A fascinating account of how Shakespeare's works were understood and valued by readers and writers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, before Shakespeare's biography came to dominate readings of his plays and poetry. For almost two centuries after his death, Shakespeare had no biography. The makings of one were not available. No chronology had been devised by which to coordinate the events in his life with the writing of his works. Nor was there an archive of primary materials on which to base a life. And the only work by Shakespeare written in the first person, the Sonnets, had yet to be critically edited and incorporated into the canon. Without a biography, how could Shakespeare have been valued and understood? In Shakespeare without a Life, Margreta de Grazia looks at aspects of Shakespeare's reception between 1600 and 1800 that have been all but lost to the now still prevailing biographical impulse. It recovers the anecdote as a form of literary criticism, retrieves the ancient category of genre as the canon's organizing rubric, demonstrates how the quest for authentic documents invalidated other forms of literary record, and reveals how the desire to forge connections between Shakespeare's life and the Sonnets occluded his self-presentation as the 'deceasèd I' of a posthumous poet.

This wide-ranging collection reflects on the various motivations that caused the Folio to come into being in 1623, 7 years after Shakespeare's death, and on how the now iconic book has been continually reimagined after its initial publication to the present day. In honour of its original publication, Shakespeare's First Folio 1623-2023: Text and Afterlives brings together a remarkable set of ground-breaking essays by an international group of scholars. From the beginning, the publication that came to be called the 'First Folio' was defined by the tension between the book as text and the book as a material object. In this volume, the individual contributions move between these two meaningsin that they consider precursors to the First Folio in the form of reader-assembled volumes; the poetic identity of Shakespeare; and how misfortunes and successes in the early modern printing house shaped Shakespeare's text. Chapters examine the unpredictable and often surprising subsequent histories of the book that has even been given a sacred status and become the basis of Shakespeare's unique position in the history of literature. They consider: the afterlife of the text, in relation to the reception of Shakespeare's First Folio in Spain; its presence in and influence on James Joyce's Ulysses; the role that Meisei University of Japan's Shakespeare Collection has played in the education and research of the institution; and what the collection of 82 copies at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, tells us about the ongoing role of these books within the study of Shakespeare and the early modern period.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

"Winner of the University of Delaware Press Award for the best manuscript in Shakespearean Studies, this study clarifies and revitalizes Shakespeare's Cymbeline for the modern reader through a rediscovery of the poet's artistic use of Renaissance myths, symbols, and emblematic topoi that give meaning to the play. Although mainly concerned with the rich classical and Christian iconography of Cymbeline, the book also rages widely over Shakespeare's dramatic and nondramatic works and beyond to the work of his contemporaries in Renaissance poetry, drama, art, theology, philosophy, emblems, and myths to show parallels between the mysteries of this tragicomedy and other examples of Renaissance thought and expression. It uncovers actual representations in the visual arts of parallels to the play's descriptive and theatrical moments. These iconographic parallels are lavishly illustrated in the book through photographs of Renaissance plaster work, embroidery, metalwork, oil paintings, and sculpture, but primarily through woodcuts and engravings from English and Continental emblem books of the period. The visual imagery is carefully related to an intellectual explanation of Cymbeline's complex Neoplatonic and Reformation themes." "The author begins with a extended definition of the genre of Renaissance tragicomedy, a form developed for Christian artistic purposes in Italy by Tasso and Guarini. Aside from the obviously similar characteristics of a happy ending and the presence of an oracle, Cymbeline shares nine other artistic aspects with the pioneer Italian tragicomedies Aminta and Il pastor fido, including the celebration of an Orphic ritual of death and resurrection. After a discussion of the Neoplatonic and Ovidian mythology embedded in the play, the book considers in detail the iconography of Imogen's elaborately decorated bedroom as a reconciliation of opposites, the iconography of primitivism and Wild Men versus courtier as a satire of the British court, and the iconography of birds, animals, vegetation, and minerals as evocative of the major themes of doubt, repentance, reformation, reunion, and regeneration in Cymbeline. The final objective of the dramatic conflict is mutual forgiveness and a happy marriage, all of which is achieved through temperance or the attainment of musical concord within the individual, the state, and the world. Although Shakespeare shows the five senses to be an inadequate means for his characters to recognize true virtue in a deceitful world, the sense of hearing is the most important in the play, since it allows participation in the four redemptive functions of sound, which ultimately leads to psychological harmony with the music of the spheres." "Simonds also demonstrates that because Cymbeline is essentially an Orphic tragicomedy designed to liberate the audience from melancholy, the play strives to bring delight through its theatrical reenactment of the initially painful Platonic journey from Eros to Anteros, from blindness to a vision of divinity, from discord to musical harmony, from spiritual confusion to joyful enlightenment."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Shakespeare's World of Death discusses Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

An illustrated collection of new essays with valuable reference material on the performance and reception of Shakespeare's plays.

The controversy over who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays has been around almost since they were written. Was the genius behind the plays really that obscure glover’s son from Stratford? Or was it someone else entirely—a man whose class, background, education, and peculiarities make him a more than plausible candidate? In The Which of Shakespeare’s Why, a 21st-century playwright named Harry Haines makes the case for a major contender via a play he himself is writing for a struggling New Jersey theatre company. Faced with strong disapproval from the “Stratfordites” and with the backing of supporters that sometimes takes some unusual forms, Harry attempts, against great odds, to get the play written and staged. In the process he has to overcome his own doubts, stay on the right side of the right people, keep his romantic life under control, and deal with not only a difficult actress or two but a flock of opinionated Rockettes. Part hilarious farce, part serious critical examination, The Which of Shakespeare’s Why provides a thought-provoking look at a controversial puzzle with a surprising, ingenious, and wholly satisfying ending that Shakespeare—whoever he was—would have given a standing ovation.