Given the wealth of formal debate contained in this tragedy, Troilus and Cressida was probably written in 1602 for a performance at one of the Inns of the Court. Shakespeare's treatment of the age-old tale of love and betrayal is based on many sources, from Homer and Ovid to Chaucer and Shakespeare's near contemporary Robert Greene. In the introduction the various problems connected with the play, its performance, and publication, are considered succinctly; its multiple sources are discussed in detail, together with its peculiar stage history and its renewed popularity in recent...

This book discovers what the sources to Shakespeare's Comedies and Tragedies really were and considers the dramatic reasons for Shakespeare's departure from them.

On her death, Professor Ellis-Fermor left behind some uncollected essays and part of a book on Shakespeare the Dramatist. This volume includes the chapters of the unfinished work and three further articles on Shakespeare.

This collection of essays by the first General Editor of the New Arden Shakespeare brings together the best of Ellis-Fermor's Shespearean criticism in addition to outstanding essays on Coriolanus and Troilus and Cressida.

This book discusses the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration in the plays of "Edward III, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Pericles" and the lost "Cardenio." It includes chapters on the dramatic value of the plays irrespective of authorship.

Discussing Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to sonnets by Italian, French and English poets, Kenneth Muir shows how they were influenced by Shakespeare's reading of Sidney, Erasmus and Ovid and discusses their art in terms of construction, sound

This book ascertains what sources Shakespeare used for the plots of his plays and discusses the use he made of them; and secondly illustrates how his general reading is woven into the texture of his work. The plays are examined in approximately

This study argues that the plays of Shakespeare must be studied by comparison with each other and not as separate entities; that they must be related to one another, to the poems and to the Sonnets; that each individual play acquires a deeper

The emphasis of this book is that each of Shakespeare's tragedies demanded its own individual form and that although certain themes run through most of the tragedies, nearly all critics refrain from the attempt to apply external rules to them.

Considered one of Shakespeare's greatest history plays, The Tragedy of King Richard II concerns the ill-fated reign of a king whose eventual overthrow marks the beginning of Shakespeare's history cycle, including Henry IV, Part I, Henry IV Part II; and Henry V.

This edition features an overview of Shakespeare's works by Sylvan Barnet, former Chairman of the English Department at Tufts University, as well as a comprehensive stage and screen history, dramatic criticism from the past and present, and sources from which Shakespeare derived this great work.