A Shakespeare Reader Sources and Criticism

by Brown, Richard Danson; Johnson, David , Ph.D.

• ISBN13: 9780312230401
• ISBN10: 0312230400
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This rich collection of critical and secondary material has been selected to assist in the study of Shakespeare's plays. It includes a selection of sources and analogues Shakespeare drew upon in writing nine of his major works as well as a variety of widely divergent critical interpretations of the plays over the last sixty years.

Author Biography

Richard Danson Brown and David Johnson are Lecturers in Literature at the Open University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Illustrations	xv
Part One Sources and Analogues	1	(58)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584)	1	(2)
Reginald Scot
From Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book IV	3	(3)
Arthur Golding
Richard II
From A Myrroure for Magistrates (1559): `How kyng Richarde the seconde was for his evyll governaunce deposed from his seat and miserably murdered in prison'	6	(4)
Macbeth
Chronicles (1587)	10	(9)
Raphael Holinshed
Antony and Cleopatra
From Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes	19	(7)
Sir Thomas North
Hamlet
The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1582--92)	26	(5)
Thomas Kyd
`Of Revenge' (1625)	31	(1)
Sir Francis Bacon
Twelfth Night
Riche his Farewell to Militaire Profession (1581)	32	(7)
Barnabe Riche
Measure for Measure
Hecatommithi (1583)	39	(7)
G. B. Giraldi Cinthio
King Lear
The Faerie Queene (1590--6)	46	(2)
Edmund Spenser
Arcadia (1590)	48	(3)
Sir Philip Sidney
The Tempest
From `The Strachey Letter' (1610)	51	(5)
From Ovid, Metamorphoses	56	(3)
Part Two Critical Readings	59	(234)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
`The Imperial Votaress'	60	(11)
Louis Montrose
`The Staging of a Midsummer Night's Dream, 1595--1895'	71	(12)
Jay L. Halio
Interval One: Shakespeare's Theatre
`The Elizabethan Drama'	83	(10)
Robert Weimann
Richard II
`The Political Background of Shakespeare's Richard II and Henry IV'	93	(11)
John Dover Wilson
`Richard II'	104	(11)
Jean E. Howard
Phyllis Rackin
Macbeth
`How Many Children had Lady Macbeth?'	115	(14)
L. C. Knights
`Macbeth: History, Ideology and Intellectuals'	129	(12)
Alan Sinfield
`Macbeth on Film: Politics'	141	(7)
E. Pearlman
Antony and Cleopatra
`Jacobean Antony and Cleoptra'	148	(13)
H. Neville Davies
`Squeaking Cleopatras. Gender and Performance in Antony and Cleopatra'	161	(9)
Juliet Dusinberre
`Spatial Politics'	170	(6)
Ania Loomba
Interval Two: Editing Shakespeare's Plays
`What is an Editor?'	176	(6)
Stephen Orgel
Hamlet
`Hamlet -- the Mona Lisa of Literature'	182	(10)
Jacqueline Rose
`Telmah'	192	(12)
Terence Hawkes
Twelfth Night
`Testing Courtesy and Humanity in Twelfth Night'	204	(14)
C. L. Barber
`The Two Antonios and Same-Sex Love in Twelfth Night and the Merchant of Venice'	218	(7)
J. Pequigney
Measure for Measure
`Measure for Measure'	225	(11)
F. R. Leavis
`London in Measure for Measure'	236	(11)
Leah Marcus
King Lear
`From Hamlet to Lear'	247	(8)
Arnold Kettle
`The Absent Mother in King Lear'	255	(11)
Coppelia Kahn
`Grigori Kozintsev's King Lear'	266	(4)
Alexander Leggatt
The Tempest
```What Cares These Roarers for the Name of King?'': Language and Utopia in the Tempest'	270	(10)
David Norbrook
`African and Caribbean Appropriations of the Tempest'	280	(13)
Rob Nixon
Part Three Critical Interventions	293	(29)
`The National Poet'	293	(12)
Jonathan Bate
`The Present Tense'	305	(7)
Gary Taylor
`New Ways to Play Old Texts. Discourses of the Past'	312	(10)
Susan Bennet
Index	322