An explosive new history of scandal and power in the Elizabethan courtA newly discovered cache of letters from the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, to Queen Elizabeth I promised a fresh insight into one of the great dramas of the Elizabethan age.Yet hidden within the collection lay a more remarkable find: the voices of Essex's sisters, Penelope Rich and Dorothy Percy, and his wife, Frances Walsingham. Candid and deeply revealing, their letters expose an extraordinar...

The Shakespearean Originals Series takes as its point of departure the question: "What is it that we read Shakespeare?" The answer may seem self-evident: we read the words that Shakespeare wrote. But do we? In the case of all the major editions of Shakespeare available in the market, the fact of the matter is that many of the words that we read in an edition of, say, Hamlet, never appeared in the text as it was printed during or shortly after Shakespeare's own lifetime. They are the interp...

Shakespeare without Boundaries: Essays in Honor of Dieter Mehl offers a wide-ranging collection of essays written by an international team of distinguished scholars who attempt to define, to challenge, and to erode boundaries that currently inhibit understanding of Shakespeare, and to exemplify how approaches that defy traditional bounds of study and criticism may enhance understanding and enjoyment of a dramatist who acknowledged no boundaries in art.The Volume is publish...

This book presents new evidence about the ways in which English Renaissance dramatists such as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Heywood, John Fletcher and Thomas Middleton composed their plays and the degree to which they participated in the dissemination of their texts to theatrical audiences. Grace Ioppolo argues that the path of the transmission of the text was not linear, from author to censor to playhouse to audience - as has been universally argued by scholars - but circular. ...

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful not...

A colleague advised that I assign my college students this edition, and I am glad she did. Rather than reading the few anthologized works together with some handouts, students now own the entire set.For anyone not familiar with Shakespeares 154 sonnets, this gives an affordable and portable version. For anyone familiar with the works, this book offers them in a beautifully light, compressed format that itself enhances rereading and re-interpretation.As an enthusiast myself-...

International bestseller Bill Bryson brings us this brilliantly readable biography of the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare.Join Bill as he takes you on a journey through Elizabethan England, tackling the myths, half-truths and downright lies to make sense of the man behind the masterpieces.Revel in this glorious celebration of the life of Shakespeare from the much-loved author of ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ and ‘Notes from a Small Island’.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, suggested by "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across ...

Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare's plays, and is his shortest tragedy, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606. It is frequently performed at both amateur and professional levels, and has been adapted for opera, film, books, stage and screen. Often regarded as archetypal, the play tells of the dangers of the lust for power and the betrayal of friends. For the plot Shakespeare drew loosely on the historical account of King Macbeth of Scotland by Raphael Hol...

Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America**, shows how the tumultuous events in 1606 influenced three of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies written that year—King Lear, Macbeth,** and Antony and Cleopatra. **“**The Year of Lear is irresistible—a banquet of wisdom” (

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, and shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' award in 2023How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow what he reads and writes, what he saw and who he worked with as he invests in the new Globe theatre and creates four of his most famous plays - Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, mo...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.In a writing career that spanned over twenty years during the explosion of poetic and theatrical creativity of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, William Shakespeare produced a body of work that has become the bedrock of human thought, literature and language in English. His poetry and plays have endured for almost 450 years, such is their universal appeal and understanding of the human condition. And yet Shakespeare w...