Was anyone undone by fire, or turned to ashes through desire?Two young trans people find love whilst escaping oppression; a shipwrecked migrant searches for his family; goddesses clash; parents fret; an alchemist brews magic and a teenage Cupid sets hearts on fire - causing chaos and near disaster. And all the while, time is running out! Galatea is an unapologetically queer tale of love, magic, and the importance of welcoming outsiders.Galatea was...

Engaging with histories of the book and of reading, as well as with studies of material culture, this volume explores ’popularity’ in early modern English writings. Is ’popular’ best described as a theoretical or an empirical category in this period? How can we account for the gap between modern canonicity and early modern print popularity? How might we weight the evidence of popularity from citations, serial editions, print runs, reworkings, or extant copies? Is something that sells a lot...

During Shakespeare's lifetime, John Lyly was repeatedly described as the central figure in contemporary English literature. This book takes that claim seriously, asking how and why Lyly was considered the most important writer of his time.Kesson traces Lyly's work in prose fiction and the theatre, demonstrating previously unrecognised connections between these two forms of entertainment. The final chapter examines how his importance to early modern authorship came to be forgotten i...

This book offers a comprehensive, readable and authoritative introduction to the study of Shakespeare, by means of nineteen newly commissioned essays. An international team of prominent scholars provide a broadly cultural approach to the chief literary, performative and historical aspects of Shakespeare's work. They bring the latest scholarship to bear on traditional subjects of Shakespeare study, such as biography, the transmission of the texts, the main dramatic and poetic genres, the st...

Which plays are included under the heading 'Shakespeare's last plays', and when does Shakespeare's 'last' period begin? What is meant by a 'late play', and what are the benefits in defining plays in this way? Reflecting the recent growth of interest in late studies, and recognising the gaps in accessible scholarship on this area, in this book leading international Shakespeare scholars address these and many other questions. The essays locate Shakespeare's last plays - single and co-authore...

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations...

Demystifying and contextualising Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, this book offers both an introduction to the subject for beginners as well as an invaluable resource for more experienced Shakespeareans.In this friendly, structured guide, Robert Shaughnessy:introduces Shakespeare’s life and works in context, providing crucial historical backgroundlooks at each of Shakespeare’s plays in turn, considering issues of historical context, contem...

Featuring essays by major international scholars, this Companion combines analysis of themes crucial to Renaissance tragedy with the interpretation of canonical and frequently taught texts. Part I introduces key topics, such as religion, revenge, and the family, and discusses modern performance traditions on stage and screen. Bridging this section with Part II is a chapter which engages with Shakespeare. It tackles Shakespeare's generic distinctiveness and how our familiarity with Shakespe...

Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volumeto explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent didplaywrights represent dramatis personae in their entertainments as forming, orfailing to form, communal groupings? How far were theatrical productions likelyto weld, or separate, different communal groupings within their target audiences?And how might such bondings or oppositions among spect...

Ranging from the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson and Milton to those of Robert Southwell and Anna Trapnel, this groundbreaking study explores the conscious use of archaic style by the poets and dramatists between 1590 and 1674. It focuses on the wide-ranging, complex and self-conscious uses of archaic linguistic and poetic style, analysing the uses to which writers put literary style in order to re-embody and reshape the past. Munro brings together scholarly conversations on temporal...

The different versions of Hamlet constitute one of the most vexing puzzles in Shakespeare studies. In this groundbreaking work, Shakespeare scholar Terri Bourus argues that this puzzle can only be solved by drawing on multiple kinds of evidence and analysis, including book and theatre history, biography, performance studies, and close readings.

Though printer Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes (1557) remains the most influential poetic collection printed in the sixteenth century, the compiliation has long been ignored or misundertood by scholars of early modern English culture. Embracing a broad range of critical and historical perspectives, the eight essays within this volume offer the first sustained analysis of the many ways that consumers read and understood Songes and Sonettes as an anthology over the course of the early m...