A Dictionary of Shakespeare

A Dictionary of Shakespeare
Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher:
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192806386

Compiled by the general editor of The Oxford Shakespeare, and one of the best-known authorities on the playwright's works, this dictionary offers up-to-date information on all aspects of Shakespeare, both in his own time and in later ages. The wide-ranging entries cover Shakespeare's plays, as well as everything from famous actors, writers, and directors connected with Shakespeare, to theatres, historical figures and places of particular interest relating to his life and work. The dictionary also includes box features of passages on Shakespeare by other famous authors, from Dr Johnson and Jane Austin to Bernard Levin and Virginia Woolf. Ideal reference for the student, actor, or director, and fascinating browsing for the general reader interested in Shakespeare's life and work.

Macbeth

Macbeth
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1408153742

"A splendid edition: it incorporates the most recent modern scholarship ... and it does so within a compass and format that is both readable and usable." - Around the Globe Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most performed and studied tragedies. This Arden Shakespeare Third Series edition offers students detailed on-page commentary notes highlighting meaning and theatrical ideas and themes, as well as an illustrated, lengthy introduction setting the play in its historical, theatrical and critical context and outlining the recent debates about Middleton's possible co-authorship of some scenes. A comprehensive and informative edition ideal for students and teachers seeking to explore the play in depth, whether in the classroom or on the stage.

Shakespeare and the Arts of Language

Shakespeare and the Arts of Language
Author: Russ McDonald
Publisher:
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2001
Genre: English language
ISBN: 0198711719

'Russ McDonald... offers an initiation into Shakespeares English.... Like a good musician leading us beyond merely humming the tunes, he helps us hear Shakespearean unclarity, revealing just how expression in late Shakespeare sometimes transcends ordinary verbal meaning.... particularly recommendable.' -Ruth Morse, Times Literary Supplement 'Oxford University Press offer a mix of engagingly written introductions to a variety of Topics intended largely for undergraduates. Each author has clearly been reading and listening to the most recent scholarship, but they wear their learning lightly.' -Ruth Morse, Times Literary SupplementOxford Shakespeare Topics (General Editors Peter Holland and Stanley Wells) provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide to further reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. For the modern reader or playgoer, English as Shakespeare used it - especially in verse drama - can seem alien. Shakespeare and the Arts of Language offers practical help with linguistic and poetic obstacles. Written in a lucid, nontechnical style, the book defines Shakespeare's artistic tools, including imagery, rhetoric, and wordplay, and illustrates their effects. Throughout, the reader is encouraged to find delight in the physical properties of the words: their colour, weight, and texture, the appeal of verbal patterns, and the irresistible affective power of intensified language.

Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes

Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes
Author: Zachary Lesser
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 081229792X

Four years before the publication of the First Folio, a group of London printers and booksellers attempted to produce a "collected works" of William Shakespeare, not in an imposingly large format but as a series of more humble quarto pamphlets. For mysterious reasons, perhaps involving Shakespeare's playing company, the King's Men, the project ran into trouble. In an attempt to salvage it, information on the title pages of some of the playbooks was falsified, making them resemble leftover copies of earlier editions. The deception worked for nearly three hundred years, until it was unmasked by scholars in the early twentieth century. The discovery of these "Pavier Quartos," as they became known, was a landmark success for the New Bibliography and played an important role in establishing the validity and authority of that method of analysis. While more recent scholars have reassessed the traditional narrative that the New Bibliographers wrote, no one has gone back to look at the primary evidence: the quartos themselves. In Ghosts, Holes, Rips and Scrapes Zachary Lesser undertakes a completely fresh study of these playbooks. Through an intensive bibliographical analysis of over three hundred surviving quartos, Lesser reveals evidence that has gone entirely unseen before: "ghosts" (faint, oily impressions produced when one book is bound next to another); "holes" (the tiny remains of the first simple stitching that held pamphlets together); and "rips and scrapes" (post-production alterations of title pages). This new evidence—much of it visible only with the aid of enhanced photographic methods—suggests that the "Pavier Quartos" are far more mysterious, with far more consequential ramifications for book history and Shakespeare scholarship than we have thought.