Lauren Robertson's original study shows that the theater of Shakespeare and his contemporaries responded to the crises of knowledge that roiled through early modern England by rendering them spectacular. Revealing the radical, exciting instability of the early modern theater's representational practices, Robertson uncovers the uncertainty that went to the heart of playgoing experience in this period. Doubt was not merely the purview of Hamlet and other onstage characters, but was in fact constitutive of spectators' imaginative participation in performance. Within a culture in the midst of extreme epistemological upheaval, the commercial theater licensed spectators' suspension among opposed possibilities, transforming dubiety itself into exuberantly enjoyable, spectacular show. Robertson shows that the playhouse was a site for the entertainment of uncertainty in a double sense: its pleasures made the very trial of unknowing possible.

This volume convenes eight noted scholars with varied positions at the interface of formal and historical literary criticism. The editors’ introduction—a far-reaching account of how both methods have intersected in studies of early modern English texts since the 1990s—is the first such survey in more than 15 years, making it invaluable to scholars entering this area. Three essays address foundational questions about genre, fictionality, and formlessness; five feature close readings of texts or passages ranging from the more canonical (Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton) to the less so (an official record of the 1604 Hampton Court Conference). For scholars and students alike, the book thus models a variety of ways both to conceptualize and to analyze the value of literature at the formal–historical interface. Encompassing drama, lyric, satirical and polemical prose, and metrical as well as rhetorical and logical forms, the collection closes with an afterword by theorist Caroline Levine.

What did publicity look like before the eighteenth century? What were its uses and effects, and around whom was it organized? The essays in this collection ask these questions of early modern London. Together, they argue that commercial theater was a vital engine in celebrity’s production. The men and women associated with playing—not just actors and authors, but playgoers, characters, and the extraordinary local figures adjunct to playhouse productions—introduced new ways of thinking about the function and meaning of fame in the period; about the networks of communication through which it spread; and about theatrical publics. Drawing on the insights of Habermasean public sphere theory and on the interdisciplinary field of celebrity studies, Publicity and the Early Modern Stage introduces a new and comprehensive look at early modern theories and experiences of publicity.

This eye-opening study draws attention to the largely neglected form of the early modern prologue. Reading the prologue in performed as well as printed contexts, Douglas Bruster and Robert Weimann take us beyond concepts of stability and autonomy in dramatic beginnings to reveal the crucial cultural functions performed by the prologue in Elizabethan England. While its most basic task is to seize the attention of a noisy audience, the prologue's more significant threshold position is used to usher spectators and actors through a rite of passage. Engaging competing claims, expectations and offerings, the prologue introduces, authorizes and, critically, straddles the worlds of the actual theatrical event and the 'counterfeit' world on stage. In this way, prologues occupy a unique and powerful position between two orders of cultural practice and perception. Close readings of prologues by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, including Marlowe, Peele and Lyly, demonstrate the prologue's role in representing both the world in the play and playing in the world. Through their detailed examination of this remarkable form and its functions, the authors provide a fascinating perspective on early modern drama, a perspective that enriches our knowledge of the plays' socio-cultural context and their mode of theatrical address and action.

Shakespeare Studies is an annual peer-reviewed volume featuring work by performance scholars, literary critics and cultural historians. The journal focuses primarily on Shakespeare and his contemporaries but embraces theoretical and historical studies of socio-political, intellectual and artistic contexts that extend well beyond the early modern English theatrical milieu. In addition to articles, Shakespeare Studies offers unique opportunities for extended intellectual exchange through its thematically-focused forums, and includes substantial reviews. An international editorial board maintains the quality of each volume so that Shakespeare Studies may serve as a reliable resource for all students of Shakespeare and the early modern period - for research scholars as well as teachers, actors and directors. Volume 52 includes a Forum devoted the "Second Acts" of Shakespeare scholars with contributions from Mary Thomas Crane, Ayanna Thompson, Emily C. Bartels, Carla Della Gatta, Mary Jo Kietzman, Gina Bloom, Kevin Windhauser, Brinda Charry, Andrew J. Hartley, and Emma Whipday. Volume 52 includes contributions from the Next Generation Plenary of the Shakespeare Association of America as well as articles by Kinga Földváry ("From Melodrama to Tragedy and Back - Closing the Melodramatic Gap between Bollywood and Hollywood Shakespeare Adaptations"), Laura Higgins ("Locating Herself, Finding Her Voice: Mapping the Queen's Story in Shakespeare's Richard II"), Wesley Kisting ("The Theater of Conscience: Reforming Punishment in Measure for Measure"), Wolfgang G. Müller ("The Political Philosophies of Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar and the Theory of Preventive Tyrannicide"), and Greg M. Colón Semenza ("'Please, just no Shakespeare' Station Eleven's Utopian Economy of Cultural Distinction"). Book reviews consider important publications on Shakespeare and university drama; Shakespeare and race; textual studies, editing and performance; poetry, science and the sublime; and entertaining uncertainty in early modern theater.

This book demonstrates the artful means by which Shakespeare responded to the competing claims of acting and writing in the Elizabethan era.

Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.