He has made me view the whole Elizabethan world afresh. The plays glow with new life, exciting and real, infused with the soul of a man too long denied his inheritance." - Sir Derek Jacobi "This is a book for anyone who loves Shakespeare. No matter who you think may have created the works of Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford's mysterious life, and that of his Queen, must be near the heart and source of the creation. Three cheers for Mr. Beauclerk's daring to explore one of the most scandalous and potentially revolutionary theories about the authorship of these immortal works." - Mark Rylance "An intriguing book that proposes another forceful argument in this age old debate. Beauclerk's detailed exploration divides the mythical notions from the historical truths. You will have a hard time putting this book down." - Roland Emmerich "An extraordinary and controversial interpretation of Shakespeare's origins, which certainly provokes much thought. A radical analysis of Shakespeare's text, leading to a conclusion which is bound to amaze the reader and the scholar. Who was Shakespeare? - Steven Berkoff "A riveting narrative filled with learned insights into Renaissance England, Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom is a soulful meditation on the timeless words of those masterworks at the centre of our cultural heritage." - Professor James Norwood "An amazing work of scholarship-so eloquent, yet written in an immediately 'popular' style. I cannot recommend it too highly." - Tony Palmer "Beauclerk has not only scandalized professors throughout the English departments of the world's schools and universities, he has thrown down the gauntlet to historians as well... and he has garnered supporters in this long-simmering debate." - Boston Globe Who was the man behind Hamlet, Romeo, Falstaff and Lear? And why did he write, 'I, once gone, to all the world must die'? In this ground-breaking work Charles Beauclerk moves beyond the narrow confines of traditional Shakespearean scholarship to explore the political milieu in which Shakespeare lived and worked and the life-and-death struggle he underwent in the name of his 'cause'. In doing so, he humanizes the bard who for centuries has remained beyond our grasp. The story revealed is one of betrayal and sacrifice at the heart of government, with Shakespeare forced to fight both for the survival of his works-and his very identity. The official history, that of a barely educated genius writing in isolation and a virginal queen married to her country, is exposed as artful propaganda. Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom delves deep into the conflicts and personalities of Elizabethan England, and the plays themselves, to cast new light on the greatest and most mysterious artist the world has known.

    Little is known about the wife of the world's most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself. Yet Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage. Before him, there were few comedies or tragedies about wooing or wedding. And yet he explored the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual, sociological, and was the creator of some of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann, who has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries, was the inspiration? Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmer's daughter who married England's greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeare's Wife is a fascinating reconstruction of Ann's life, and an illuminating look at the daily lives of Elizabethan women, from their working routines to the rituals of courtship and the minutiae of married life. In this thoroughly researched and controversial book, Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions, and begins to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.

    Bate opens by taking up questions of authorship, asking, for example, Who was Shakespeare, based on the little documentary evidence we have? Which works really are attributable to him? And how extensive was the influence of Christopher Marlowe? Bate goes on to trace Shakespeare's canonization and near- deification, examining not only the uniqueness of his status among English-speaking readers but also his effect on literate cultures across the globe. Ambitious, wide-ranging, and historically rich, this book shapes a provocative inquiry into the nature of genius as it ponders the legacy of a talent unequalled in English letters. A bold and meticulous work of scholarship, The Genius of Shakespeare is also lively and accessibly written and will appeal to any reader who has marveled at the Bard and the enduring power of his work.

    Helen Vendler, widely regarded as an accomplished interpreter of poetry, here serves as a guide to some of the best-known poems in the English language.In detailed commentaries on Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, Vendler interprets imaginative and stylistic features of the poems, pointing out new levels of import in particular lines, and the ways in which the four parts of each sonnet work together to enact emotion and create dynamic effect.

    He understood how politics is shaped by the clash of men with various colorings of self-interest and idealism, how violence breeds violence, how fragile human beings create masks and disguises for protection, how schemers do the same for advancement, how love can grow out of hate and hate out of love.Dare anyone say that these insights are irrelevant to living in the real world? For many in an older generation, the Bible and the Collected Shakespeare were the two indispensable books, and thus their sense of life and history was shaped by the best and best-told stories. And they were the wiser for it.Literature abstracts from the complex events of life (just as we all do in everyday life) and can reveal patterns that are like the patterns of events in the real world. Studying literature can give us sensitivity to those patterns. This sensitivity to the rhythm of life is closely connected with what the Bible calls wisdom.

    By tracing the historical progression of rhetoric from the Greek Sophists of the 5th Century B.C. to contemporary studies--such as the rhetoric of science and feminist rhetoric--this concise yet comprehensive text helps students better understand what rhetoric is and what unites differing rhetorical theories throughout history.

    A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else.Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of.But it doesn't tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. Now, Emma Smith - an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer - takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex, and the Shakespeare she reveals in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers, always implicating us in working out what it might mean.

    Every comedy, tragedy, history, and poem of Shakespeare's is collected here in this comprehensive guide.Shakespeare's canon comes to life with images, idea webs, timelines, and quotes that help the reader understand the context of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Each play includes a glance-able guide to story chronology, so you can easily get back on track if you get lost in Shakespeare's beautiful language. Character guides are a handy reference for casual readers and an invaluable resource for playgoers and students writing reports on Shakespeare. The Shakespeare Book includes the best of Shakespeare, and it's set to become a staple for theater lovers, Shakespeare students, and Shakespeare fans because its information is delivered in such an understandable and inspirational way.

    The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.

    It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare's greatest plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest.In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by the essays of Montaigne that were translated into English while Shakespeare was writing. In addition to chapters on the great plays, there are also essays on Shakespeare and gender and his plays from the aspects of psychology, ethics, and tragedy.As McGinn says about Shakespeare, "There is not a sentimental bone in his body. He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgement of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet." McGinn relates the ideas in the plays to the later philosophers such as David Hume and the modern commentaries of critics such as Harold Bloom. The book is an exhilarating reading experience, especially at a time when a new audience has opened up for the greatest writer in English.

    Carefully chosen selections from Frye, Benjamin, Lévi-Strauss, Lukács, Bakhtin, and other prominent theorists explore the historical significance of the novel as a genre, from its early beginnings to its modern variations in the postmodern novel and postcolonial novel.Offering a generous selection of key theoretical texts for students and scholars alike, Theory of the Novel also presents a provocative argument for studying the genre. In his introduction to the volume and in headnotes to each section, McKeon argues that genre theory and history provide the best approach to understanding the novel. All the selections in this anthology date from the twentieth century—most from the last forty years—and represent the attempts of different theorists, and different theoretical schools, to describe the historical stages of the genre's formal development.

    The speech, included in this volume, aptly summarises the deep-seated hostility of Brahminic India towards the Dalit Bahujan. Similarly, the other essays and speeches collected in this volume, written and delivered by a number of writers, academics, students, and activists (referred to as the Ambedkar Age Collective in this book), unfurl before you a critical tapestry dissecting the hegemonic brahminic discourse which works towards delegitimizing the radical legacy of Amebdkarite thought. The most stark example of these efforts, from the 'left' and the 'right' of the Indian political spectrum, is the Navayana edition of Babasaheb's AoC with an 'introduction' by Arundhati Roy. The works collected here emerged as spontaneous reactions to the Roy-Navayana project from multiple locations and in multiple languages. The varied interventions, which began online, and the discursive terrains it opened up offer us a glimpse of the ways through which the marginalised resist continued attempts made at hegemonising their knowledge and lives by the brahminic oppressors irrespective of their political leanings. Authors include: Anu Ramdas, Kuffir, Gurinder Azad, Bojja Tharakam Adv. Dr. Suresh Mane, Anoop Kumar, U. Sambashiva Rao, Shakyamuni, Dr Sangeeta Pawar, Sunny Kapicadu, O.K. Santhosh, Dr B. Ravichandran, Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes, Karthik Navayan, Joopaka Subhadra Dr. K Satyanarayana, Vaibhav Wasnik, Nilesh Kumar, Asha Kowtal, Nidhin Shobhana, Gee Imaan Semmalar, Syam Sundar, Murali Shanmugavelan, Praveena Thaali, Dr Karthick RM, Huma Dar, Joby Mathew, James Michael, Akshay Pathak, Vinay Bhat, Yogesh Maitreya, Thongam Bipin, K K Baburaj, Sruthi Herbert, Gaurav Somwanshi, Kadhiravan, Rahul Gaikwad, Joe D'Cruz

    As only he could, Updike recasts a tale of medieval violence and presents the case for its central couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude's warmth and lucidity, Claudius's soldierly yet peaceable powers of command are seen afresh against a background of fond intentions and familial dysfunction, on a stage darkened by the ominous shadow of a sullen, disaffected prince.

    This provocative book tackles some of the enduring 'sacred truths' surrounding the high cultural status of the live event.

    Think of Hamlet, trapped in indecision, or Macbeth’s merciless and ultimately self-destructive ambition, or the Machiavellian rise and short reign of Richard III. They are so vital, so alive and real that we can see aspects of ourselves in them. But their world was at once familiar and nothing like our own. In this brilliant work of historical reconstruction Neil MacGregor and his team at the British Museum, working together in a landmark collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, bring us twenty objects that capture the essence of Shakespeare’s universe. A perfect complement to A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor’s landmark New York Times bestseller, Shakespeare’s Restless World highlights a turning point in human history. This magnificent book, illustrated throughout with more than one hundred vibrant color photographs, invites you to travel back in history and to touch, smell, and feel what life was like at that pivotal moment, when humankind leaped into the modern age. This was an exhilarating time when discoveries in science and technology altered the parameters of the known world. Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation map allows us to imagine the age of exploration from the point of view of one of its most ambitious navigators. A bishop’s cup captures the most sacred and divisive act in Christendom. With A History of the World in 100 Objects, MacGregor pioneered a new way of telling history through artifacts. Now he trains his eye closer to home, on a subject that has mesmerized him since childhood, and lets us see Shakespeare and his world in a whole new light.