A comprehensive analysis of the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors. This volume focuses on Shakespeare's reception by major American writers and poets.

Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

This volume looks at Marx and Freud, who, though not 'Shakespeareans' in the usual academic or theatrical sense, were both deeply informed by Shakespeare's writings, and have both had enormous influence on the understanding and reception of Shakespeare. The first section of this volume consists of a discussion of Marx's use of Shakespeare by Crystal Bartolovich followed by an essay on Shakespeareans' recent uses of Marx by Jean E. Howard. The volume's second half, written by David Hillman, juxtaposes a discussion of Freud's use of Shakespeare with a meditation on Shakespeare's 'use' of Freud. Each part can be read fruitfully independently of the others, but the sum is greater than the parts, offering an engagement with two of the most influential thinkers in Western modernity and their interchanges with, arguably, the most influential figure of early modernity: Shakespeare.

A comprehensive critical analysis of the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors. This volume focuses on Shakespeare's reception by Bradley, Greg and Folger.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Great Shakespeareans will be an essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

The Great William is the first book to explore how seven renowned writers—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Virginia Woolf, Charles Olson, John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, and Ted Hughes—wrestled with Shakespeare in the very moments when they were reading his work. What emerges is a constellation of remarkable intellectual and emotional encounters. Theodore Leinwand builds impressively detailed accounts of these writers’ experiences through their marginalia, lectures, letters, journals, and reading notes. We learn why Woolf associated reading Shakespeare with her brother Thoby, and what Ginsberg meant when referring to the mouth feel of Shakespeare’s verse. From Hughes’s attempts to find a “skeleton key” to all of Shakespeare’s plays to Berryman’s tormented efforts to edit King Lear, Leinwand reveals the palpable energy and conviction with which these seven writers engaged with Shakespeare, their moments of utter self-confidence and profound vexation. In uncovering these intense public and private reactions, The Great William connects major writers’ hitherto unremarked scenes of reading Shakespeare with our own.