Early Shakespeare, 1588–1594 draws together leading scholars of text, performance, and theatre history to offer a rigorous re-appraisal of Shakespeare's early career. The contributors offer rich new critical insights into the theatrical and poetic context in which Shakespeare first wrote and his emergence as an author of note, while challenging traditional readings of his beginnings in the burgeoning theatre industry. Shakespeare's earliest works are treated on their own merit and in their own time without looking forward to Shakespeare's later achievements; contributors situate Shakespeare, in his twenties, in a very specific time, place, and cultural moment. The volume features essays about Shakespeare's early style, characterisation, and dramaturgy, together with analysis of his early co-authors, rivals, and influences (including Lyly, Spenser and Marlowe). This collection provides essential entry points to, and original readings of, the poet-dramatist's earliest extant writings and shines new light on his first activities as a professional author.

This book re-appraises Shakespeare's early career, situating his writings and activities in their time, place, and cultural moment.

Focusing on a period (c.1577-1594) that is often neglected in Elizabethan theater histories, this study considers Shakespeare's involvement with the various London acting companies before his membership in the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1594. Locating Shakespeare in the confusing records of the early London theater scene has long been one of the many unresolved problems in Shakespeare studies and is a key issue in theatre history, Shakespeare biography, and historiography. The aim in this book is to explain, analyze, and assess the competing claims about Shakespeare's pre-1594 acting company affiliations. Schoone-Jongen does not demonstrate that one particular claim is correct but provides a possible framework for Shakespeare's activities in the 1570s and 1580s, an overview of both London and provincial playing, and then offers a detailed analysis of the historical plausibility and probability of the warring claims made by biographers, ranging from the earliest sixteenth-century references to contemporary arguments. Full chapters are devoted to four specific acting companies, their activities, and a summary and critique of the arguments for Shakespeare's involvement in them (The Queen's Men, Strange's Men, Pembroke's Men, and Sussex's Men), a further chapter is dedicated to the proposition Shakespeare's first theatrical involvement was in a recusant Lancashire household, and a final chapter focuses on arguments for Shakespeare's membership in a half dozen other companies (most prominently Leicester's Men). Shakespeare's Companies simultaneously opens up twenty years of theatrical activity to inquiry and investigation while providing a critique of Shakespearean biographers and their historical methodologies.

"The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus" by William Shakespeare is a gripping and intense drama that explores themes of revenge, betrayal, and the destructive consequences of violence. Set in ancient Rome, the play follows the tragic downfall of the noble general Titus Andronicus and his family as they become embroiled in a cycle of vengeance and bloodshed. At the heart of the story is the brutal conflict between Titus Andronicus and Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose sons are executed by Titus as retribution for their crimes. In retaliation, Tamora and her lover, Aaron the Moor, orchestrate a series of heinous acts of revenge against Titus and his family, plunging them into a spiral of madness and despair. As the body count rises and the atrocities escalate, Titus is consumed by grief and rage, leading to a climactic showdown that culminates in a shocking and tragic conclusion. Along the way, Shakespeare explores themes of honor, justice, and the nature of humanity, offering a searing indictment of the cycle of violence and the capacity for cruelty that lies within us all.

English comedy from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century abounds in song lyrics, but most of the original tunes were thought to have been lost--until now. By deducing that playwrights borrowed melodies from songs they already knew, Ross W. Duffin has used the existing English repertory of songs, both popular and composed, to reconstruct hundreds of songs from more than a hundred plays and other stage entertainments. Thanks to Duffin's incredible breakthrough, these plays have been rendered performable with period music for the first time in five hundred years. Some Other Note not only brings these songs back from the dead, but tells a thrilling tale of the investigations that unraveled these centuries-old mysteries [Publisher description]

A fascinating book exploring the early modern authors who helped to shape Shakespeare’s beloved plays. Shakespeare’s plays have influenced generations of writers, but who were the early modern playwrights who influenced him? Using the latest techniques in textual analysis Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers a fresh look at William Shakespeare and reveals the influence of a community of playwrights that shaped his work. This compelling book argues that we need to see early modern drama as a communal enterprise, with playwrights borrowing from and adapting one another's work. From John Lyly's wit to the collaborative genius of John Fletcher, to Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's borrowed feathers offers fresh insights into Shakespeare’s artistic development and shows us new ways of looking at the masterpieces that have enchanted audiences for centuries.

Between 1599 and 1601, no fewer than five anthologies appeared in print with extracts from Shakespeare's works. Some featured whole poems, while others chose short passages from his poems and plays, gathered alongside lines on similar topics by his rivals and contemporaries. Appearing midway through his career, these anthologies marked a critical moment in Shakespeare's life. They testify to the reputation he had established as a poet and playwright by the end of the sixteenth century. In extracting passages from their contexts, though, they also read Shakespeare in ways that he might have imagined being read. After all, this was how early modern readers were taught to treat the texts they read, selecting choice excerpts and copying them into their notebooks. Taking its cue from these anthologies, Anthologizing Shakespeare, 1593-1603 offers new readings of the formative works of Shakespeare's first decade in print, from Venus and Adonis (1593) to Hamlet (1603). It illuminates a previously neglected period in Shakespeare's career, what it calls his 'anthology period'. It investigates what these anthologies made of Shakespeare, and what he made of being anthologized. And it shows how, from the early 1590s, his works were inflected by the culture of commonplacing and anthologizing in which they were written, and in which Shakespeare, no less than his readers, was schooled. In this book, Ted Tregear explores how Shakespeare appealed to the reading habits of his contemporaries, inviting and frustrating them in turn. Shakespeare, he argues, used the practice of anthologizing to open up questions at the heart of his poems and plays: questions of classical literature and the schoolrooms in which it was taught; of English poetry and its literary inheritance; of poetry's relationship with drama; and of the afterlife he and his works might win--at least in parts.