Shakespeare’s Style presents a detailed consideration of aspects of Shakespeare’s writing style in his plays. Each chapter offers a detailed discussion about a single feature of style in a chosen Shakespeare play. Topics examine include: a discussion of a key image or images, both verbal and nonverbal; consideration of the way a character is put together; reflection of the changing audience response to a character; and audience response to an account of the speech rhythms of a single play. This book will be of interest to audiences who see Shakespeare’s plays, readers of the printed page, and students aiding them in concentrating on the significant ways that Shakespeare expresses himself.

First published in 1980. At their most successful, Shakespeare's styles are strategies to make plain the limits of thought and feeling which define the significance of human actions. John Baxter analyses the way in which these limits are reached, and also provides a strong argument for the idea that the power of Shakespearean drama depends upon the co-operation of poetic style and dramatic form. Three plays are examined in detail in the text: The Tragedy of Mustapha by Fulke Greville and Richard II and Macbeth by Shakespeare.

When Shakespeare gave up tragedy around 1607 and turned to the new form we call romance or tragicomedy, he created a distinctive poetic idiom that often bewildered audiences and readers. The plays of this period, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as Shakespeare's part in the collaborations with John Fletcher (Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen), exhibit a challenging verse style - verbally condensed, metrically and syntactically sophisticated, both conversational and highly wrought. In Shakespeare's Late Style, McDonald anatomizes the components of this late style, illustrating in a series of topically organized chapters the contribution of such features as ellipsis, grammatical suspension, and various forms of repetition. Resisting the sentimentality that frequently attends discussion of an artist's 'late' period, Shakespeare's Late Style shows how the poetry of the last plays reveals their creator's ambivalent attitude towards art, language, men and women, the theatre, and his own professional career.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry contains thirty-eight original essays written by leading Shakespeareans around the world. Collectively, these essays seek to return readers to a revivified understanding of Shakespeare's verbal artistry in both the poems and the drama. The volume understands poetry to be not just a formal category designating a particular literary genre but to be inclusive of the dramatic verse as well, and of Shakespeare's influence as a poet on later generations of writers in English and beyond. Focusing on a broad set of interpretive concerns, the volume tackles general matters of Shakespeare's style, earlier and later; questions of influence from classical, continental, and native sources; the importance of words, line, and rhyme to meaning; the significance of songs and ballads in the drama; the place of gender in the verse, including the relationship of Shakespeare's poetry to the visual arts; the different values attached to speaking 'Shakespeare' in the theatre; and the adaptation of Shakespearean verse (as distinct from performance) into other periods and languages. The largest section, with ten essays, is devoted to the poems themselves: the Sonnets, plus 'A Lover's Complaint', the narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, and 'The Phoenix and the Turtle'. If the volume as a whole urges a renewed involvement in the complex matter of Shakespeare's poetry, it does so, as the individual essays testify, by way of responding to critical trends and discoveries made during the last three decades.

Shakespeare's Blank Verse: An Alternative History is a study both of Shakespeare's versification and of its place in the history of early modern blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). It ranges from the continental precursors of English blank verse in the early sixteenth century through thedrama and poetry of Shakespeare's contemporaries to the editing of blank verse in the eighteenth century and beyond.Alternative in its argumentation as well as its arguments, Shakespeare's Blank Verse tries out fresh ways of thinking about meter--by shunning doctrinaire methods of apprehending a writer's versification, and by reconnecting meter to the fundamental literary, dramatic, historical, and socialquestions that animate Shakespeare's drama.

In this, her last book, Rosalie L. Colie suggests that by linking "forms"—verse forms, devices, motives, themes, conventions, genres—to the culture from which a writer springs and to his selection and organization of materials, we can understand the processes by which he becomes what he is, and is enabled to do what he does. She is particularly concerned with uncovering the ways in which Shakespeare used, misused, criticized, re-created, and sometimes revolutionized the received topics and devices of his craft. In this sense, Shakespeare's plays are seen as problem plays, each exploring the problematics of his craft and revealing his assessment of what was problematical. The author has chosen for study topics which connect Shakespeare with the long and rich continental Renaissance, in the hope that in the future Shakespeare might be, like Dante and Cervantes, an essential author in a comparatist's education. Usually a single topic dealing with some formal aspect of a play—the use of stereotypes to create a character highly original in stage practice, or the various manipulations of a mode (the pastoral, for example) rich in potentialities—is used to try to see in what particular ways Shakespeare shaped works that are still unique. Originally published in 1974. 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.

In Shakespeare’s Language, Keith Johnson offers an overview of the rich and dynamic history of the reception and study of Shakespeare’s language from his death right up to the present. Tracing a chronological history of Shakespeare’s language, Keith Johnson also picks up on classic and contemporary themes, such as: lexical and digital studies original pronunciation rhetoric grammar. The historical approach provides a comprehensive overview, plotting the attitudes towards Shakespeare’s language, as well as a history of its study. This approach reveals how different cultural and literary trends have moulded these attitudes and reflects changing linguistic climates; the book also includes a chapter that looks to the future. Shakespeare’s Language is therefore not only an essential guide to the language of Shakespeare, but it offers crucial insights to broader approaches to language as a whole.

In this book, leading international Shakespeare scholars consider the significant characteristics of Shakespeare's last plays and place them in their Jacobean context.

First published in 1981. Each of Shakespeare's plays is in a continuous state of development in performance. This book examines major changes whilst focusing on six plays in detail: Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Henry V, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Changing Styles in Shakespeare looks at representative and key productions to trace the evolution of each play on today's stage, illustrating how production changes relate to a changed perception of the play, and thus to shifts in social attitudes. It singles out the salient features of many productions, paying special attention to reviews and prompt books.

Shakespeare's English: A Practical Linguistic Guide provides students with a solid grounding for understanding the language of Shakespeare and its place within the development of English. With a prime focus on Shakespeare and his works, Keith Johnson covers all aspects of his language (vocabulary, grammar, sounds, rhetorical structure etc.), and gives illuminating background information on the linguistic context of the Elizabethan Age. As well as providing a unique introduction to the subject, Johnson encourages a "hands-on" approach, guiding students, through the use of activities, towards an understanding of how Shakespeare's English works. This book offers: · A unique approach to the study of Early Modern English which enables students to engage independently with the topic · Clear and engagingly written explanations of linguistic concepts · Plentiful examples and activities, including suggestions for further work · A glossary, further reading suggestions and guidance to relevant websites Shakespeare's English is perfect for undergraduate students following courses that combine English language, linguistics and literature, or anyone with an interest in knowing more about the language with which Shakespeare worked his literary magic.