Books by John (Professor of English 2000 Kerrigan

This compact, engaging book puts Shakespeare's originality in historical context and looks at how he worked with his sources: the plays, poems, chronicles and romances on which his own plays are based.

Shakespeare's Binding Language is an innovative, substantial but highly readable study exploring the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges and the other verbal and performative acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come.