Shakespeare, Our Contemporary is a provocative, original study of the major plays of Shakespeare. More than that, it is one of the few critical works to have strongly influenced theatrical productions. Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz are among the many directors who have acknowledged their debt to Jan Kott, finding in his analogies between Shakespearean situations and those in modern life and drama the seeds of vital new stage conceptions. Shakespeare, Our Contemporary has been translated into nineteen languages since it appeared in 1961, and readers all over the world have similarly found their responses to Shakespeare broadened and enriched.

Arguably the first play in a Shakespearean tetralogy, Richard II is a unique and compelling political drama whose themes still resonate today. It is one of the few Shakespeare plays written entirely in verse and its format presents unique theatrical challenges. Politically engaged and controversial, it raises crucial debates about the relationship between early modern art, audience response and state power. This collection provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the critical and theatrical history of the play. The substantial introduction surveys the history of critical interpretations of Richard II since the eighteenth century. The eleven newly written critical essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field then adopt an eclectic range of critical approaches that encourage scholars and students to pursue new and imaginative directions with the text.

A complete critical introduction to New Historicist and Cultural Materialist approaches that have dominated contemporary Shakespeare theory, as well as alternative new directions.

The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on critical approaches to Shakespeare by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on 20 specific critical practices, each grounded in analysis of a Shakespeare play. These practices range from foundational approaches including character studies, close reading and genre studies, through those that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s that challenged the preconceptions on which traditional liberal humanism is based, including feminism, cultural materialism and new historicism. Perspectives drawn from postcolonial, queer studies and critical race studies, besides more recent critical practices including presentism, ecofeminism and cognitive ethology all receive detailed treatment. In addition to its coverage of distinct critical approaches, the handbook contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A–Z glossary of key terms and concepts, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field and a substantial annotated bibliography.

An electrifying new study that investigates the challenges of the Bard’s inconsistencies and flaws, and focuses on revealing—not resolving—the ambiguities of the plays and their changing topicality A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn’t tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith—an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer—takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.

During the last two decades, new critical schools of Shakespeare scholarship have emerged, each with its own ideology, each convinced that all other approaches are deficient. This controversial book argues that in attempting to appropriate Shakespeare for their own purposes, these schools omit and misrepresent Shakespeare's text--and thus distort it. Brian Vickers describes the iconoclastic attitudes emerging in French criticism of the 1960s that continue to influence literary theory: that language cannot reliably represent reality; that literature cannot represent life; that since no definitive reading is possible, all interpretation is misinterpretation. Vickers shows that these positions have been refuted, and he brings together work in philosophy, linguistics, and literary theory to rehabilitate language and literature. He then surveys the main conflicting schools in Shakespearean and other current literary criticism--deconstructionism, feminism, new historicism, cultural materialism, and psychoanalytic, Marxist, and Christian interpretations--describing the theoretical basis of each school, both in its own words and in those of its critics. Evaluating the resulting interpretations of Shakespeare, he shows that each is biased and fragmentary in its own way. The epilogue considers two related issues: the attempt of current literary theory to present itself as a coherent system while at the same time wishing to evade accountability; and the way in which different schools "demonize" their rivals, thus adding an intolerant tone to much recent criticism.

Oxford Shakespeare Topics (General Editors Peter Holland and Stanley Wells) provide students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship, including some general anthologies relating to Shakespeare. Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century traces the reception of Shakespeare in the critical literature from the end of Victorianism to the present day. It charts a course through the turbulent waters of the twentiethcentury's intense and prolific engagement with Shakespeare, dramatist and poet. This is not an exhaustive history: its aim is to describe the place of the major Shakespeare critics in the schools and movements of their times. Following an introductory overview of the major trends in Shakespeare criticism in their embattled state in the twentieth century, later chapters take up the various strands of this criticism in a more expansive manner. While recognizing that these strands work from genuine differences of principle and methodology, Taylor points out connections, parallels, and echoes between and among the critical approaches. The book ranges widely across the plays and poems, and canvasses all stages of Shakespeare's career.