Reading Antony and Cleopatra is particularly challenging because of Shakespeare's masterful embodiment of Rome and Egypt's contrasting worlds in language, structure, and characterization.
Instead of seeing the interaction of Roman and Egyptian perspectives in Antony and Cleopatra as a type of double image of reality that changes as one moves from one location to another, students often find themselves compelled to pick sides. The more romantic opt for Cleopatra as the most sympathetic character, while the pragmatists dismiss her lifestyle as self-indulgent. The central challenge...

Reading Antony and Cleopatra is particularly challenging because of Shakespeare's masterful embodiment of Rome and Egypt's contrasting worlds in language, structure, and characterization.
Instead of seeing the interaction of Roman and Egyptian perspectives in Antony and Cleopatra as a type of double image of reality that changes as one moves from one location to another, students often find themselves compelled to pick sides. The more romantic opt for Cleopatra as the most sympathetic character, while the pragmatists dismiss her lifestyle as self-indulgent. The central challenge...

Shakespeare's engagement with anti-Semitic tradition is a notoriously disturbing feature of The Merchant of Venice. Douglas Lanier carefully shows how Shakespeare shuttles between language that emphasises irreconcilable differences, and language that emphasizes common humanity, and how you can productively analyse this language for yourself.The language of business-of monetary value, money-making, profit and loss, risk and reward-invades nearly all other issues and themes in The Merchant of Venice, and can also be challenging to grasp. This guide shows how to unpick this...

Shakespeare's engagement with anti-Semitic tradition is a notoriously disturbing feature of The Merchant of Venice. Douglas Lanier carefully shows how Shakespeare shuttles between language that emphasises irreconcilable differences, and language that emphasizes common humanity, and how you can productively analyse this language for yourself.The language of business-of monetary value, money-making, profit and loss, risk and reward-invades nearly all other issues and themes in The Merchant of Venice, and can also be challenging to grasp. This guide shows how to unpick this...

Much Ado About Nothing presents a world of glittering surfaces and exquisite social performances. The language of the play sparkles with a fireworks of wit and dazzling bouts of repartee, most memorably in the "merry war" of words between the reluctant lovers, Benedick and Beatrice. A closer look at the language of the play, however, reveals it to be laced with violence and charged with the desire to humiliate others. Wit is deployed as a weapon to ridicule one's opponent; much of the humour circulates incessantly around the theme of cuckoldry, a major source of male anxiety in the...

Much Ado About Nothing presents a world of glittering surfaces and exquisite social performances. The language of the play sparkles with a fireworks of wit and dazzling bouts of repartee, most memorably in the "merry war" of words between the reluctant lovers, Benedick and Beatrice. A closer look at the language of the play, however, reveals it to be laced with violence and charged with the desire to humiliate others. Wit is deployed as a weapon to ridicule one's opponent; much of the humour circulates incessantly around the theme of cuckoldry, a major source of male anxiety in the...