Product Description: The purpose of this book is to honor the scholarly legacy of Charles R. Forker with a series of essays that address the problem of literary influence in original ways and from a variety of perspectives. The emphasis throughout is on the sort of careful, exhaustive, evidence-based scholarship to which Forker dedicated his entire professional life...read more

3rd edition

Product Description: Since the early '90s, cross-gender casting in performance of Shakespeare's plays has become an increasingly common phenomenon. Such casting has involved not only men playing women's roles but also women playing men's roles, and both playing roles re-gendered for the opposite sex...read more

Shakespeare, Theory and Performance is a groundbreaking collection of seminal essays which apply the abstract theory of Shakespearean criticism to the practicalities of performance. Bringing together the key names from both realms, the collection reflects a wide range of sources and influences, from traditional literary, performance and historical criticism to modern cultural theory. Together they raise questions about the place of performance criticism in modern and often competing debates of cultural materialism, new historicism, feminism and deconstruction. An exciting and fascinating volume, it will be important reading for students and scholars of literary and theatre studies alike.

Product Description: In performance "The Merchant of Venice" often proves a problematic blend of romantic artifice and social realism. Especially since the last century, the figure of Shylock has focused attention on the play's anti-Semitism. Does Shakespeare promote a comic Jewish stereotype, or use that stereotype only to overturn it? Or does he expose the Christians as the true villains and Shylock as his victim? No production of "The Merchant" can be politically or socially disinterested: over the years, the play has tended to arouse more passion and to prompt more theatrical experimentation than any other Shakespearian comedy...read more

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Product Description: Shakespeare's idiom is an aggregate of archaic modes of speech and codes of conduct. This book attempts to make that idiom more accessible and, in the process, to illuminate the significance of heroic concepts to a study of Shakespeare's tragedies and histories.