Structural Readers is a series in six stages, of mainly original titles including fiction, non-fiction, poems, and plays.
The past plays an important part in both of these stories. In Stranger things have happened, Chris Duncan, a successful young businessman, arrives home from Pakistan determined to find himself a wife. He has no luck- until a dream of his happy childhood days in a Sussex house puts him on the right track.
In It’s not right, is it? A young man, David Monroe, takes a flat in an old lady’s house. Trouble starts when he realizes that the old lady believes he is her own dead son…
William Shakespeare. Born April 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon. Died April 1616. Married Anne Hathaway: two daughters, one son. Actor, poet, famous playwright. Wrote nearly forty plays.
But what was he like as a man? What did he think about when he rode into London for the first time . . . or when he was writing his plays Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet . . . or when his only son died?
We know the facts of his life, but we can only guess at his hopes, his fears, his dreams.
A new study of Shakespeare’s life and times, which illuminates our understanding and appreciation of his works. Combines an accessible fully historicised treatment of both the life and the plays, suited to both undergraduate and popular audiences
Looks at 24 of the most significant plays and the sonnets through the lens of various aspects of Shakespeare’s life and historical environment
Addresses four of the most significant issues that shaped Shakespeare’s career: education, religion, social status, and theatre
Examines theatre as an institution and the literary environment of early modern LondonExplains and dispatches conspiracy theories about authorship
In the context of classical and Renaissance theories of imitation, or mimesis, Shakespeare's Imitations discusses features of four plays by Shakespeare that imitate materials outside but especially within the same plays. The book argues that an imitation does not merely repeat its model, it completes and deciphers it: the model, that is, can begin to be understood fully only after its imitation is apprehended as an interpretation of it.
Shakespeare's plays are stuffed with letters - 111 appear on stage in all but five of his dramas. But for modern actors, directors, and critics they are frequently an awkward embarrassment. Alan Stewart shows how and why Shakespeare put letters on stage in virtually all of his plays. By reconstructing the very different uses to which letters were put in Shakespeare's time, and recapturing what it meant to write, send, receive, read, and archive a letter, it throws new light on some of his most familiar dramas
