that Shakespeare has always been
present in popular shows. Softcover, 221 pp. $34.95.
 Where
There's a Will There's a Way
or All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Shakespeare
Laurie Maguire
In this learned and illuminating book, Laurie Maguire brings her deep knowledge
and love of Shakespeare's plays to bear on the great questions, challenges, and
choices we face in life. The bard's classic tragedies, comedies, and histories
still invite us to explore our emotions, and both challenge and reaffirm our
judgments about love and sex, death and grief, rebellion, midlife crisis, racism,
religion, war and politics, marriage, family, and friendships. They also offer
suggestions for change. They comfort, encourage, and provide the solutions that
Maguire convincingly argues are as wise and compelling today as they were when
they were written. They help us take control over the plot of our own lives,
and embody a code of conduct in which Shakespeare lays out the basic principles
for living. To read Shakespeare is to understand what it means to be human: To
read Where There's a Will There's a Way is to better understand
how to deal with it.
 Shylock Is Shakespeare
Kenneth Gross
Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who famously
demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his antisemitic
tormentors, is one of Shakespeare's most complex and idiosyncratic
characters. With his unsettling eloquence and his varying voices
of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock remains a source of
perennial fascination. What explains the strange and enduring force
of his character, so unlike that of any other in Shakespeare's plays?
Kenneth Gross posits that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because
he is the voice of Shakespeare himself. Hardcover, 202 pp. $29.95.
 Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays
Colin McGinn
Shakespeare has always been celebrated for the depth of his themes, the
vividness of his characters, and the beauty of his poetry. However,
the philosophical nature of his opus has often been overlooked. Interweaving
close textual analysis and conceptual exploration, Shakespeare's
Philosophy pursues questions of character against a background of
their philosophical significance. Hardcover, 230 pp. $32.50.
 How
to Read a Shakespeare Play
David Bevington
How should we read Shakespeare plays? In this clear and succinct book,
author David Bevington suggests that readers think of themselves
as armchair directors, deciding what the actors should wear, what
social class they
represent, why they are there, and, most importantly, what they are
after. This introduction to Shakespeare will encourage readers to
approach his
work aggressively, interactively, and inquisitively.
Softcover, 172 pp. $25.95.
 Hamlet:
A Sourcebook
Sean McEvoy
Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Shakespeare's remarkable
play offers: extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical
history and many interpretations of the texts; annotated extracts
from key contextual
documents, reviews, critical works, and the text itself; cross-references
between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest
links between texts, contexts and criticisms; suggestions for further
reading. Softcover, 183 pp. $34.95.
 William
Shakespeare's Macbeth
A Sourcebook
Edited by Alexander Leggat
This guide to Shakespeare's Macbeth offers extensive introductory comment
on context, critical history, and interpretations from the play's first
performance through modern times. Annotated extracts from key source documents,
reviews, critical works and Macbeth itself. Sourcebook is cross-referenced
in order to demonstrate links between texts, contexts, and criticism; and
includes suggestions for further reading.
Part of the Routledge Guides To Literature series. Softcover, 197 pp.
$35.95.
 A
Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Tragedies
Richard Dutton & Jean F. Howard
This companion to Shakespeare's tragedies contains original essays on every tragedy
from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus, as well
as thirteen additional essays on such topics as Shakespeare's Roman tragedies,
Shakespeare's tragedies on film, Shakespeare's tragedies of love, Hamlet in performance,
and tragic emotion in Shakespeare. Softcover, 491 pp. $48.95.
 A
Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Histories
Richard Dutton & Jean F. Howard
This companion to Shakespeare's histories contains original essays on every
history play from Henry VI to Henry V as
well as fourteen original essays on such topics as censorship in Shakespeare's
histories, the relation of
Shakespeare's plays to other dramatic histories of the period, Shakespeare's
histories on film, the homoerotics of Shakespeare's history plays, and nation
formation in Shakespeare's histories. Softcover, 484 pp. $48.95.
 A
Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Comedies
Richard Dutton & Jean F. Howard
This companion to Shakespeare's comedies contains original essays on every
comedy from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to Twelfth
Night. In addition,
the volume features twelve essays on such topics as the humoral body
in Shakespearean comedy, Shakespeare's comedies on film, Shakespeare's
relation
to other comic writers of his time, Shakespeare's cross-dressing
comedies, and the geographies of Shakespearean comedy.
Softcover, $48.95.
 A
Companion to Shakespeare's Works: The Poems, Problem Comedies, Late Plays
Richard Dutton & Jean F. Howard
This companion to Shakespeare's poems, problem comedies, and late
plays contains original essays on Troilus and Cressida, Measure
for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, Venus
and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and
The Sonnets, as well as Pericles, The
Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Henry
VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. In addition, it includes eleven
essays on such topics as the reception history of the sonnets, collaboration
in Shakespeare's middle and late plays, the generic classification
of Shakespeare's late plays, The Tempest in performance, and the
relation
of Shakespeare's "problem
plays " to
the work of contemporary dramatists. Softcover, 482 pp. $48.95.
 A
Concise Companion to Shakespeare on Screen
Diana E. Henderson
This Concise Companion offers readers a variety of accessible routes into
Shakespeare on screen and supports further study of the subject through
the inclusion of a bibliography, a chronological chart, and a thorough
index. At the same time, it serves as a focal point for exploring
fundamental issues in the study of literature and culture more broadly,
such as the
relationship between elite and popular culture, art and the marketplace,
text, image, and performance. Softcover, 264 pp. $41.95.
 Shakespeare
Mark van Doren
This legendary book features a series of smart, witty, deeply perceptive
essays about each of Shakespeare's plays, together with a further
discussion of the poems. Writing with an incomparable knowledge of
his subject, but
without a hint of pedantry, Mark Van Doren elucidates both the astonishing
boldness and myriad subtleties of Shakespeare's protean art. This
is a book to be both treasured by both new and longtime students
of the Bard. Softcover, 302 pp. $20.95.
 Shakespeare:
The Seven Ages of Human Experience
David Bevington
What makes Shakespeare great? Why do we still read and perform his
works? In this deft and witty introduction, David Bevington argues
that Shakespeare continues to live among us today because his representations
of the human
condition are believable, endearing, and touchingly human. The book
is structured around Shakespeare's arc of human life from infancy
and childhood to adulthood, advancing age, and eventual death, as
set out by Jaques
in
the "Seven
Ages of Man" speech from As You Like It. Softcover, 264 pp. $27.95.
 The
Dances of Shakespeare
Tim Hoskins
The Dances of Shakespeare offers brief introduction to the performance
of the entire repertory of dance styles featured in Shakespeare's
plays. Designed for the practicing director, actor, or choreographer,
this book
provides clear instructions on how to perform popular social dances
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including masques, brawls,
canaries, corantos, galliards, jigs, La Volta, pavans, morris dances,
and roundels. Softcover, 135 pp. $23.95.
Back to top
|
|
101
Things You Didn't Know About Shakespeare
The
Pocket Companion to Shakespeare's Plays 
"
Shakespeare" by Another Name
Shakespeare's
Tragedies: Violation and Identity 
Shakespeare
at the Huntington
The
Rough Guide to Shakespeare
The
Age of Shakespeare
A
Case for Shylock: Around the World with Shakespeare's Jew 
Queen
Elizabeth: Selected Works 
Shakespeare's
Tribe
Playgoing
in Shakespeare's London
Radical
Tragedy
Looking
for Sex in Shakespeare
Searching
Shakespeare:
Shakespearean
Afterlives
Shakespeare,
The Movie, II: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, Video, and DVD
Inspirational Leadership
Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance
Shakespeare
and Violence
Shakespeare
After Mass Media
Editing
Shakespeare
Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life
Shakespeare in Canada: 
Henslowe's Diary
Roar of the Canon
Shakespeare's
Tragic Skepticism
A
Feminist Companion To Shakespeare
