During Shakespeare's lifetime, Henry IV was his most popular play. Today, Sir John Falstaff still towers above Shakespeare's other comic inventions. This edition considers the play in the context of various critical approaches, offers a history of the play in performance from Shakespeare's time to ours, and provides useful information on its historical background. Readers will also find detailed commentary on individual words and phrases, and selections from Shakespeare's sources. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has...
During Shakespeare's lifetime, Henry IV was his most popular play. Today, Sir John Falstaff still towers above Shakespeare's other comic inve...
Many readers first encounter Shakespeare's plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So what do we lose when we leave Shakespeare the practitioner behind, and what do we learn when we think about his plays as dramas to be performed?
David Bevington answers these questions with This Wide and Universal Theater, which explores how Shakespeare's plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. Making use of historical documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington brings Shakespeare's original...
Many readers first encounter Shakespeare's plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So wh...
This book takes a new look at the courtly masque--a unique combination of music, dance, speech, and elaborate costume--in early-seventeenth-century England. The essays, written by distinguished scholars from around the world, present an interdisciplinary approach, with experts on dance, music, visual spectacle and politics all addressing the masque from the point of view of their speciality. Together they reveal how rival factions at the courts of James I and of Charles I represented their clash of viewpoints through dancing and spectacle.
This book takes a new look at the courtly masque--a unique combination of music, dance, speech, and elaborate costume--in early-seventeenth-century En...
This collection of essays adopts a novel, interdisciplinary approach to a diverse group of texts composed in London during the Renaissance. Eight literary scholars and eight historians from two continents have been paired to write companion essays on each text. This original method opens up rich insights into London's social, political, and cultural life which would have eluded members of either discipline working in isolation. 'Theatrical' is taken to be a very flexible term, and is applied to the civic rituals and public spectacles of the capital (for example, the execution of King Charles...
This collection of essays adopts a novel, interdisciplinary approach to a diverse group of texts composed in London during the Renaissance. Eight lite...
For this updated edition, David Bevington has included in his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent critical and stage interpretations of Antony and Cleopatra, 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. An updated reading list completes the edition. First Edition Hb (1990) 0-521-25256-3 First...
For this updated edition, David Bevington has included in his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent critical and stage interpretatio...
William Shakespeare David Bevington David Scott Kastan
A triumphantly patriotic play that also casts a critical eye at war and warriors, this great epic drama depicts a charismatic ruler in a time of national struggle. The young King Henry's victory over the French despite overwhelming odds creates a spectacle of action, color, and thundering battles. Whether the warrior-king is urging his men "Once more unto the breach, dear friends," or wooing Katharine of France, Henry is magnificently adapted to the role he must play in England's greatness. Henry V represents the culmination of Shakespeare's art as a writer of historical drama....
A triumphantly patriotic play that also casts a critical eye at war and warriors, this great epic drama depicts a charismatic ruler in a time of natio...
The extended second edition of this inspiring introduction to Shakespeare offers readers more insights into what makes Shakespeare great, and why we still read and perform his works.
A highly innovative introduction to the extraordinary phenomenon of Shakespeare
Explores Shakespeares works through the -Seven Ages of Man-, from childhood to -second childishness and mere oblivion-
Now includes more material on fathers and sons, the perils of courtship, the circumstances of Shakespeares own life, the performance history of...
The extended second edition of this inspiring introduction to Shakespeare offers readers more insights into what makes Shakespeare great, and why we s...
This volume offers the most comprehensive and critically up-to-date edition of Troilus and Cressida available today. Bevington's learned and engaging introduction discusses the ambivalent status and genre of the play, variously presented in its early printing as a comedy, a history and a tragedy. He examines and assimilates the wide variety of critical responses the play has elicited, and argues its importance in today's culture as an experimental and open-ended work. He also, however, suggests that this experimentalism may have contributed to its lack of immediate stage success, and goes on...
This volume offers the most comprehensive and critically up-to-date edition of Troilus and Cressida available today. Bevington's learned and engaging ...
Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Shortly after his early success with Capaspe and Sappho and Phao in 1583-84, he took up the story of two young women, Galatea (or Gallathea) and Phillida who are dressed up in male clothes by their fathers so that they can avoid the requirement of the god Neptune that every year 'the fairest and chastest virgin in all the country' be sacrificed to a sea-monster. Hiding together in the forest, the two maidens fall in love, each supposing the other to be a young man. This leads to delightful complications that remind us of the...
Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Shortly after his early success with Capaspe and Sappho and Phao in 1583-84, he took up ...
Many readers first encounter Shakespeare's plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So what do we lose when we leave Shakespeare the practitioner behind, and what do we learn when we think about his plays as dramas to be performed?
David Bevington answers these questions with This Wide and Universal Theater, which explores how Shakespeare's plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. Making use of historical documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington brings Shakespeare's original...
Many readers first encounter Shakespeare's plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So wh...
