William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare PDF Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019102869X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
In this new offering from Stanley Wells, the pre-eminent Shakespearian scholar, comes a Very Short Introduction to the life and writings of the world's greatest and best-known dramatists: William Shakespeare. Looking at his early life and education, Wells explores Shakespeare's social and intellectual background and the literary traditions on which Shakespeare drew. Examining the theatres and theatrical profession of the time, he also considers how Shakespeare experienced this world, both as an actor and as a writer. Examining Shakespeare's narrative poems, sonnets, and all of his plays, Wells outlines their sources, style, and originality over the course of Shakespeare's career, to consider the fundamental impact his work has had for subsequent generations. Written with enthusiasm and flair by a scholar who has devoted a lifetime to the study of Shakespeare and his works, this is an engaging and authoritative introduction. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Jonathan Bate
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191614297
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Sweeping across two millennia and every literary genre, acclaimed scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate provides a dazzling introduction to English Literature. The focus is wide, shifting from the birth of the novel and the brilliance of English comedy to the deep Englishness of landscape poetry and the ethnic diversity of Britain's Nobel literature laureates. It goes on to provide a more in-depth analysis, with close readings from an extraordinary scene in King Lear to a war poem by Carol Ann Duffy, and a series of striking examples of how literary texts change as they are transmitted from writer to reader. The narrative embraces not only the major literary movements such as Romanticism and Modernism, together with the most influential authors including Chaucer, Donne, Johnson, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens and Woolf, but also little-known stories such as the identity of the first English woman poet to be honoured with a collected edition of her works. Written with the flair and passion for which Jonathan Bate has become renowned, this book is the perfect Very Short Introduction for all readers and students of the incomparable literary heritage of these islands. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction

Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Bart van Es
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191034967
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Book Description
From The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early 1590s to The Two Noble Kinsmen at the end of his career around 1614, Shakespeare wrote at least eighteen plays that can be called 'comedies': a far higher number than that for any other genre in which he wrote. So what is a Shakespearean comedy? We associate these plays with such themes as mistaken identities, happy marriages, and exuberant cross dressing, but how representative are these of the oeuvre as a whole? In this Very Short Introduction, Bart van Es explores the full range of the playwright's comic writing, from the neat classical plotting of early works like The Comedy of Errors to the corrupt world of the so-called problem plays, written in the middle years of Shakespeare's life. Examining Shakespeare's influences and sources, van Es compares his plays to those of his rivals, and looks at the history of the plays in performance, from the biographies of Shakespeare's original actors to the plays' endless reinvention in modern stage productions and in films. Identifying the key qualities that make Shakespearean comedy distinctive, van Es traces the changing nature of Shakespeare's comic writing over the course of a career that spanned nearly a quarter century of theatrical change. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction

William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191028681
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
In this new offering from Stanley Wells, the pre-eminent Shakespearian scholar, comes a Very Short Introduction to the life and writings of the world's greatest and best-known dramatists: William Shakespeare. Looking at his early life and education, Wells explores Shakespeare's social and intellectual background and the literary traditions on which Shakespeare drew. Examining the theatres and theatrical profession of the time, he also considers how Shakespeare experienced this world, both as an actor and as a writer. Examining Shakespeare's narrative poems, sonnets, and all of his plays, Wells outlines their sources, style, and originality over the course of Shakespeare's career, to consider the fundamental impact his work has had for subsequent generations. Written with enthusiasm and flair by a scholar who has devoted a lifetime to the study of Shakespeare and his works, this is an engaging and authoritative introduction. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Shakespeare's Tragedies

Shakespeare's Tragedies PDF Author: Stanley Wells
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198785291
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
Shakespeare's tragedies contain an astonishing variety of suffering, from suicides and murders to dismemberments and grief. Stanley Wells considers how the bard's tragic plays drew on the literary and theatrical conventions of his time. Discussing the individual plays, he also explores why tragedy is regarded as a fit subject for entertainment.

History: A Very Short Introduction

History: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: John Arnold
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 019285352X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.

George Bernard Shaw: A Very Short Introduction

George Bernard Shaw: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Christopher Wixson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192590340
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
George Bernard Shaw has been called the second greatest playwright in English (after William Shakespeare) and one of the inventors of modern celebrity as the most famous public intellectual of his time. Beginning in the 1880s, as a critic and as a playwright, he transformed British drama, bringing to it intellectual substance, ethical imperatives, and modernity itself, setting the theatrical course for the subsequent century. That his legacy endures seventy years after his death is testament to the prescience of his thinking and his prolific creativity. This Very Short Introduction looks at Shaw's life, starting with his upbringing in Ireland, and then takes a chronological approach through his works. Considering Shaw's committed antagonism on behalf of a range of socio-political issues; his use of comedy as a mode for communicating serious ideas; and his rhetorical style that pushes conventional boundaries, Christopher Wixson provides an overview of the creative evolution of core themes throughout Shaw's long career. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Modern Drama

Modern Drama PDF Author: Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199658773
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
This book tells the story of modern drama through its seminal, groundbreaking plays and performances, and the artistic diversity that these represent. Exploring the new note of artistic hostility between dramatists and their audience, Shepherd-Barr draws on a range of theories and performances to reveal what makes modern drama 'modern'.

Tragedy

Tragedy PDF Author: Adrian Poole
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Comparative literature
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
How and why does tragedy matter? This book approaches this question through a close reading of Greek tragedies that is designed both for readers with Greek and those with none. It explores Greek plays alongside three of Shakespeare's tragedies: "Macbeth", "Hamlet" and "King Lear".

Shakespeare, Co-author

Shakespeare, Co-author PDF Author: Brian Vickers
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199269167
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Book Description
No issue in Shakespeare studies is more important than determining what he wrote. For over two centuries scholars have discussed the evidence that Shakespeare worked with co-authors on several plays, and have used a variety of methods to differentiate their contributions from his. In thiswide-ranging study, Brian Vickers takes up and extends these discussions, presenting compelling evidence that Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus together with George Peele, Timon of Athens with Thomas Middleton, Pericles with George Wilkins, and Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen with JohnFletcher.In Part One Vickers reviews the standard processes of co-authorship as they can be reconstructed from documents connected with the Elizabethan stage, and shows that every major, and most minor dramatists in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline theatres collaborated in getting plays written andstaged. This is combined with a survey of the types of methodology used since the early nineteenth century to identify co-authorship, and a critical evaluation of some 'stylometric' techniques.Part Two is devoted to detailed analyses of the five collaborative plays, discussing every significant case made for and against Shakespeare's co-authorship. Synthesizing two centuries of discussion, Vickers reveals a solidly based scholarly tradition, building on and extending previous work,identifying the co-authors' contributions in increasing detail. The range and quantity of close verbal analysis brought together in Shakespeare, Co-Author present a compelling case to counter those 'conservators' of Shakespeare who maintain that he is the sole author of his plays.
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