We celebrate Shakespeare as a creator of plays and poems, characters and ideas, words and worlds. But so too, in the four centuries since his death in 1616, have thinkers, writers, artists and performers recreated him. Readers of this book are invited to explore Shakespeare's afterlife on the stage and on the screen, in poetry, fiction, music and dance, as well as in cultural and intellectual life. A series of concise introductory essays are here combined with personal reflections by prominent contemporary practitioners of the arts. At once a celebration and a critical response, the book explores Shakespeare as a global cultural figure who continues to engage artists, audiences and readers of all kinds. Includes contributions from: John Ashbery, Shaul Bassi, Simon Russell Beale, Sally Beamish, David Bintley, Michael Bogdanov, Kenneth Branagh, Debra Ann Byrd, John Caird, Antoni Cimolino, Wendy Cope, Gregory Doran, Margaret Drabble, Dominic Dromgoole, Ellen Geer, Michael Holroyd, Gordon Kerry, John Kinsella, Juan Carlos Liberti, Lachlan Mackinnon, David Malouf, Javier Marías, Yukio Ninagawa, Janet Suzman, Salley Vickers, Rowan Williams, Lisa Wolpe, Greg Wyatt. All proceeds from the sale of this volume will be donated to the International Shakespeare Association, to support the study and appreciation of Shakespeare around the world.

We celebrate Shakespeare as a creator of plays and poems, characters and ideas, words and worlds. But so too, in the four centuries since his death in 1616, have thinkers, writers, artists and performers recreated him. Readers of this book are invited to explore Shakespeare's afterlife on the stage and on the screen, in poetry, fiction, music and dance, as well as in cultural and intellectual life. A series of concise introductory essays are here combined with personal reflections by prominent contemporary practitioners of the arts. At once a celebration and a critical response, the book explores Shakespeare as a global cultural figure who continues to engage artists, audiences and readers of all kinds. Includes contributions from: John Ashbery, Shaul Bassi, Simon Russell Beale, Sally Beamish, David Bintley, Michael Bogdanov, Kenneth Branagh, Debra Ann Byrd, John Caird, Antoni Cimolino, Wendy Cope, Gregory Doran, Margaret Drabble, Dominic Dromgoole, Ellen Geer, Michael Holroyd, Gordon Kerry, John Kinsella, Juan Carlos Liberti, Lachlan Mackinnon, David Malouf, Javier Marías, Yukio Ninagawa, Janet Suzman, Salley Vickers, Rowan Williams, Lisa Wolpe, Greg Wyatt. All proceeds from the sale of this volume will be donated to the International Shakespeare Association, to support the study and appreciation of Shakespeare around the world.

New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity documents and analyses the different ways in which a range of innovative projects take Shakespeare out into the world beyond education and the theatre. Mixing critical reflection on the social value of Shakespeare with new creative work in different forms and idioms, the volume triumphantly shows that Shakespeare can make a real contribution to contemporary civic life. Highlights include: Garrick's 1769 Shakespeare ode, its revival in 2016, and a devised performance interpretation of it; the full text of Carol Ann Duffy's A Shakespeare Masque (set to music by Sally Beamish); a new Shakespearean libretto inspired by Wagner; an exploration of the civic potential of new Shakespeare opera and ballet; a fresh Shakespeare-inspired poetic liturgy, including commissions by major British poets; a production of The Merchant of Venice marking the 500th anniversary of the Venetian Jewish Ghetto; and a remaking of Pericles as a response to the global migrant crisis.

This collection of essays brings together innovative scholarship on Shakespeare’s afterlives in tribute to Christy Desmet. Contributors explore the production and consumption of Shakespeare in acts of adaptation and appropriation across a range of performance topics, from book history to the novel to television, cinema, and digital media.

Shakespeare's plays have never had a larger audience than they do in our time. This wide viewing is complemented by modern scholarship, which has verified and elucidated the plays' texts. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's plays continue to be revised. In order to find out how and why he has been rewritten, Ruby Cohn examines modern dramatic offshoots in English, French, and German. Surveying drama intended for the serious theater, the author discusses modern versions of Shakespeare's plays, especially Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. Although the focus is always on drama, contrast is supplied by fiction stemming from Hamlet and essays inspired by King Lear. The book concludes with an assessment of the influence of Shakespeare on the creative work of Shaw, Brecht, and Beckett. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

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.

Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.

Structured around modes in which one might encounter Asian-themed performances and adaptations, Shakespeare and East Asia identifies four themes that distinguish post-1950s East Asian cinemas and theatres from works in other parts of the world: Japanese formalistic innovations in sound and spectacle; reparative adaptations from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; the politics of gender and reception of films and touring productions in South Korea and the UK; and multilingual, diaspora works in Singapore and the UK. These adaptations break new ground in sound and spectacle; they serve as a vehicle for artistic and political remediation or, in some cases, the critique of the myth of reparative interpretations of literature; they provide a forum where diasporic artists and audiences can grapple with contemporary issues; and, through international circulation, they are reshaping debates about the relationship between East Asia and Europe. Bringing film and theatre studies together, this book sheds new light on the two major genres in a comparative context and reveals deep structural and narratological connections among Asian and Anglophone performances. These adaptations are products of metacinematic and metatheatrical operations, contestations among genres for primacy, or experimentations with features of both film and theatre.