Shakespeare

by Gabriel Egan

Overview

This book helps the reader make sense of the most commonly studied writer in the world. It starts with a brief explanation of how Shakespeare's writings have come down to us as a series of scripts for actors in the early modern theatre industry of London. The main chapters of the book approach the texts through a series of questions: 'what's changed since Shakespeare's time?', 'to what uses has Shakespeare been put?', and 'what value is there in Shakespeare?' These questions go to the heart of why we study Shakespeare at all, which question the book encourages the readers to answer for themselves in relation to their own critical writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748623723
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2007
Series:	Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gabriel Egan is Lecturer in English in the Department of English & Drama at Loughborough University. He is the Author of Green Shakespeare (Routledge, 2005) and Shakespeare and Marx (OUP, 2004).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; A note on style; Chronology; Introduction; How Shakespeare's works come down to us; Part One. Dramatic Genres; Chapter One. Comedies: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598); Transformation, translation, and plays to pass the time; Much Ado About Nothing; Soldiers turned lovers; Determining genre; Dirty jokes and sexual mores; Chapter Two. Histories: Richard 2 and Henry 5; This England; Providence; Serialized history and the Tudor Myth; The order of composition; What kind of king is Henry 5?; Chapter Three. Tragedies: Hamlet and Othello; Large and small affairs in Hamlet; Sex, suicide, and scepticism; Testing the supernatural; The character of Othello in isolation; The character of Othello in the world; Racial difference — cultural difference — multiculturalism; Chapter Four. Problem plays and Romances: All's Well that Ends Well and The Winter's Tale; Not Hamlet in a dress, nor Helen in breeches; Choosing among the men; Helen's quest; Unsuitable husbands; Do Hermione and Polixenes paddle palms?; The Winter's Tale as proto-novel; Summer/Winter — Man/Woman — Land/Class; Part Two. Critical Approaches; Chapter Five. Authority and authorship: Measure for Measure; History: Then; Proposing to Isabella; Being a nun; Meaning: Now; Recovering Shakespeare's version; Chapter Six. Performance: Macbeth; The witches; The timing of exits and entrances; The bipolar stage; The apparitions; Indeterminacy; Chapter Seven. Identities: The Tempest; The identity of Caliban; Nature/Nurture; The New World; Colonialism in general; Ariel as subaltern; Chapter Eight. Materialism: Timon of Athens; Base and superstructure; Timon as unaccommodated man; Money, gold, and g(u)ilt: Shakespearian alchemy; The second law of thermodynamics; The new materialism versus Gaia; Conclusion; Student Resources; Electronic Resources and Reference Resources; Glossary; Guide to Further Reading.

Editorial Reviews

In a series of direct, clear, unpatrionising chapters, Egan shows some of the ways in which questions of genre, authorship, context, performance and readers' preoccupations can enter into critical readings of Shakespeare's plays....'Shakespeare' can be genuinely useful for undergraduates, teachers who are not Shakespeare specialists, and some bright A level students.

Use of English

On the whole, this scholarly informed book... [offers] a range of approaches applied to plays of different stages in the Bard's career.

Studies in English Literature