Women reading Shakespeare, 1660-1900 comprehensively rediscovers a lost tradition of women's writing on Shakespeare. Since Margaret Cavendish published the first critical essay on Shakespeare in 1664, women have written as scholars, critics, editors, performers and popularisers of Shakespeare. Many found in Shakespeare criticism the opportunity to raise a wide variety of issues, ranging from the use of literary sources to girls' education, the role of women in society, family life, social relations and ethnic difference. In their different ways, women appropriated Shakespeare to their own...

A collection of new and specially commissioned essays by an eminent team of Shakespeare scholars, focusing on the particular issues relating to the editing of Shakespeare and other Renaissance texts. The editing of dramatic and other literary texts has always been an important aspect of literary studies. In recent years, editing and the theoretical frameworks that underlie editing practices have become a lively and controversial focus of debate, sparked both by philosophical discussions on 'the death of the author' and by the technological challenges presented by the possibilities of...

King Lear is an enormous work in every sense. Despite the misgivings and often pertinent criticisms of earlier generations of critics, it seems now to be accepted as the greatest monument of our culture: the most revered play by the most revered writer in our language.

In this study, Dr. Thompson first analyses the many critical approaches to King Lear, placing in context the formal, historical, social, philosophical, religious, mico-level and performance-based approaches. In her Appraisal section, she investigates the phenomenon of 'The Greatness of King Lear',...