The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare

by Emma Smith

• ISBN13: 9780521855990
• ISBN10: 0521855993
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This lively and innovative introduction to Shakespeare promotes active engagement with the plays, rather than recycling factual information. Covering a range of plays, it is divided into seven subject-based chapters: Character; Performance; Texts; Language; Structure; Sources and History, and it does not assume any prior knowledge. Instead, it develops ways of thinking and provides the reader with resources for independent research through the 'Where next?' sections at the end of each chapter. The book draws on up-to-date scholarship without being overwhelmed by it, and unlike other introductory guides to Shakespeare it emphasizes that there is space for new and fresh thinking by students and readers, even on the most-studied and familiar plays.

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables	p. viii
Preface	p. ix
Character	p. 1
Juliet's balcony, Verona	p. 1
Shakespeare's realism?	p. 3
Shakespeare's 'unreal' characters	p. 4
Reading Shakespeare's characters on the page	p. 6
Embodying Shakespeare's characters on stage	p. 7
Doubling on the early modern stage	p. 8
Writing for particular actors	p. 11
Falstaff: character as individual or type?	p. 12
Naming and individuality	p. 12
Characters as individuals or as inter-relationships	p. 14
Character: interior or exterior?	p. 17
Character: where next?	p. 19
Performance	p. 23
Measure for Measure: staging silence	p. 23
'Going back to the text': the challenge of performance	p. 26
Performance interpretations: The Taming of the Shrew	p. 27
Topical performance: the plays in different theatrical contexts	p. 30
Citing performances	p. 32
Using film	p. 33
Using film comparatively: Macbeth	p. 35
Hamlet: 'To be or not to be'	p. 39
Adaptations: Shakespearean enough?	p. 41
Performance: where next?	p. 42
Texts	p. 46
Shakespeare's hand	p. 46
So what did Shakespeare write?	p. 47
Stage to page	p. 48
Quartos and Folio	p. 49
Editing as interpretation	p. 50
The job of the editor: the example of Richard II	p. 53
Stage directions	p. 57
Speech prefixes	p. 60
The job of the editor: the example of King Lear	p. 61
Texts: where next?	p. 65
Language	p. 71
'In a double sense'(Macbeth 5.7.50)	p. 71
Did anyone really talk like that?	p. 72
Playing with language	p. 77
Language of the play / language of the person	p. 79
Prose and verse	p. 81
Linguistic shifts: 1 Henry IV	p. 82
Shakespeare's verse	p. 84
Linguistic variation: A Midsummer Night's Dream	p. 85
Language: where next?	p. 87
Structure	p. 90
Finding the heart of the play	p. 90
Shakespeare's genres: dynamic, not static	p. 93
Tragedy and comedy	p. 94
Tragedy - expanding the genre	p. 95
Comedy - expanding the genre	p. 98
History: is this a fixed genre?	p. 101
Structuring scenes: Much Ado About Nothing	p. 103
Juxtaposing scenes, activating ironies: Henry V	p. 104
Showing v. telling	p. 106
Structure: where next?	p. 107
Sources	p. 113
Antony and Cleopatra and Plutarch	p. 113
Originality: was Shakespeare a plagiarist?	p. 116
Shakespeare at work: the intentional fallacy?	p. 118
The source bites back: Romeo and Juliet and The Winter's Tale	p. 120
The strong poet? King Lear	p. 127
Sources: where next?	p. 131
History	p. 134
Politic picklocks: interpreting topically	p. 134
History plays: political Shakespeare?	p. 136
History plays: Shakespeare as propagandist?	p. 138
Hamlet as history play?	p. 140
Jacobean patronage: King Lear and Macbeth	p. 142
Historical specificity: gender roles	p. 144
Race and Othello	p. 148
History: where next?	p. 153
Bibliography	p. 157
Index	p. 162
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