Shakespeare and Biography is not a new biography of Shakespeare. Instead, it is a study of what biographers have said about Shakespeare, from the first formal biography in the early 18th century by Nicholas Rowe to Stephen Greenblatt, James Shapiro, Jonathan Bate, Germaine Greer, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Park Honan, Rene Weis, and others who have written recent biographical accounts of England's greatest writer. The emphasis is on what sorts of issues these biographers have found especially interesting in relation to sex and gender, politics, religion, pessimism, misanthropy,...

What is it about Hamlet that has made it such a compelling and vital work? Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages is an account of Shakespeare's great play from its sources in Scandinavian epic lore to the way it was performed and understood in his own day, and then how the play has fared down to the present: performances on stage, television, and in film, critical evaluations, publishing history, spinoffs, spoofs, musical adaptations, the play's growing reputation, its influence on writers and thinkers, and the ways in which it has shaped the very language we speak. The staging,...

This clear and succinct book is designed for general readers who want to know how to go about reading Shakespeare's works for pleasure.

• Encourages readers to approach Shakespeare's works aggressively, interactively, and questioningly
  
• Focuses on six popular Shakespeare plays - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV Part I, Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest
  
• Recommends the best editions, recordings and DVDs / videos of these plays
  
• Discusses the production of the plays on stage and screen
  
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