Taking a wide-ranging intertextual approach, Richard Hillman sets Early Modern English play-texts against political and cultural discourses concerning France, as these informed contemporary English consciousness. The English works explored go beyond those directly representing French affairs; the French examples include dramatic treatments of Joan of Arc and of the assassination of the Guises by Henri III. In addition to its fresh readings of some familiar plays, the book proposes, as unique to the English-French dynamic, a theoretical model relating history, discourse and subjectivity.

Of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays, fifteen include queens. This collection gives these characters their due as powerful early modern women and agents of change, bringing together new perspectives from scholars of literature, history, theater, and the fine arts. Essays span Shakespeare’s career and cover a range of famous and lesser-known queens, from the furious Margaret of Anjou in the Henry VI plays to the quietly powerful Hermione in The Winter’s Tale; from vengeful Tamora in Titus Andronicus to Lady Macbeth. Early chapters situate readers in the critical concerns underpinning any discussion of Shakespeare and queenship: the ambiguous figure of Elizabeth I, and the knotty issue of gender presentation. The focus then moves to analysis of issues such as motherhood, intertextuality, and contemporary political contexts; close readings of individual plays; and investigations of rhetoric and theatricality. Featuring twenty-five chapters with a rich variety of themes and methodologies, this handbook is an invaluable reference for students and scholars, and a unique addition to the fields of Shakespeare and queenship studies. Winner of the 2020 Royal Studies Journal book prize

"This volume's main focus is on the ways in which, over the past 400 years, Shakespeare has played a role of significance within a European framework, particularly where a series of political events and ideologically based developments were concerned, such as the early modern wars of religion, the emergence of "the nation" during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the First and Second World Wars, the process of European unification during the 1990s, the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, and Britain's participation in the war in Iraq." "The whole of the collection and particularly the opening section clearly invites a European and even a global perspective." "This book convincingly demonstrates that Shakespeare, both at the level of his meaning in his own time and at that of his reception in later ages, should no longer be studied only in relation to particular nations, but as Dirk Delabastita argues, also at various supranational levels." --Book Jacket.

It is October 1592. Christopher Marlowe, the most accomplished playwright in London, has written The Massacre at Paris for his company, the Lord Admiral's Men. Bubonic plague has hit outlying parishes, forcing theaters to close and postponing the season. Ordinarily, the Rose Theatre would debut Marlowe's work, but its subject—the St. Bartholomew Day's Massacre—is unpleasant and might inflame hostilities against Catholics and their sympathizers, such as merchants on whom trade depends. A new company, the Lord Strange's Men, boasts a young writer, William Shakespeare, who is said to have several barnburners in the queue. A competition is called to decide which company will reopen the theaters. Who will most effectively represent the nation's ideals and energies, its humor and grandeur? One troupe will gain supremacy, primarily for literary but also for cultural, religious, and political reasons. Free supplementary materials for this textbook are available at the Reacting to the Past website. Visit https://reacting.barnard.edu/instructor-resources, click on the RTTP Game Library link, and create a free account to download what is available.

As one of Roosevelt's "brain trusters" and a leading spokesman for the policies of the New Deal in the 1930s, Rexford Tugwell was a major force in government in one of the most critical periods in American history. In this colorful memoir, Tugwell begins with his entry as a freshman into the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1911 and concludes with his acceptance in 1933 of the post of Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in the Roosevelt Administration. Along the way, the reader is treated to a wealth of reactions and asides about a number of significant people, among them Scott Nearing, Simon Nelson Patten, Joseph Wharton, Ezra Pound, Thorstein Veblen, Allen Tate, and his colleagues on the New Republic of the 1920s. Through his often wryly ironic anecdotes, Tugwell reveals how the unique combination of people and events he encountered in the academic world directly influenced his later controversial social and economic reform policies. These years shaped a man who would leave an indelible mark on American life. To the Lesser Heights of Morningside illuminates not only the period of Rexford Tugwell's intellectual and political growth but the development of social reform and economic recovery ideas at two prominent universities during the twenties and thirties. Tugwell provides us with an intriguing and privileged glance into the intellectual climate and the complex of ideas that gave rise to the New Deal Era. As Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, and then Undersecretary, Tugwell took a bold stance on the government's role in the regulation of industry and establishment of social welfare programs. From 1935-36 he headed the Rural Resettlement Administration and aided in the formation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Tugwell was the originator of currency legislation and of the processing tax. In 1941 he became governor of Puerto Rico, where he did much to improve economic and political conditions. Among his written works is he definitive biography of FDR, The Democratic Roosevelt. Tugwell returned to teaching after his governorship and held both active and honorary posts until his death in 1979.