Twelfth Night has seldom been off the stage since Shakespeare’s day. It has been performed for its romantic high comedy and its boisterous low comedy; with an emphasis on farce or on autumnal melancholy; as straightforward celebration of heterosexual love and marriage or as exploration of the complexity of gender. David Carnegie and Mark Houlahan’s introduction to the play provides a lively discussion of the play’s performance history and encourages readers to think about stagecraft and the play as a performance text, while the historical appendices provide materials that illuminate different thematic elements of the play. Extended notes interleaved throughout the play present relevant illustrations and expand on mythological, historical, and religious references in the play. The accompanying online text will offer additional commentary on staging alternatives and more extensive visual materials. A collaboration between Broadview Press and the Internet Shakespeare Editions project at the University of Victoria, the editions developed for this series have been comprehensively annotated and draw on the authoritative texts newly edited for the ISE. This innovative series allows readers to access extensive and reliable online resources linked to the print edition.

Twelfth Night has seldom been off the stage since Shakespeare’s day. It has been performed for its romantic high comedy and its boisterous low comedy; with an emphasis on farce or on autumnal melancholy; as straightforward celebration of heterosexual love and marriage or as exploration of the complexity of gender. David Carnegie and Mark Houlahan’s introduction to the play provides a lively discussion of the play’s performance history and encourages readers to think about stagecraft and the play as a performance text, while the historical appendices provide materials that illuminate different thematic elements of the play. Extended notes interleaved throughout the play present relevant illustrations and expand on mythological, historical, and religious references in the play. The accompanying online text will offer additional commentary on staging alternatives and more extensive visual materials. A collaboration between Broadview Press and the Internet Shakespeare Editions project at the University of Victoria, the editions developed for this series have been comprehensively annotated and draw on the authoritative texts newly edited for the ISE. This innovative series allows readers to access extensive and reliable online resources linked to the print edition.

This volume includes the text of Twelfth Night as prepared and annotated by David Swain for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, and is accompanied by the excellent introduction and supplementary materials from the anthology. The diverse and extensive appendices acquaint readers with Shakespeare’s sources and contextualize the play within Elizabethan society. The appendices include an excerpt from Barnabe Riche’s “Of Apollonius and Silla,” Shakespeare’s primary source of inspiration for the play; selections from Galen, Plato, and others illustrating Elizabethan attitudes toward gender and sexuality; excerptions illuminating contemporary moral discomfort with the theatre, such as Philip Stubbes’s “Of Stage-plays and Interludes, with their wickedness”; and pieces on music and duelling that illustrate cultural conventions important to the interpretation of Twelfth Night. This is one of several Broadview Anthology of British Literature Editions being released this year; those wishing to teach the text will have the option of including the convenient stand-alone book as part of a specially-priced shrink-wrapped package together with a volume of the anthology.

Although other Shakespeare plays offer higher body counts, more gore, and more plentiful scenes of heartbreak, Othello packs an unusually powerful affective punch, stunning us with its depiction of the swiftness and thoroughness with which love can be converted to hatred, and forcing us to confront our complicity with social and political institutions that can put all of us—but especially the most vulnerable among us—at risk. This edition features a variety of interleaved materials—from maps and manuscripts to illustrations and extended discussions of myth and politics—that provide a context for the social and cultural allusions in the play. Appendices offer excerpts from Shakespeare’s key sources and historical materials on marriage, jealousy, and the treatment of people of African descent in Renaissance England. A collaboration between Broadview Press and the Internet Shakespeare Editions project at the University of Victoria, the editions developed for this series have been comprehensively annotated and draw on the authoritative texts newly edited for the ISE. This innovative series allows readers to access extensive and reliable online resources linked to the print edition.

"Shaped by sound literary and historical scholarship, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature takes a fresh approach to many canonical authors and includes a broad selection of work by lesser-known writers. The anthology also provides wide-ranging coverage of the worldwide connections of British literature, and it pays attention throughout to matters such as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation ... Highlights of Volume 5: The Victorian Era include the complete texts of In Memoriam A.H.H., The Importance of Being Earnest, Carmilla, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as Contexts sections on "Work and Poverty," "Women in Society," "Sexuality in the Victorian Era," "Nature and the Environment," "The New Woman," and "Britain, Empire, and a Wider World." The third edition also offers expanded representation of writers of color, including Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Toru Dutt, and Rabindranath Tagore."--Provided by publisher.

“Rapt in Secret Studies”: Emerging Shakespeares is a collection of new essays in Shakespeare Studies from a generation of scholars presently emerging out of Australia and New Zealand. These 18 essays respond in a myriad of ways to the challenge of Prospero’s phrase from The Tempest, in which he tells his daughter Miranda that in his life before the island he had been “rapt in secret studies”-to an early modern audience, these words were likely to mean much more than a predilection for the black arts, as modern audiences tend to hear in them. Each of the key words used by Prospero evoked a range of meanings in early modern times, to which the emerging scholars represented in this collection responded by imagining new pathways in Shakespeare Studies, a field of study that has in recent times risked being marginalised even within the traditional liberal arts. The “secret studies” of which Prospero speaks are, in fact, more liberal than dark, and so the response by new scholars to a challenge issued by one of Shakespeare’s characters more than four centuries ago has a renewed sense of relevance in the academy today. The essays are divided into three sections, each of which is oriented toward meanings that are specifically associated with one of the key terms in Prospero’s phrase. The “rapt” section has essays concerned with excess in its various forms-jealousy, obsession, sex, violence, and even death-as well as with travel and its impact on ways of knowing about the world. In the “secret” section, the nature of things about which the early modern could scarcely speak are taken into consideration, with essays on prevailing early modern myths, infidelities, stillborn children, contagion, and the instruments of secrecy such as gossip and spies. Finally, in the “study” section, essays cover issues related both to early modern textual practice-the use of historical source materials in Shakespeare’s writing, questions of multiple authorship, and the issue of early modern style and kinds of drama-and to more modern scholarly practice, such as the role of Shakespeare in the New Bibliography and the New Historicism.

The eponymous alchemist of Ben Jonson's quick-fire comedy is a fraud: he cannot make gold, but he does make brilliant theatre. The Alchemist is a masterpiece of wit and form about the self-delusions of greed and the theatricality of deception. This guide is useful to a diverse assembly of students and scholars, offering fresh new ways into this challenging and fascinating play.

This is a book for real students, people with full and active lives. Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students covers the basics of the introductory college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format. Each chapter concentrates on a crucial element of composing an academic essay and is capable of being read in a single sitting. The book also includes numerous “timesaver tips,” along with warnings about frequent student errors—all designed to help students make the most of one of their most limited and precious resources: time.

Epicoene, or The silent woman, also known as Epicene, is a comedy by Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson. It was originally performed by the Blackfriars Children or Children of the Queen's Revels, a group of boy players, in 1609. It was, by Jonson's admission, a failure on its first presentation; however, John Dryden and others championed it, and after the Restoration it was frequently revived-indeed, a reference by Samuel Pepys to a performance on 6 July 1660 places it among the first plays legally performed after Charles II's ascension. The play takes place in London. Morose, a wealthy old man with an obsessive hatred of noise, has made plans to disinherit his nephew Dauphine by marrying. His bride Epic ne is, he thinks, an exceptionally quiet woman; he does not know that Dauphine has arranged the whole match for purposes of his own. The couple are married despite the well-meaning interference of Dauphine's friend True-wit. Morose soon regrets his wedding day, as his house is invaded by a charivari that comprises Dauphine, True-wit, and Clerimont; a bear warden named Otter and his wife; two stupid knights, La Foole and Daw; and an assortment of "collegiates," vain and scheming women with intellectual pretensions. Worst for Morose, Epic ne quickly reveals herself as a loud, nagging mate."

A History of New Zealand Literature traces the genealogy of New Zealand literature from its first imaginings by Europeans in the eighteenth century. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction that charts the growth of, and challenges to, a nationalist literary tradition, the essays in this History illuminate the cultural and political intricacies of New Zealand literature, surveying the multilayered verse, fiction and drama of such diverse writers as Katherine Mansfield, Allen Curnow, Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame, Keri Hulme, Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History devotes special attention to the lasting significance of colonialism, biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand literature. A History of New Zealand Literature is of pivotal importance to the development of New Zealand writing and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike.