Citizen Shakespeare: Freemen and Aliens in the Language of the Plays
Shakespeare lived his professional life amid the London streets and died a prominent figure in the town of Stratford. The language of his plays is shot through with the concerns of London "freemen" and their wives, the diverse commercial class that nevertheless excluded adult immigrants from c
We need a poetic history of the ocean, and Shakespeare can help us find one. There's more real salt in the plays than we might expect. Shakespeare's dramatic ocean spans the God-sea of the ancient world and the immense blue vistas that early modern mariners navigated. Throughout his career, from the opening shipwrecks of The Comedy of Errors through The Tempest, Shakespeare's plays figure the ocean as shocking physical reality and mind-twisting symbol of change and instability.
Shakespeare has made the big time. No less than the Beatles or Liberace, Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger, Shakespeare is big-time in the idiomatic sense of cultural success and widespread notoriety. Not only has he achieved canonical status, Shakespeare is a contemporary celebrity. His artistic distinction and aptitude for contro
When critical theory met literary studies in the 1970s and '80s, some of the most radical and exciting theoretical work centred on the quasi-sacred figure of Shakespeare. In Alternative Shakespeares, John Drakakis brought together key essays by founding figures in this movement to remake Shakespeare studies.
The Tempest has long dazzled readers and audiences with its intricate blend of magic, music, humour, intrigue and tenderness, its vibrant but ambiguous central characters. As Virginia and Alden Vaughan show, in their wide-ranging new edition of this established favourite, such antithetical extremes exemplify the play’s endlessly arguable nature, its appeal to diverse eras and cultures.
