A Penguin Classics edition containing The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night Shakespearean comedy has as much to do with the structure and movement of the drama as with the wit of its dialogue or the humour of its characters. In these four comedies there is a near-tragic crisis at which disaster or happiness may ensue, but the overriding force of goodwill and the power of understanding, love and generosity brings us through to a joyful conclusion. In comedy, 'sweet are the uses of adversity', so that the...
A Penguin Classics edition containing The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night...
The sonnets are among the most accomplished and fascinating poems in the English language. They are central to an understanding of Shakespeare's work as a poet and poetic dramatist, and while their autobiographical relevance is uncertain, no account of Shakespeare's life can afford to ignore them. So many myths and superstitions have arisen around these poems, relating for example to their possible addressees, to their coherence as a sequence, to their dates of composition, to their relation to other poetry of the period and to Shakespeare's plays, that even the most naive reader will find it...
The sonnets are among the most accomplished and fascinating poems in the English language. They are central to an understanding of Shakespeare's work ...
Hailed by The Washington Post as "a definitive synthesis of the best editions" and by The Times of London as "a monument to Shakespearean scholarship," The Oxford Shakespeare is the ultimate anthology of the Bard's work: the most authoritative edition of the plays and poems ever published.
Now, almost two decades after the original volume, Oxford is proud to announce a thoroughly updated second edition, including for the first time the texts of The Reign of Edward III and Sir Thomas More, recognizing these two plays officially as authentic...
Hailed by The Washington Post as "a definitive synthesis of the best editions" and by The Times of London as "a monument to Shakespe...
From the dean of Shakespeare studies comes a lively, entertaining work of biography that firmly locates Shakespeare within the hectic, exilarating world in which he lived and worked.Theatre in Shakespeare's day was a growth industry. Everyone knew everyone else, and they all sought to learn, borrow, or steal from one another. Stanley Wells explores the theatre world from behind the scenes, examining how the great actors of the time influenced Shakespeare's work. He writes about the lives and works of the other major writers of the day and discusses Shakespeare's relationships-sometimes...
From the dean of Shakespeare studies comes a lively, entertaining work of biography that firmly locates Shakespeare within the hectic, exilarating wor...
One of the best-known and most versatile of Shakespearian scholars considers the extent to which sexual meaning in Shakespeare's writing relies on interpretation by actors, directors and critics. Tracing interpretations of Shakespearian "bawdy" and "innuendo" from the eighteenth-century to the present, Stanley Wells pays special attention to interpretations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Sonnets and homosexual relationships in the plays.
One of the best-known and most versatile of Shakespearian scholars considers the extent to which sexual meaning in Shakespeare's writing relies on int...
One of the best-known and most versatile of Shakespearian scholars considers the extent to which sexual meaning in Shakespeare's writing relies on interpretation by actors, directors and critics. Tracing interpretations of Shakespearian "bawdy" and "innuendo" from the eighteenth-century to the present, Stanley Wells pays special attention to interpretations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Sonnets and homosexual relationships in the plays.
One of the best-known and most versatile of Shakespearian scholars considers the extent to which sexual meaning in Shakespeare's writing relies on int...
King Lear, widely considered Shakespeare's most deeply moving, passionately expressed, and intellectually ambitious play, has almost always been edited from the revised version printed in the First Folio of 1623, with additions from the quarto of 1608. Now for the first time, this new volume presents the full, scholarly edition to be based firmly on the quarto, now recognized as the base text from which all others derive. A thorough, attractively written introduction suggests how the work grew slowly in Shakespeare's imagination, fed by years of reading, thinking, and experience as a...
King Lear, widely considered Shakespeare's most deeply moving, passionately expressed, and intellectually ambitious play, has almost always been edite...