This book examines Shakespeare's response in his late plays to the challenge of making romance stories believable through theatrical representation and the kind of experience the late plays in performance seek to create for their spectators. Taking The Winter's Tale as a case study, the book's central chapters demonstrate how Shakespeare tests and transforms the techniques to create the sweeping, restorative transformations of individuals and communities that are central to both earlier dramatic romances and Shakespeare's own romance experiments. The book's three other chapters address the methodologies for study of spectator's experience through a dramatic text, the history of dramatic romance to 1610, and Shakespeare's further experiments with the staging of romance after The Winter's Tale.-

Pericles The first of Shakespeare’s late romances moves spectacularly from one dramatic period to another as the hero, Pericles, sails off to adventure and love, and experiences what for him is a miracle. Cymbeline A favorite romantic drama, this play of a wife unjustly accused of faithlessness moves from a world of intrigue and slander to one of reconciliation and forgiveness, and contains two of Shakespeare’s most poignantly beautiful songs. The Winter's Tale From a darkly melodramatic beginning to a joyous pastoral ending, this romance of a jealous king and his long-suffering queen is superb entertainment, with revelations, plot twists, and a final compelling theatrical moment of discovery. The Tempest This tale of the exiled Duke of Milan, marooned on an enchanted island, is so richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, that its theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.

This work is a critical study of Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, with a focus on Shakespeare's exploration of language in its destructive potentialities and its redemptive workings.

A compact edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare. It combines impeccable scholarship with beautifully written editorial material and a user-friendly layout of the text. Also included is a foreword, list of contents, general introduction, essay on language, contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, glossary, consolidated bibliography and index of first lines of Sonnets.

This unique and comprehensive volume looks at the study of literature and religion from a contemporary critical perspective. Including discussion of global literature and world religions, this Companion looks at: Key moments in the story of religion and literary studies from Matthew Arnold through to the impact of 9/11 A variety of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and literature Different ways that religion and literature are connected from overtly religious writing, to subtle religious readings Analysis of key sacred texts and the way they have been studied, re-written, and questioned by literature Political implications of work on religion and literature Thoroughly introduced and contextualised, this volume is an engaging introduction to this huge and complex field.

A newly edited edition of The Winter?'s Tale, with a detailed introduction and full commentary.

Re-Visions of Shakespeare: Essays in Honor of Robert Ornstein is a tribute to one of the most prominent Shakespeareans in the last half of the twentieth century, past president of the Shakespeare Association of America, and author of Shakespeare's Comedies: From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery, and Other texts. Twelve original contributions by an international group of scholars, including some of the most prominent working in Shakespeare studies today, use a variety of theoretical perspectives to address issues of contemporary import in the dramatic texts. Janus-like, the collection suggests the directions of Shakespeare studies at the outset of the new millennium while considering their roots in the last.

In Parallel Lives, the contributors observe particular Spanish and English plays from the perspective of the numerous parallels and apparent similarities in the evolution of this art form in the two countries. Illustrated.

This volume freshly illuminates the diversity of early modern religious beliefs, practices and issues, and their representation in Shakespeare's plays.

A collection that includes a lengthy introduction describing historical trends in critical interpretations and theatrical performances of Shakespeare's play; 20 essays on the play, including two written especially for this volume (by Maurice Hunt and David Bergeron).