Studying Shakespeare

by Maguire, Laurie

• ISBN13: 9780470775929
• ISBN10: 0470775920
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2008-04-21
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This engaging book draws on all of Shakespeare's plays to show they can still be used as a guide to life.

• Introduces beginning students and general readers to Shakespeare's plays by highlighting the connections between the issues addressed by the plays and those of our own time.


• Focuses on the characters, situations and stories in Shakespeare which are still familiar today.


• Shows how Shakespeare's plays illustrate some of life's most familiar stories - love and obsession, parents and children, sex and politics, suffering and revenge


• Makes Shakespeare’s plays accessible to the widest possible audience.

Author Biography

Laurie Maguire is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and a Lecturer in English at Oxford University. She is the author of Shakespearean Suspect Texts (1996) and co-editor of Textual Formations and Reformations (1998), among other publications.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.

Conventions.

List Of Illustrations.

1. Private Life: Shakespeare And Selfhood:.

The Divided Self.

Comedy Of Errors; As You Like It.

Naming The Self.

Troilus And Cressida; Romeo And Juliet; Taming Of The Shrew.

The Self And Language.

Measure For Measure; Troilus And Cressida.

The National Self.

Othello; King Lear.

The Self At Play.

Love’s Labour’s Lost; Taming Of The Shrew.

2. Marital Life: Shakespeare And Romance:.

Love And Hazard.

Merchant Of Venice.

Love And Friendship.

Two Gentlemen Of Verona; Winter’s Tale; Two Noble Kinsmen.

Love And Madness.

Midsummer Night’s Dream; Cymbeline; All’s Well; Measure For Measure; Troilus And Cressida.

Marriage And Identity.

Comedy Of Errors; All’s Well; Taming Of The Shrew.

Love And Abuse.

The Taming Of The Shrew; Merry Wives Of Windsor; Othello; Troilus And Cressida.

3. Political Life: Shakespeare And Government:.

Acting Politics.

3 Henry 6; Richard 3; 1 Henry 4; 2 Henry 4; Henry 5; Coriolanus; Julius Caesar.

Surviving Politics.

Richard 2; Macbeth.

The Personal Versus The Political.

Richard 2; Henry 4; Henry 5.

4. Public Life: Shakespeare And Social Structures:.

Money.

Macbeth; Merchant Of Venice; Romeo And Juliet; Merry Wives Of Windsor; Timon Of Athens.

Women And Public Life.

Antony And Cleopatra; King John; Measure For Measure.

Language.

Titus Andronicus; Much Ado About Nothing; All’s Well.

5.Real Life: Shakespeare And Suffering:.

Mingled Yarns.

Twelfth Night; King Lear; Much Ado.

Mourning.

Hamlet; Twelfth Night.

The Family.

King Lear; Macbeth.

Anger And Revenge.

Titus Andronicus.

Forgiveness.

Cymbeline; Pericles; Winter’s Tale; Tempest; Henry 8; Two Noble Kinsmen.

Index.