Books by Stanley Wells

Shakespeare without Boundaries: Essays in Honor of Dieter Mehl offers a wide-ranging collection of essays written by an international team of distinguished scholars who attempt to define, to challenge, and to erode boundaries that currently inhibit understanding of Shakespeare, and to exemplify how approaches that defy traditional bounds of study and criticism may enhance understanding and enjoyment of a dramatist who acknowledged no boundaries in art.The Volume is published in tribute to Professor Dieter Mehl, whose critical and scholarly work on authors from Chaucer through Shakespeare to D. H. Lawrence has transcended temporal and national boundaries in its range and scope, and who, as Ann Jennalie Cook writes, has contributed significantly to the erasure of political boundaries that have endangered the unity of German literary scholarship and, more broadly, through his work for the International Shakespeare Association, to the globalization of Shakespeare studies.Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Why do Shakespeare's works continue to exert so strong an influence and have such lasting appeal? What do they have to offer modern readers and play-goers? The author seeks to answer these questions in this wide-ranging critical survey of Shakespeare's career as a poet and playwright.

This book examines the areas of plays that are dependent upon the art of the theatre and the fluidity of interpretation to which this gives rise.

'Enjoyable, lively such a pleasure to read renders the drama of Shakespeare s contemporaries more than fringe entertainment Independent Shakespeare is one of the greatest of all English figures, considered a genius for all time. Yet as this enthralling book shows, he was at heart a man of the theatre, one among a community of artists in the teeming world of Renaissance London from the enigmatic spy Christopher Marlowe to the self-aggrandizing Ben Jonson, from the actor Richard Burbage to the brilliant Thomas Middleton. By bringing Shakespeare s contemporaries to life, Shakespeare & Co throws fresh new light on the man himself. Warm, cheerful, generous Wells sketches a whole gallery of Shakespeare s fellow playwrights He brings each vividly to life, making you feel that you ve met them personally in some Blackfriars tavern Simon Callow It was a time and place teeming with excitement, anecdote and incident, and Wells, in this richly enjoyable work, brings it to life with a novelist s sense of the telling detail Dominic Dromgoole Enthralling Observer This is one of the most sane and exciting books on Shakespeare I have read for a long time Scotland on Sunday