Sir William Davenant (1606–1668) – Poet Laureate and Civil War hero – is one of the most influential and neglected figures in the history of British theatre. He introduced ‘opera’, actresses, scenes and the proscenium arch to the English stage. Narrowly escaping execution for his Royalist activities during the Civil War, he revived theatrical performances in London, right under Oliver Cromwell’s nose. Nobody, perhaps, did more to secure Shakespeare’s reputation or to preserve the memory of the Bard.Davenant was known to boast over a glass of wine that he wrote ‘with the very spirit’ of Shakespeare and was happy to be thought of as Shakespeare’s son. By recounting the story of his eventful life backwards, through his many trials and triumphs, this biography culminates with a fresh examination of the vexed issue of Davenant’s paternity. Was Sir William’s mother the voluptuous and maddening ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and was he Shakespeare’s ‘lovely boy’?

In a quiet manor house in Oxfordshire, an ailing housekeeper by the name of Aerlene Ward feels the time has come to confess the great secret that has shaped her life --

This encyclopedia-style dicitonary explores early modern social life, legal thought, and the interactions within Shakespearean drama.

Presents a collective study of all of Shakespeare's soliloquies by defining the soliloquy, classifying the soliloquies and presenting them as revelations of thought and feeling.

This work searches Shakespeare's history and Roman plays to find the raw materials of English national consciousness and identity. The messages of Shakespeare's history plays are not principally the plots or "facts" of the dramas but the attitudes and imaginings they elicited in audiences. Reading Shakespeare through the lens of national identity is a study almost as old as the plays themselves, and many scholars have found various articulations of nationhood in Shakespeare's plays. This book argues that Shakespeare's histories furnished modern England with a curriculum for constructing a national identity, a confidence of language and culture, and a powerful new medium through which to communicate and express this negotiated identity. Highlighting the application of semiotics, it studies the playwright's use of symbols, metonymy, symbolic codes, and metaphor. By examining what Shakespeare and playgoers remembered and forgot, as well as the ways ideas were framed, this book explores how a national identity was crafted, contested, and circulated.