The ten lectures presented here were given consecutively at the British Academy's annual Shakespeare Lecture over the years 1980-89. This lecture series has been going since 1911 with this volume being the fourth 'collection' of essays.

From the entry of Shakespeare's birth in the Stratford church register to a Norwegian production of Macbeth in which the hero was represented by a tomato, this enthralling and splendidly illustrated book tells the story of Shakespeare's life, his writings, and his afterlife. Drawing on a lifetime's experience of studying, teaching, editing, and writing about Shakespeare, Stanley Wells combines scholarly authority with authorial flair in a book that will appeal equally to the specialist and the untutored enthusiast. Chapters on Shakespeare's life in Stratford and in London offer a fresh view of the development of the writer's career and personality. At the core of the book lies a magisterial study of the writings themselves--how Shakespeare set about writing a play, his relationships with the company of actors with whom he worked, his developing mastery of the literary and rhetorical skills that he learned at the Stratford grammar school, the essentially theatrical quality of the structure and language of his plays. Subsequent chapters trace the fluctuating fortunes of his reputation and influence. Here are accounts of adaptations, productions, and individual performances in England and, increasingly, overseas; of great occasions such as the Garrick Jubilee and the tercentenary celebrations of 1864; of the spread of Shakespeare's reputation in France and Germany, Russia and America, and, more recently, the Far East; of Shakespearian discoveries and forgeries; of critical reactions, favorable and otherwise, and of scholarly activity; of paintings, music, films and other works of art inspired by the plays; of the plays' use in education and the political arena, and of the pleasure and intellectual stimulus that they have given to an increasingly international public. Shakespeare, said Ben Jonson, was not of an age but for all time. This is a book about him for our time.

A collection of new and specially commissioned essays by an eminent team of Shakespeare scholars, focusing on the particular issues relating to the editing of Shakespeare and other Renaissance texts. The editing of dramatic and other literary texts has always been an important aspect of literary studies. In recent years, editing and the theoretical frameworks that underlie editing practices have become a lively and controversial focus of debate, sparked both by philosophical discussions on 'the death of the author' and by the technological challenges presented by the possibilities of electronic texts. Most national and international conferences on literature and drama include sessions on textual studies and editing, and a number of monographs address particular issues relating to the editing of Shakespeare and other Renaissance texts, but this is the first overall survey of the current state of the field. The essays have been commissioned to honour Professor Richard Proudfoot, Senior General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare, and an internationally recognised authority in the field of Shakespeare textual scholarship, who retired from King's College London in 1999 after 35 years. This is a well-planned, focused and co-ordinated volume makes a significant contribution to Shakespeare studies. The contributors are a formidable and global group of scholars, representing both traditional and contemporary viewpoints. They include a number of Arden editors, past and present, as well as scholars who have edited texts for the main competitors.

This edited collection of essays on Shakespeare includes writings on Shakespeare in his time, in our time, and in the future. It looks at why we talk so much about Shakespeare by considering the dominant views and theories on his work at the beginning of the new millennium. Essays included examine topics such as touring practices in Shakespeare's day, the history of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare in relation to his contemporaries, Shakespeare and homoeroticism and Shakespeare and the future. Talking Shakespeare, as its title implies, focuses on the reciprocal relationship between past and present, the way Shakespeare talks to us, the ways in which we talk about Shakespeare, and the way in which Shakespeare, ultimately, is 'all talk'. Indeed the approach employed throughout the book is a consideration of the ways in which the past informs the present as well as how the present informs the past. The book takes a multi-disciplinary view of Shakespeare, looking at how Shakespeare is 'talked about' in the fields of English Studies, Performance Studies and Cultural Studies. There is also an appendix surveying material available on Shakespeare in the electronic or 'virtual' library.

This substantial collection includes contributions from leading international Shakespeare scholars such as Tom Craik, Philip Edwards, IngA-Stina Ewbank, R.A. Foakes, G.K. Hunter, Kenneth Muir, A.D. Nuttall, Brian Vickers and Stanley Wells. The book's twenty five essays range over the whole field of Shakespeare studies and deal especially with Shakespeare and his predecessors, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Shakespeare in performance (including film) and Shakespeare in relation to later literature. Shakespearean Continuities is published in honour of the distinguished Shakespeare scholar E.A.J. Honigmann, FBA, Joseph Cowen Professor of English Literature at the University of Newcastle, 1970-1989.

Presents a collection of critical essays on the works of William Shakespeare.

These two criticisms are based on the presumption that only a socially and intellectually elite reader is able to view the author's language in terms of its organic relationship with the text as a whole. The Romantics focused on the interpretive reproduction of Shakespeare through sympathetic identification with his characters."--BOOK JACKET.