While the focus is predominantly on Bulgaria, its particular experience is considered as representative of the entire Soviet bloc, to which it belonged for four and a half long decades. And its multiple links with partner-countries in this fold are always kept in view."--BOOK JACKET.

'Shakespeare in Art' looks at the huge variety of painters who made Shakespeare's extremes of passion, his evocations of nature, his spirit world and his eternally familiar characters the subjects of their own work. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Western culture.

A fascinating literary detective story charting the surprising, true history of a recently discovered painting of Shakespeare held by the same family for 400 years -- adding new drama to the Bard's life. When author Stephanie Nolen reported the discovery of the only portrait of William Shakespeare painted while he was alive, the announcement ignited furious controversy around the world. Now, in this provocative biography of the portrait, she tells the riveting story of how a rare image of the young Bard at thirty-nine came to reside in the suburban home of a retired engineer, whose grandmother kept the family treasure under her bed, and how he embarked on authenticating it. The ultimate Antiques Roadshow dream, the portrait has been confirmed by six years of painstaking forensic studies to date from around 1600, and it has not been altered since.

Open a new portal into Shakespeare’s words—and his Renaissance life—with math and numbers as your key. Shakespeare’s era was abuzz with mathematical progress, from the new concept of “zero” to Galileo’s redraft of the heavens. Now, Rob Eastaway uncovers the many surprising ways math shaped Shakespeare’s plays—and his world—touring astronomy, code-breaking, color theory, navigation, music, sports, and more. How reliable was a pocket sundial? Was math illusionist John Dee the real-life Prospero? How long was a Scottish mile, and what could you buy for a groat? Do Jupiter’s moons have a cameo in Cymbeline? How did ordinary people use numbers day to day? And might Shakespeare have tried that game-changing invention—the pencil? Full of delights for devotees of both Tudor history and the Bard, Much Ado About Numbers is proof that the arts and sciences have always danced together.

This volume, with a foreword by Dennis Kennedy, addresses a range of attitudes to Shakespeare's English history plays in Britain and abroad from the early seventeenth century to the present day. It concentrates on the play texts as well as productions, translations and adaptations of them. The essays explore the multiple points of intersection between the English history they recount and the experience of British and other national cultures, establishing the plays as genres not only relevant to the political and cultural history of Britain but also to the history of nearly every nation worldwide. The plays have had a rich international reception tradition but critics and theatre historians abroad, those practising 'foreign' Shakespeare, have tended to ignore these plays in favour of the comedies and tragedies. By presenting the British and foreign Shakespeare traditions side by side, this volume seeks to promote a more finely integrated world Shakespeare.