HLI 331: Shakespeare

This clear guide demystifies Shakespeare for the beginning reader. An essential reference resource of ideas and approaches, it is fully illustrated with examples from some of the most frequently studied plays.

William Shakespeare's work and life have proved endlessly fascinating to generations of readers. However, it can be difficult to find a way through the mass of differing interpretations of his work and speculation about his life. This book offers a reassessment of Shakespeare and his creative output from his earliest work through his 'mature' drama and the late plays, taking into account our current knowledge of Shakespeare's biography and consensus on key textual, critical and theatrical issues. William Baker offers a comprehensive but accessible introduction to Shakespeare's work and places.

This volume is a biography on English poet and playwright, William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. In this work, the author attempts to provide a vivid and plausible version of the undocumented areas of Shakespeare's life. The author intends to demonstrate how an acutely sensitive and talented boy -- surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, full of drama and pageantry, and also cruelty and danger -- could have become the world's greatest playwright. He brings together little-known historical facts and little-noticed elements of Shakespeare's plays and makes connections between Shakespeare's life and his works.

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Reading Shakespeare Historically is a passionate, provocative book by one of the most renowned and popular Renaissance scholars writing today. Charting ten years of critical development, these challenging, witty essays shed new light on Renaissance studies. It also raises intriguing questions about how the culture and history of the past illuminates the key social and political issues of today. Lisa Jardine re-reads Renaissance drama in its historical and cultural context, from laws of defamation in Othello to the competing loyalties of companionate marriage and male frie.

Like the other entries in this fascinating series, Women in the Age of Shakespeare shows the influence of the world William Shakespeare lived in on the worlds he created for the stage, this time by focusing on women in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras in general and in ShakespeareÕs works in particular.''Women in the Age of Shakespeare explores the ancient and medieval ideas that Shakespeare drew upon in creating his great comedic and tragic heroines. It then looks at how these ideas intersected with the lived experiences of women of ShakespeareÕs time, followed by a close look at the major female characters in ShakespeareÕs plays and poems. Later chapters consider how these characters have been enacted on stage and in film, interpreted by critics and scholars, and re-imagined by writers in our own time. ''

The book is comprised of essays that utilize Shakespeare as a productive window into topics of contemporary social and political relevance. Its interdisciplinary qualities make the book relevant for students of political studies, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and history.

Reviews Shakespeare's view of masculinity through The Tempest, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and others.