This innovative collection explores uses of Shakespeare in a wide variety of 21st century contexts, including business manuals, non-literary scholarship, database aggregation, social media, gaming, and creative criticism. Essays in this volume demonstrate that users’ critical and creative uses of the dramatist’s works position contemporary issues of race, power, identity, and authority in new networks that redefine Shakespeare and reconceptualize the ways in which he is processed in both scholarly and popular culture. While The Shakespeare User contributes to the burgeoning corpus of critical works on digital and Internet Shakespeares, this volume looks beyond the study of Shakespeare artifacts to the system of use and users that constitute the Shakespeare network. This reticular understanding of Shakespeare use expands scholarly forays into non-academic practices, digital discourse communities, and creative critical works manifest via YouTube, Twitter, blogs, databases, websites, and popular fiction.

Grammar-school students in Shakespeare's time were taught to recognise the two hundred figures of speech that Renaissance scholars had derived from Latin and Greek sources (from amphibologia through onomatopoeia to zeugma). This knowledge was one element in their thorough grounding in the liberal arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, known as the trivium. In Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language Sister Miriam Joseph writes: "The extraordinary power, vitality, and richness of Shakespeare's language are due in part to his genius, in part to the fact that the unsettled linguistic forms of his age promoted to an unusual degree the spirit of creativeness, and in part to the theory of composition then prevailing . . . The purpose of this study is to present to the modern reader the general theory of composition current in Shakespeare's England." The author then lays out those figures of speech in simple, understandable patterns and explains each one with examples from Shakespeare. Her analysis of his plays and poems illustrates that the Bard knew more about rhetoric than perhaps anyone else. Originally published in 1947, this book is a classic.

The contribution of the present work is to present in organized detail essentially complete the general theory of composition current during the Renaissance (as contrasted with special theories for particular forms of composition) and the illustration of Shakespeare’s use of it. It is organized as follows: Part One: Introduction I. The General Theory of Composition and of Reading in Shakespeare’s England 1. The Concept of Art in Renaissance England 2. Training in the Arts in Renaissance England 3. The English Works on Logic and Rhetoric 4. The Tradition 5. Invention and Disposition Part Two. Shakespeare’s Use of the Theory II. Shakespeare’s Use of the Schemes of Grammar, Vices of Language, and Figures of Repetition 1. The Schemes of Grammar 2. The Vices of Language 3. The Figures of Repetition III. Logos: The Topics of Invention 1. Inartificial Arguments or Testimony 2. Definition 3. Division: Genus and Species, Whole and Parts 4. Subject and Adjuncts 5. Contraries and Contradictories 6. Similarity and Dissimilarity 7. Comparison: Greater, Equal, Less 8. Cause and Effect, Antecedent and Consequent 9. Notation and Conjugates IV. Logos: Argumentation 1. Syllogistic Reasoning 2. Fallacious Reasoning 3. Disputation V. Pathos and Ethos 1. Pathos 2. Ethos Part Three. The General Theory of Composition and Reading as Defined and Illustrated by Tudor Logicians and Rhetoricians VI. Schemes of Grammar, Vices of Language, and Figures of Repetition 1. The Schemes of Grammar 2. Vices of Language VII. Logos: The Topics of Invention 1. Inartificial Arguments or Testimony 2. Definition 3. Division: Genus and Species, Whole and Parts 4. Subject and Adjuncts 5. Contraries and Contradictories 6. Similarity and Dissimilarity 7. Comparison: Greater, Equal, Less 8. Cause and Effect, Antecedent and Consequent 9. Notation and Conjugates 10. Genesis or Composition 11. Analysis or Reading VIII. Logos: Argumentation 1. Syllogistic Reasoning 2. Fallacious Reasoning 3. Disputation IX. Pathos and Ethos 1. Pathos 2. Ethos

Catalogs Shakespeare's life, his times, his use of language and choice of words, the best and most insulting lines from his plays and poems, the actors who have performed his plays, the theaters where they have been performed, and the videos, films, and spin-offs of his works.

This book considers early modern and postmodern ideals of health, vigor, ability, beauty, well-being, and happiness, uncovering and historicizing the complex negotiations among physical embodiment, emotional response, and communally-sanctioned behavior in Shakespeare's literary and material world. The volume visits a series of questions about the history of the body and how early modern cultures understand physical ability or vigor, emotional competence or satisfaction, and joy or self-fulfillment. Individual essays investigate the purported disabilities of the "crook-back" King Richard III or the "corpulent" Falstaff, the conflicts between different health-care belief-systems in The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet, the power of figurative language to delineate or even instigate puberty in the Sonnets or Romeo and Juliet, and the ways in which the powerful or moneyed mediate the access of the poor and injured to cure or even to care. Integrating insights from Disability Studies, Health Studies, and Happiness Studies, this book develops both a detailed literary-historical analysis and a provocative cultural argument about the emphasis we place on popular notions of fitness and contentment today.

SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT FEAR guides novice actors through Shakespearean verse, helping them understand dialogue, its meaning and purpose, and finally, helping them interpret it in their acting. It teaches actors how to use verse scansion, rhetoric, and vocal scoring to obtain the desired results from their own acting as well as from others in a scene. Written in the format of a dialogue between a student and an instructor, SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT FEAR explores a student's point of view, addressing the concerns of a first-time Shakespearean actor. The author writes with a sense of humor in a clear, unintimidating style.

The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Interface provides a ground-breaking investigation into media-specific spaces where Shakespeare is experienced. While such operations may be largely invisible to the average reader or viewer, the interface properties of books, screens, and stages profoundly mediate our cognitive engagement with Shakespeare. This volume considers contemporary debates and questions including how mobile devices mediate the experience of Shakespeare; the impact of rapidly evolving virtual reality technologies and the interface architectures which condition Shakespearean plays; and how design elements of hypertext, menus, and screen navigation operate within internet Shakespeare spaces. Charting new frontiers, this diverse collection delivers fresh insight into human–computer interaction and user-experience theory, cognitive ecology, and critical approaches such as historical phenomenology. This volume also highlights the application of media and interface design theory to questions related to the medium of the play and its crucial interface with the body and mind.