Shakespeare: A Complete Introduction is designed to give you everything you need to succeed, all in one place. It covers the key themes and critical concepts that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the ideas in clear jargon-free English, and then providing added-value features like key quotes, chapter recap sections, and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam.
The book organizes Shakespeare's work by genre and theme, in order to look closely at the individual plays. It opens with contextualizing information about the original texts,...

Literary theory has now become integral to how we produce literary criticism. When critics write about a text, they no longer think just about the biographical or historical contexts of the work, but also about the different approaches that literary theory offers. By making use of these, they create new interpretations of the text that would not otherwise be possible. In your own reading and writing, literary theory fosters new avenues into the text. It allows you to make informed comments about the language and form of literature, but also about the core themes - concepts such as gender,...