Paying close attention to the performance conditions in the Elizabethan theatre, Edelman (English, Edith Cowan U., Western Australia) explores how Shakespeare's many battle scenes, duels, and single combats would have been presented by his own company. He draws on the whole range of plays to argue that such scenes reinforce poetic and dramatic themes, rather than merely provide a popular spectacle for the crowd. Distributed in the US by St. Martin's Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts, the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins>

This new edition of Shakespeare's most celebrated war play points to the many inconsistencies in the presentation of Henry V. Andrew Gurr's substantial introduction explains the play as a reaction to the decade of war which preceded its writing, and analyses the play's double vision of Henry as both military hero and self-seeking individual. Professor Gurr shows how the patriotic declarations of the Chorus are contradicted by the play's action. He places the play's more controversial sequences in the context of Elizabethan thought, in particular the studies of the laws and morality of war written in the years before Henry V. He also studies the variety of language and dialect in the play. The appendices summarise Shakespeare's debt to his dramatic and historical sources, while the stage history shows how subsequent centuries have received and adapted the play on the stage and in film.

This remarkable study shows how prologues ushered audience and actors through a rite of passage and how they can be seen to offer rich insight into what the early modern theatre was thought capable of achieving.