This edition of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by six sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to fit many different approaches to Shakespeare's play and the early modern culture out of which the play emerges. The texts include travel accounts, poetry, excerpts from early modern fencing manuals, royal proclamations and statutes, tables and prognostications from an early modern almanac, and orders for religious ceremonies from The Book of Common Prayer. Unique to this edition, too, is the inclusion...

This edition of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by four sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to facilitate many different approaches to Shakespeare's play and the early modern culture out of which the play emerges. The texts include royal proclamations, speeches, court records, sermons, biographical writings, prayers, ballads, poetry, excerpts from plays and the Bible, and drawings, woodcuts, and engravings. These documents contextualize the role of rulers and government in Jacobean society,...

The Corrupting Power of Unchecked Ambition. The main theme of Macbeth-the destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral constraints-finds its most powerful expression in the play's two main characters. Macbeth (full title The Tragedy of Macbeth) is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, and is considered one of his darkest and most powerful works. Set in Scotland, the play illustrates the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. The play is believed to have been written between 1599 and 1606, and is most...

From Longman's new Cultural Edition series, Hamlet, edited by Constance Jordan, includes the play and contextual materials from the era of Shakespeare.

This edition represents Shakespeare's text as it appears in the most authoritative of early editions, the Folio, published in 1623, and it supplies students with useful footnotes to the interpretation of the text. It also includes brief samples of works by Shakespeare's contemporaries in a section entitled Contexts; which will help students understand the historical setting and cultural ideas that helped shape the...

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to forswear the company of women for three years of study and fasting, and their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies. In an untraditional ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess's father, and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine love and desire,...

"The film, like the play, will have something for everyone," he says. "Its a ghost story, a thriller, an action-packed murder mystery, and a great tragedy that is profoundly moving." With an outstanding cast of international actors--including Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Julie Christie as Gertrude, Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Charlton Heston as the Player King, Robin Williams as Osric, and Gerard Depardieu as Reynaldo--Branagh's version, in which he will play the title role as well as direct, is sure to go down in film history This beautiful volume includes Branagh's introduction and screenplay...

The text is taken from the Norton Critical Edition and includes a preface and footnotes by Byrus Hoy, professor emeritus at the University of Rochester. The preface speaks to the choice of text--primarily the second quarto with reliance on the folio as necessary--and places it in the context of its times and of the evolving criticism of the play.

"Contexts and Sources" includes dueling arguments on the play's completeness (one play or one half of a play?) and the naming of a central character (Falstaff or Oldcastle?) "Criticism" includes twenty-four essays--from E. M. W. Tillyard's classic argument of an ordered Shakespearean universe to Graham Holderness's rebuttal to Gus Van Sant's interview regarding1 Henry IV as the inspiration for his cult film, My Own Private Idaho--nineteen of them new to the Third Edition. The Selected Bibliography has been thoroughly updated.

This challenging and lively volume contains essays by Stephen Greenblatt, Elaine Showalter, Jonathan Goldberg, Stanley Cavell, Robert Weimann, Margaret Fergusson, Howard Felperin and many others.