Books in the Cambridge School Shakespeare series

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of King Henry V, Shakespeare's most celebrated war play, Andrew Gurr has added a new section to his introduction in which he considers recent criticism and important contemporary productions of the play. Concentrating in particular on 'secret' versus 'official' readings of the work, he analyses Shakespeare's double vision of Henry as both military hero and self-seeking individual, and shows how the patriotic declarations of the Chorus are contradicted by the play's dramatic action. Controversial sequences are placed in the context of Elizabethan thought while the exceptional variety of language and dialect in the text is also studied. An updated reading list completes the edition.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Much Ado About Nothing retains the text and introduction prepared by F. H. Mares and features a new section by Angela Stock on recent film, stage and critical interpretations of the play. Mares pays special attention in the Introduction to the range of theatrical interpretations that have flourished since the first documented production of the play in the early seventeenth century. In particular, he explores notable performances of the roles of Benedick and Beatrice, from David Garrick to John Gielgud, and Peggy Ashcroft to Judi Dench. The commentary explicates the many sexual jokes in the text that are obscured by the complexity of Elizabethan English.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. In this second edition of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor David Crane emphasises the liveliness of the play in stage terms. He also claims that this citizen comedy was an expression of Shakespeare's fundamental understanding of human life, conveyed centrally in the character of Falstaff. In the process he examines Shakespeare's free and vigorous use of different linguistic worlds. An account of the play's textual history concludes that at the time of its earliest performances Shakespeare's text was being adapted to specific theatrical needs, and as much in the possession of its players as of its author.

An active approach to Shakespeare in the classroom.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. Edited and introduced by L. A. Beaurline, the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of King John offers the most complete account to date of the play's stage history, with accompanying illustrations to demonstrate its dramatic potential. Although King John fell out of fashion by the end of the nineteenth century, Beaurline shows how its political importance, rich and varied language, and skilful design suggest that it should occupy a prominent position among Shakespeare's historical tragedies. In the Appendix, Beaurline surveys the arguments about the dating of the play and the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John, and presents new evidence to support the view that Shakespeare's play was written first.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of King Richard II Andrew Gurr has added a new section to the introduction, in which he discusses a number of important theatrical productions as well as the scholarly criticism of recent years. Gurr foregrounds the growing interest in re-historicising and re-politicising the play, emphasising that, to Shakespeare's contemporaries, King Richard II was a balanced dramatisation of the central political and constitutional issue of the day: how to reign-in an unjust ruler. The Introduction provides a full context for both contemporaneous and modern views of King Richard's fall. An updated reading list completes the edition.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of The Comedy of Errors, Ros King has revised T. S. Dorsch's renowned text and commentary and written a completely new introduction to the work. She argues that the play cannot be regarded merely as a farcical romp based on a classical model but that it belongs to the critically misunderstood genre of tragi-comedy. Emphasising the seriousness that underlies the text, she pays special attention to the play's religious imagery and at the same time engages fully with its lightness of touch and its continuing popularity in the theatre. The volume also features accounts of recent and historical performances, and an updated reading list.

A wealth of expert advice and practical ideas for teaching the plays.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of The Sonnets, Stephen Orgel has written a new introduction to Shakespeare's best-loved and most widely read poems. In a series of focused readings he probes the sonnets' sexual and temperamental ambiguity as well as their complex textual history, and explores the difficulties editors face when modernising the spelling, punctuation and layout of the 1609 quarto. Orgel reminds us that the order in which the sonnets were composed bears no relation to the order in which they appear in the quarto and he warns against reading them biographically. This edition retains the text prepared by G. Blakemore Evans, together with his notes and commentary.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For the second edition of All's Well That Ends Well, Alexander Leggatt has written a completely new introduction to Russell Fraser's text of one of Shakespeare's most puzzling, ambiguous and demanding plays. Leggatt's interest in performance is evident throughout the introduction, particularly in his discussion of the instability of the main characters. He also provides a full, illustrated and thoughtful account of the play's critical and theatrical fortunes to the end of the twentieth century, and explores our experience as an audience of seeing and hearing the play performed. An updated reading list completes the volume.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of Measure for Measure Angela Stock has written a new introductory section that takes account of recent scholarly criticism and important contemporary productions on stage and film. The edition retains the text prepared by Brian Gibbons together with his comprehensive introduction, in which he shows how the play's critical reception and stage history varies from one period to the next according to the prevailing social, moral and religious issues of the day. Gibbons explores the thrilling experience of watching the play in performance, with its shocking reversals and surprises, great tragic poetry and exuberant comic prose. An updated reading list completes the edition.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This third edition of Julius Caesar retains the text prepared by Marvin Spevak for the 1988 first edition and features a completely new introduction by Jeremy Lopez. Discussing in detail the play's strange and innovative form, Lopez explores the interpretive challenges Julius Caesar has presented to audiences, scholars and theatre companies from Shakespeare's time to our own. The textual commentary has been revised and updated with an eye, and ear, to the contemporary student reader, and the list of further readings has been updated to reflect the latest developments in scholarly criticism. The edition concludes with an Appendix containing relevant excerpts from Shakespeare's main source in Plutarch.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This is the third New Cambridge edition of The Taming of the Shrew, one of Shakespeare's most popular yet controversial plays. Ann Thompson considers its reception in the light of the hostility and embarrassment that the play often arouses, taking account of both scholarly defences and modern feminist criticism. For this version the editor pays lively attention to the problematic nature of debates about the play and its reception in the twenty-first century. She discusses recent editions and textual, performance and critical studies.

For four centuries Twelfth Night has inspired theatre directors and performers. Surveying a dazzling range of Twelfth Night productions - including many significant productions which have not received due critical attention previously - Schafer provides the reader with an indispensable stage history of this popular play, from its first performance to today.

As You Like It has sometimes seemed a subversive play that exposes the instability of gender roles and traditional values. In other eras it has been prized - or derided - as a reliable celebration of conventional social mores. The play's ability to encompass these extremes tells an interesting story about changing cultural and theatrical practices. This edition provides a detailed history of the play in production, both on stage and on screen. The introduction examines how changing conceptions of gender roles have affected the portrayal of Rosalind, one of Shakespeare's greatest comic heroines. The striking differences between the British tradition and the freer treatment the play has received abroad are discussed, as well as the politics of court versus country. The commentary, printed alongside the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the text, draws on primary sources to illuminate how costuming, stage business, design, and directorial choices have shaped the play in performance.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of The Tempest, David Lindley has thoroughly revised the Introduction to take account of the latest developments in criticism and performance. He has also added a completely new section on casting in recent productions of the play. The complex questions this new section raises about colonisation, racial and gender stereotypes and the nature of theatrical experience are explored throughout the introduction. Careful attention is paid to dramatic form, stagecraft, and the use of music and spectacle in The Tempest, a play that is widely regarded as one of Shakespeare's most elusive and suggestive. A revised and updated reading list completes the edition.

This edition tells the story of Hamlet in production, from Burbage at the Globe to Branagh on film, relating stage interpretations to developments in the theatre, literary criticism and society. The introduction focuses on whole productions of the play including supporting players and, in this century, direction and design.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss, provides a thorough reconsideration of what was probably Shakespeare's last tragedy. In the introduction, Bliss situates the play within its contemporary social and political contexts and pays particular attention to Shakespeare's manipulation of his primary source in Plutarch's Lives. The edition is alert to the play's theatrical potential, while the stage history also attends to the politics of performance from the 1680s onwards, including European productions following the Second World War. A new introductory section by Bridget Escolme accounts for recent theatrical productions as well as scholarly criticism of the last decade, with particular emphasis on gender and politics.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of Antony and Cleopatra, David Bevington has included in his introductory section a thorough consideration of recent critical and stage interpretations, demonstrating how the theatrical design and imagination of this play make it one of Shakespeare's most remarkable tragedies. The edition is attentive throughout to the play as theatre: a detailed, illustrated account of the stage history is followed, in the commentary, by discussion of staging options offered by the text. The commentary is especially full and helpful, untangling many obscure words and phrases, illuminating sexual puns, and alerting the reader to Shakespeare's shaping of his source material in Plutarch's Lives.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems and an extensive introduction. The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's most varied, theatrically self-conscious, and emotionally wide-ranging plays. Much of the play's copiousness inheres in its generic intermingling of tragedy, comedy, romance, pastoral, and the history play. In addition to dates and sources, the introduction attends to iterative patterns, the nature and cause of Leontes' jealousy, the staging and meaning of the bear episode, and the thematic and structural implications of the figure of Time. Special attention is paid to the ending and its tempered happiness. Performance history is integrated throughout the introduction and commentary. Appendices include the theatrical practice of doubling.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of The Merchant of Venice retains the text and Introduction prepared by M. M. Mahood and features a new introductory section by Charles Edelman. Where Mahood focuses in her Introduction on the expectations of the play's first audience and on our modern experience of seeing and hearing the drama performed, Edelman explores the play's sexual politics. He also foregrounds recent scholarship on the position of Jews in Shakespeare's time and surveys the international scope and diversity of theatrical interpretations of the text in the 1980s and 1990s. He pays particular attention to the ways in which directors and actors tackle the troubling figure of Shylock.

Invaluable support for all teachers of Shakespeare in schools, colleges and institutions of higher education.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Macbeth provides a thorough reconsideration of one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. In his introduction, A. R. Braunmuller explores Macbeth's immediate theatrical and political contexts, particularly the Gunpowder Plot, and addresses such celebrated questions as: do the Witches compel Macbeth to murder; is Lady Macbeth herself in some sense a witch; is Macduff morally culpable? A new and well-illustrated account of the play in performance examines several cinematic versions, such as those by Kurosawa and Roman Polanski, as well as other dramatic adaptations. Several possible new sources are suggested and the presence of Thomas Middleton's writing in the play is also proposed.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. For this second edition of King Richard III, Janis Lull has added a new section to her introduction, in which she focuses on contemporary productions of the play as well as recent scholarly criticism. Lull emphasises the importance of women's roles in this popular drama but shows how the text has frequently been cut, rewritten and reshaped by directors and actors to enhance the role of Richard, often at the expense of female characters. The special relationship between King Richard III and Macbeth is also explored while the notes detail the play's language in terms that are easily accessible to contemporary readers.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Othello retains the text and Introduction prepared by Norman Sanders and features a new section by Scott McMillin on recent scholarship and key performances of the play since the 1980s. Building on the full and well-illustrated stage history compiled by Sanders, McMillin focuses on political, feminist and postcolonial treatments of Othello in various parts of the world and discusses important performances on stage, film and television. Sanders' discussion of the stylistic and racial problems facing modern readers and spectators is complemented by McMillin who explores the influence of new historicism and cultural materialism and the issue of black/white casting of the main characters.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Romeo and Juliet retains the text prepared by G. Blakemore Evans, together with his introduction and detailed textual notes. A thorough stage history features illustrations and photographs of notable performances from the eighteenth century onwards while a lucid commentary alerts the reader to the difficulties of language, thought and staging. For this second edition, Thomas Moisan has added a new introductory section which focuses on recent scholarly criticism and contemporary productions of the play. The reading list has also been revised and updated.

John Dover Wilson's New Shakespeare, published between 1921 and 1966, became the classic Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's plays and poems until the 1980s. The series, long since out-of-print, is now reissued. Each work contains a lengthy and lively introduction, main text, and substantial notes and glossary.

An active approach to Shakespeare in the classroom.