Presenting a background study of honor, the author compares ancient concepts with the sympathetic restatements of them that appeared during the Renaissance. He places Shakespeare's plays in the context of these Renaissance ideas, pointing up the sharp conflict between Christian morality and the revived pagan humanism. He demonstrates by pertinent evidence from the plays that Shakespeare favored humanist values over Christian values. Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Given the wealth of formal debate contained in this tragedy, Troilus and Cressida was probably written in 1602 for a performance at one of the Inns of the Court. Shakespeare's treatment of the age-old tale of love and betrayal is based on many sources, from Homer and Ovid to Chaucer andShakespeare's near contemporary Robert Greene. In the introduction the various problems connected with the play, its performance, and publication, are considered succinctly; its multiple sources are discussed in detail, together with its peculiar stage history and its renewed popularity in recentyears.

Renaissance ideas of honour had a profound influence on the English people who formed Shakespeare’s audiences. In When Honour’s at the Stake, first published in 1973, Norman Council describes the increasing importance of these ideas to the themes and structure of a number of Shakespeare’s major plays. The validity of the most widely approved code of honour was being challenged on a variety of fronts, yet both personal standards of behaviour and public affairs were habitually understood in terms of honour. A series of tragedies are given their basic form by dramatizing the pernicious effects of man’s disobedience to the various demands of honour; in Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear honour is among the principal motives of tragedy. In this way, the modern reader’s comprehension of the plays can be greatly enhanced by reference to Elizabethan honour codes.

A revised edition of this intriguing and complex play, updated to cover recent critical thinking and stage history. Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy often labelled a "problem" play because of its apparent blend of genres and its difficult themes. Set in the Trojan Wars it tells a story of doomed love and honour, offering a debased view of human nature in war-time and a stage peopled by generally unsympathetic characters. The revised edition makes an ideal text for study at undergraduate level and above.

The plays, theme or focus of this volume includes: King John Much Ado About Nothing Timon of Athens Silence

Shakespeare and Impure Aesthetics explores ideas about art implicit in Shakespeare's plays and defines specific Shakespearean aesthetic practices in his use of desire, death and mourning as resources for art. Hugh Grady draws on a tradition of aesthetic theorists who understand art as always formed in a specific historical moment but as also distanced from its context through its form and Utopian projections. Grady sees A Midsummer Night's Dream, Timon of Athens, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet as displaying these qualities, showing aesthetic theory's usefulness for close readings of the plays. The book argues that such social-minded 'impure aesthetics' can revitalize the political impulses of the new historicism while opening up a new aesthetic dimension in the current discussion of Shakespeare.