Bøger i Cambridge School Shakespeare serien

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of The Merchant of Venice retains the text and Introduction prepared by M. M. Mahood and features a new introductory section by Charles Edelman. Where Mahood focuses in her Introduction on the expectations of the play's first audience and on our modern experience of seeing and hearing the drama performed, Edelman explores the play's sexual politics. He also foregrounds recent scholarship on the position of Jews in Shakespeare's time and surveys the international scope and diversity of theatrical interpretations of the text in the 1980s and 1990s. He pays particular attention to the ways in which directors and actors tackle the troubling figure of Shylock.

As You Like It has sometimes seemed a subversive play that exposes the instability of gender roles and traditional values. In other eras it has been prized - or derided - as a reliable celebration of conventional social mores. The play's ability to encompass these extremes tells an interesting story about changing cultural and theatrical practices. This edition provides a detailed history of the play in production, both on stage and on screen. The introduction examines how changing conceptions of gender roles have affected the portrayal of Rosalind, one of Shakespeare's greatest comic heroines. The striking differences between the British tradition and the freer treatment the play has received abroad are discussed, as well as the politics of court versus country. The commentary, printed alongside the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the text, draws on primary sources to illuminate how costuming, stage business, design, and directorial choices have shaped the play in performance.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of Antony and Cleopatra, David Bevington has included in his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent critical and stage interpretations, demonstrating how the theatrical design and imagination of this play make it one of Shakespeare's most remarkable tragedies. The edition is attentive throughout to the play as theatre: a detailed, illustrated account of the stage history is followed, in the commentary, by discussion of staging options offered by the text. The commentary is especially full and helpful, untangling many obscure words and phrases, illuminating sexual puns, and alerting the reader to Shakespeare's shaping of his source material in Plutarch's Lives.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss, provides a thorough reconsideration of what was probably Shakespeare's last tragedy. In the introduction, Bliss situates the play within its contemporary social and political contexts and pays particular attention to Shakespeare's manipulation of his primary source in Plutarch's Lives. The edition is alert to the play's theatrical potential, while the stage history also attends to the politics of performance from the 1680s onwards, including European productions following the Second World War. A new introductory section by Bridget Escolme accounts for recent theatrical productions as well as scholarly criticism of the last decade, with particular emphasis on gender and politics.

This edition tells the story of Hamlet in production, from Burbage at the Globe to Branagh on film, relating stage interpretations to developments in the theatre, literary criticism and society. The introduction focuses on whole productions of the play including supporting players and, in this century, direction and design.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of The Tempest, David Lindley has thoroughly revised the Introduction to take account of the latest developments in criticism and performance. He has also added a completely new section on casting in recent productions of the play. The complex questions this new section raises about colonisation, racial and gender stereotypes and the nature of theatrical experience are explored throughout the introduction. Careful attention is paid to dramatic form, stagecraft, and the use of music and spectacle in The Tempest, a play that is widely regarded as one of Shakespeare's most elusive and suggestive. A revised and updated reading list completes the edition.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of King Henry V, Shakespeare's most celebrated war play, Andrew Gurr has added a new section to his introduction in which he considers recent criticism and important contemporary productions of the play. Concentrating in particular on 'secret' versus 'official' readings of the work, he analyses Shakespeare's double vision of Henry as both military hero and self-seeking individual, and shows how the patriotic declarations of the Chorus are contradicted by the play's dramatic action. Controversial sequences are placed in the context of Elizabethan thought while the exceptional variety of language and dialect in the text is also studied. An updated reading list completes the edition.

For four centuries Twelfth Night has inspired theatre directors and performers. Surveying a dazzling range of Twelfth Night productions - including many significant productions which have not received due critical attention previously - Schafer provides the reader with an indispensable stage history of this popular play, from its first performance to today.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This is the third New Cambridge edition of The Taming of the Shrew, one of Shakespeare's most popular yet controversial plays. Ann Thompson considers its reception in the light of the hostility and embarrassment that the play often arouses, taking account of both scholarly defences and modern feminist criticism. For this version the editor pays lively attention to the problematic nature of debates about the play and its reception in the twenty-first century. She discusses recent editions and textual, performance and critical studies.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This third edition of Julius Caesar retains the text prepared by Marvin Spevak for the 1988 first edition and features a completely new introduction by Jeremy Lopez. Discussing in detail the play's strange and innovative form, Lopez explores the interpretive challenges Julius Caesar has presented to audiences, scholars and theatre companies from Shakespeare's time to our own. The textual commentary has been revised and updated with an eye, and ear, to the contemporary student reader, and the list of further readings has been updated to reflect the latest developments in scholarly criticism. The edition concludes with an Appendix containing relevant excerpts from Shakespeare's main source in Plutarch.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of Measure for Measure Angela Stock has written a new introductory section that takes account of recent scholarly criticism and important contemporary productions on stage and film. The edition retains the text prepared by Brian Gibbons together with his comprehensive introduction, in which he shows how the play's critical reception and stage history varies from one period to the next according to the prevailing social, moral and religious issues of the day. Gibbons explores the thrilling experience of watching the play in performance, with its shocking reversals and surprises, great tragic poetry and exuberant comic prose. An updated reading list completes the edition.