This wide-ranging study traces the forces that drove the production and interpretation of visual images of Shakespeare's plays. Covering a rich chronological terrain, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the midpoint of the nineteenth, Stuart Sillars offers a multidisciplinary, nuanced approach to reading Shakespeare in relation to image, history, text, book history, print culture and performance. The volume begins by relating the production imagery of Shakespeare's plays to other visual forms and their social frames, before discussing the design and operation of illustrated editions and the 'performance readings' they offer, and analysing the practical and theoretical foundations of easel paintings. Close readings of The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, the Roman plays, The Merchant of Venice and Othello provide detailed insight into how the plays have been represented visually, and are accompanied by numerous illustrations and a beautiful colour plate section.
The aim of this collection is to illustrate the pervasive influence of humanist rhetoric on early-modern literature and philosophy. The first half of the book focuses on the classical rules of judicial rhetoric. One chapter considers the place of these rules in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, while two others concentrate on the technique of rhetorical redescription, pointing to its use in Machiavelli's The Prince as well as in several of Shakespeare's plays, notably Coriolanus. The second half of the book examines the humanist background to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. A major new essay discusses his typically humanist preoccupation with the visual presentation of his political ideas, while other chapters explore the rhetorical sources of his theory of persons and personation, thereby offering new insights into his views about citizenship, political representation, rights and obligations and the concept of the state.
This book gives a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse, theatrically vital formal conventions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Besides providing readings of plays such as Hamlet, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus, it also places Shakespeare emphatically within his own theatrical context, and focuses on the relationship between the demanding repertory system of the time and the conventions and content of the plays. Lopez argues that the limitations of the relatively bare stage and non-naturalistic mode of early modern theatre would have made the potential for failure very great, and he proposes that understanding this potential for failure is crucial for understanding the way in which the drama succeeded on stage. The book offers perspectives on familiar conventions such as the pun, the aside and the expository speech; and it works toward a definition of early modern theatrical genres based on the relationship between these well-known conve
From the Hamlet acted on a galleon off Africa to the countless outdoor productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream that now defy each English summer, Shakespeare and Amateur Performance explores the unsung achievements of those outside the theatrical profession who have been determined to do Shakespeare themselves. Based on extensive research in previously unexplored archives, this generously illustrated and lively work of theatre history enriches our understanding of how and why Shakespeare's plays have mattered to generations of rude mechanicals and aristocratic dilettantes alike: from the days of the Theatres Royal to those of the Little Theatre Movement, from the pioneering Winter's Tale performed in eighteenth-century Salisbury to the Merchant of Venice performed by Allied prisoners for their Nazi captors, and from the how-to book which transforms Mercutio into Yankee Doodle to the Napoleonic counterspy who used Richard III as a tool of surveillance.
Winner of 2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award, Shakespeare's Political Wisdom offers careful interpretations of five Shakespearean plays –Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, King
This volume, first published in 2000, draws together thirteen important essays on the concept of race in Shakespeare's drama. The authors, who themselves reflect racial and geographical diversity, explore issues of ethnography, politics, religion, identity, nationalism, and the distribution of power in Shakespeare's plays. The authors write from a variety of perspectives, drawing on Elizabethan and Jacobean historical studies and critical theory. They attend to performances of the plays in different ages and places, as well as to the text. An introductory essay sets the context for the ensuing chapters, which reflect shifts in scholarship over the last forty years. Most are reprinted from volumes of Shakespeare Survey. They tackle the ethnic implications of Shakespearean drama in South Africa, the Caribbean, Germany and the Arab world as well as England. A broad range of plays and poems is included, while particular essays focus on Othello, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest.
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 id
劍橋大學出版社從上世紀80年代初開始策劃“劍橋莎士比亞戲劇精選（中文詳注）”系列產品，是一套針對本國乃至全世界對莎士比亞戲劇感興趣的廣大讀者而開發的一系列賞析性讀物，本系列既可以用作課堂教學的教材和課外讀物，也有很強的學術參考價值，因此也可以用作學術參考書。本系列問世以來，在全世界已經成為最為暢銷的莎士比亞文學賞析系列讀物。“劍橋莎士比亞戲劇精選（中文詳注）”系列旨在幫助讀者在欣賞原汁原味的莎翁戲劇的同時，感受他無限的想像力，並通過見解獨到、細緻入微但容易理解的導讀，讓讀者更加透徹地領會莎士比亞無限的文學魅力。 本系列收錄莎士比亞最膾炙人口、影響力大的14部戲劇，它們分別是：悲劇《哈姆雷特》（Hamlet）《奧賽羅》（Othello）《麥克白》（Macbeth）《李爾王》（King Lear）《羅密歐與朱麗葉》（Romeo and Juliet）《朱利葉斯·凱撒》（Julius Caesar）；喜劇《皆大歡喜》（As You Like It）《第十二夜》（Twelfth Night）《威尼斯商人》（The Merchant of Venice）《仲夏夜之夢》（A Midsummer Night's Dream）《馴悍記》（The Taming of the Shrew）《無事生非》（Much Ado About Nothing）《暴風雨》（The Tempest）；以及歷史劇《理查三世》（King Richard III）等。 本書為其中的《第十二夜》。
