First published in 1980. This collection of essays by the first General Editor of the New Arden Shakespeare brings together the best of Ellis-Fermor's Shespearean criticism, in addition to outstanding essays on Coriolanus and Troilus and Cressida. Collected and edited by Kenneth Muir, the book is prefaced by an appreciation of Ellis-Fermor's work.

Exile defines the Shakespearean canon, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen . This book traces the influences on the drama of exile, examining the legal context of banishment (pursued against Catholics, gypsies and vagabonds) in early modern England; the self-consciousness of exile as an amatory trope; and the discourses by which exile could be reshaped into comedy or tragedy. Across genres, Shakespeare's plays reveal a fascination with exile as the source of linguistic crisis, shaped by the utterance of that word 'Banished'.

This volume presents for the first time in English a selection of seminal studies, originally published in Italian, on the dramatic potential of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, providing a crucial contribution to a recently revived debate on their inherent dramatic dimension. These studies long antedate the recent attention internationally dedicated to the formal and semiotic functions of the communicative structure of the sonnets, providing the basis for a new perception of their peculiar capacity to perform speech acts within dramatically defined situations. The first, longest, section, is dedicated to a discussion of the so-called ‘Sonnets of Immortality’ where the poet struggles with Time over the future of the fair youth, providing the argumentative premise upon which issues of mortality and loss, running through the whole collection, are defined in the agonistic terms of human defiance of Time’s destructive power. There follow two essays devoted to Sonnets 33 and 29, and to the last sonnets for the young friend, respectively. Here the poet abandons the battlefield of human mortality and engages with the tensions and conflicts of affection and moral duty against the backdrop of an intrinsically conflicting world model, showing a medieval symbolic universe traversed by incipient, yet radical, sceptical stances. These poems interlace fictionality and biography, constructing a lyrical drama where the I/poet features as an extraordinarily artificial, yet all too real, voice.

Constructing 'Monsters' in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture argues for the crucial place of the 'monster' in the early modern imagination. Burnett traces the metaphorical significance of 'monstrous' forms across a range of early modern exhibition spaces - fairground displays, 'cabinets of curiosity' and court entertainments - to contend that the 'monster' finds its most intriguing manifestation in the investments and practices of contemporary theatre. The study's new readings of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson make a powerful case for the drama's contribution to debates about the 'extraordinary body'.

This book establishes the significance of actresses, female playgoers and women critics in shaping Shakespeare's burgeoning reputation in the eighteenth century.

His life, art, and characters.