Bringing together methods, assumptions and approaches from a variety of disciplines, Geraldo de Sousa's innovative study explores the representation, perception, and function of the house, home, household, and family life in Shakespeare's great tragedies. Concentrating on "King Lear", "Hamlet", "Othello", and "Macbeth", Sousa's examination of the home provides a fresh look at material that has been the topic of fierce debate.
Original in topic and approach, Searching Shakespeare presents a political-historical exploration of Shakespeare's drama, examining the plays in the context of current ideological concerns - history, memory, marginality, and nationalism. Derek Cohen predicates his argument on the supposition that the individual, as much as the encompassing state, is subject to the shaping forces and machinery of the ideological surround.
A comprehensive treatment of Shakespeare's plays in clear prose, The Practical Shakespeare: The Plays in Practice and on the Page illuminates for a general audience how and why the plays work so well.Noting in detail the practical and physical limitations the Bard faced as he worked out the logistics of his plays, Colin Butler demonstrates how Shakespeare incorporated and exploited those limitations to his advantage: his management of entrances and exits; his characterization technique; his handling of scenes off stage; his control of audience responses; his organization of major scenes; and his use of prologues and choruses.
After discussing the structuralism, post structuralism, Marxist, queer and feminist theories of dramatic action and dramaturgical development, the author posits an ontological (and refreshing) vision of Shakespearian stagecraft and dramatic movement. Shakespeare is seen as an actor and Roman Catholic, an outsider in an early modern Protestant state in the process of dynamic cultural, economic reform and political repression. These themes are reflected in the unsettled, morally ambiguous characterizations that Professor Crosman studies: Hamlet, Polonius, McBeth, Henry V and Falstaff among others.
Childhood in Shakespeare’s Plays challenges the notion that Shakespeare, like other Elizabethans, regarded children as small adults. The author shows how the playwright’s myriad references to childhood give an additional dimension to his adult figures. Providing the first detailed analysis of the child characters in Richard III, King John, Macbeth, and The Winter’s Tale, this book proves that Shakespeare did not depict children as unnaturally precocious or sentimentally innocent.
