1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616-Shakespeare's Sonnets-Substitution code-1609 Quarto- 2. The Poet William Shakespeare-The Youth Henry Wriothesley-The Dark Lady Aemelia Bessano Lanyer- The Rival Poet Christopher Marlowe-Deciphering- Time and Timeline-Names and Identities.

As David Ovason reveals, many leading esoteric writers - alchemists, occultists and Rosicrucians -contributed to this 'Secret booke'. Among the more outstanding English literary figures who used the code were the mysterious adviser to Elizabeth I, John Dee, the turbulent author of The Alchemist, Ben Jonson, and the more classically-minded Edmund Spenser, whose poem 'The Faerie Queene' is the best-known esoteric work of the period. Shakespeare's Secret Booke reveals many other literary figures who together form a remarkable underground literary movement, including the most influential esotericist of the period, Jacob Boehme, and alchemists such as the English polymath Robert Fludd. Another was Shakespeare's contemporary, the youthful Johann Valentin Andreae, credited as author of The Chymical Wedding - a Rosicrucian work replete with sophisticated examples of encoding. --

The Secret Life of Poems is a primer which offers a poem - or on occasion an excerpt - succeeding with commentary in which rhythm, form, metre and sources are the order of the day, not ethical commentary or descriptive paraphrase. This brief engagement with forty-seven poems is intended for students and readers of poetry, and seeks to explain how poetry works by bringing into view the hidden order of specific poems.

Who was Shakespeare? In an intellectual sensation that went through three printings in the first year, a Moscow scholar presents a solidly documented work showing how, and why, the 5th Earl of Rutland wrote most of the Shakespeare oeuvre. Gililov has studied watermarks and printer's type, registration dates, and documented biographical details of Shakespeare contemporaries, considering the physical evidence as well as the personalities and motives of the suspects.

Although little known, cannabis and other psychoactive plants held a prominent and important role in the Occult arts of Alchemy and Magic, as well as being used in ritual initiations of certain secret societies. Find out about the important role cannabis played in helping to develop modern medicines through alchemical works. Cannabis played a pivotal role in spagyric alchemy, and appears in the works of alchemists such as Zosimos, Avicenna, Llull, Paracelsus, Cardano and Rabelais. Cannabis also played a pivotal role in medieval and renaissance magic and recipes with instructions for its use appear in a number of influential and important grimoires such as the Picatrix, Sepher Raxiel: Liber Salomonis, and The Book of Oberon. Could cannabis be the Holy Grail? With detailed historical references, the author explores the allegations the Templars were influenced by the hashish ingesting Assassins of medieval Islam, and that myths of the Grail are derived from the Persian traditions around the sacred beverage known as haoma, which was a preparation of cannabis,opium and other drugs. Many of the works discussed, have never been translated into English, or published in centuries. The unparalleled research in this volume makes it a potential perennial classic on the subjects of both medieval and renaissance history of cannabis, as well as the role of plants in the magical and occult traditions.

Providing important context for his greatest works, Shakespeare's Life presents a thorough biography of the Bard, featuring the latest findings from scholars about his life and his works. Included is coverage of his upbringing in Stratford, his marriage and family life, the process of writing his greatest works, and his life after the theater. Coverage includes: His early years in Stratford, including his marriage to Anne Hathaway His rise to stardom within the London theater scene The death of his nine-year-old son, Hamnet The writing of his greatest works, including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and others His retirement from the theater and move back to Stratford And much more.

In Lesbian Utopics, Annamarie Jagose surveys the construction of the lesbian and finds her in a cultural space that is both everywhere and, of all places, nowhere. The "lesbian", in other words, is symbolically central, yet culturally marginal.

Shakespeare's Catholic context was the most important literary discovery of the last century. No biography of the Bard is now complete without chapters on the paranoia and persecution in which he was educated, or the treason which engulfed his family. Whether to suffer outrageous fortune or take up arms in suicidal resistance was, as Hamlet says, 'the question' that fired Shakespeare's stage. In 'Secret Shakespeare' Richard Wilson asks why the dramatist remained so enigmatic about his own beliefs, and so silent on the atrocities he survived.Shakespeare constructed a drama not of discovery, like his rivals, but of darkness, deferral, evasion and disguise, where, for all his hopes of a 'golden time' of future toleration, 'What's to come' is always unsure. Whether or not 'He died a papist', it is because we can never 'pluck out the heart' of his mystery that Shakespeare's plays retain their unique potential to resist.This is a fascinating work, which will be essential reading for all scholars of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies.