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Nine Lives Of William Shakespeare | | Graham Holderness | | 2011 |
This new biography of Shakespeare identifies and expounds the many possible
'lives' that can reasonably be drawn around the basic facts,
traditions and literary remains of his legacy. Graham Holderness
takes a hard and fresh look at the facts, the traditions,
and the possible relations between a life and the works that
life created. He offers nine possible short 'lives' of Shakespeare,
based on specific facts and traditions, drawn from the documentary
record and from biographical interpretation, and supported
by a body of critical and biographical work. |
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How To Do Shakespeare | | Adrian Noble | | 2010 |
Adrian Noble has worked on Shakespeare with everyone from Oscar-nominated
actors to groups of schoolchildren. Here he draws on several
decades of top-level directing experience to shed new light
on how to bring some of theatre's seminal texts to life.
He shows you how to approach the perennial issues of performing
Shakespeare, including: Wordplay, Dialogue, Building a character,
and Shape and structure.
This guided tour of Shakespeare's complex but unfailingly
rewarding work stunningly combines instruction and inspiration. |
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Shakespeare, Sex, & Love | | Stanley Wells | | 2010 |
| Through detailed reference to written sources, Stanley Wells
takes us to the brothels, bedchambers, marriages, and divorces
of Stratford-upon-Avon; and to the metropolitan buzz of London,
including its burgeoning industry in homoerotic publishing.
He shows how Shakespeare's attitude to sex developed over the
course of his writing career, and explores the multiplicity
of ways in which he deploys it: sexual humour; sexual jealousy;
sexual experience; same-gender relationships. Through this one
perennially enticing subject, Wells brings a myriad of ideas
and insights to life. |
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The Genius Of Shakespeare | | Jonathan Bate | | 2008 |
| Who was Shakespeare? Why has his writing endured? What makes
it so endlessly adaptable to different times and cultures? And
how has Shakespeare come to be such a powerful symbol of genius?
The Genius Of Shakespeare is a fascinating biography
of the life - and afterlife - of the greatest English poet.
Jonathan Bate, one of the world's leading Shakespearean scholars,
deftly shows how the legend of Shakespeare's genius was created
and sustained, and how it has become a truly global phenomenon.
This is the best book about Shakespeare for a generation. |
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Shakespeare On Toast | | Ben Crystal | | 2008 |
| This book knocks the stuffing from the staid old myth of Shakespeare,
revealing the man and his plays for what they really are: modern,
thrilling and uplifting drama. Actor and author Ben Crystal
brings the bright words and colourful characters of the world's
greatest hack writer brilliantly to life, handing over the key
to Shakespeare's plays, unlocking the so-called difficult bits
and finding Shakespeare's own voice amid the poetry. Told in
five Acts, this book sweeps the cobwebs from the Bard revealing
both the man and his work to be relevant, accessible and full
of beans. |
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Shakespeare The Thinker | | A.D. Nuttall | | 2007 |
| A.D. Nuttall's profound and elegantly written study of Shakespeare's
thought is a marvellous inquiry into the questions that engrossed
the playwright throughout his life. Nuttall investigates the
dynamic nature of Shakespeare's evolving answers and provides
for twenty-first century readers an unparalleled guide to Shakespeare's
plays. The delight of Nuttall's book springs not just from the
incisiveness of his ideas but from the deftness with which he
unfolds scenes and speeches. It is like walking through the
countryside with someone who recognizes every bird's song and
each wild flower. |
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Shakespeare: The World As A Stage | | Bill Bryson | | 2007 |
| Examining centuries of myths, half-truths and downright lies,
Bill Bryson tries to make sense of the man behind the masterpieces.
In a journey through the streets of Shakespeare's time, he brings
to life the hubbub of Elizabethan England and a host of characters
along the way. Bryson celebrates the glory of Shakespeare's
language and delights in details of his fall-outs and folios,
poetry and plays. Stitching together information from a vast
array of sources, he has created a unique celebration of one
of the most significant, and least understood, figures in history. |
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The Lodger: Shakespeare On Silver Street | | Charles Nicholl | | 2007 |
| In this subtle and atmospheric exploration of William Shakespeare
at forty, we see him not from the viewpoint of literary greatness,
but in the humdrum and very human context of Silver Street,
where to the maid of the house he was merely 'one Mr Shakespeare',
renting the room upstairs. Charles Nicholl applies a powerful
biographical magnifying glass to a fascinating but oddly neglected
episode in Shakespeare's life. By opening up an unexpected window
into the dramatist's famously obscure life-story, the writer
has created something all too rare - a fresh and original book
about Shakespeare. |
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William Shakespeare: Complete Works | | Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (editors) | | 2007 |
| The text in this edition is based on the 1623 First Folio,
the first and original Complete Works lovingly assembled and
seen into print by Shakespeare's fellow-actors. The First
Folio is a literary icon and is the version of Shakespeare's
text preferred by many actors and directors. At the request
of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
have used the very latest techniques and research to correct
the errors and variations found in the early printed copies
and to present the First Folio for modern readers. |
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Shakespeare & Co. | | Stanley Wells | | 2006 |
| In this book Stanley Wells breaks new ground in an engaging
and illuminating study of the lives and careers of Shakespeare's
contemporaries, a vital part of the time in which he wrote.
Stanley Wells explores the Elizabethan theatrical scene, looks
at the great actors Shakespeare worked with, and examines the
lives and works of the writers of his day and his later successors.
He argues that it is only through remembering and celebrating
the sheer richness and variety of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama
that we can come to a closer understanding of the shadowy figure
of Shakespeare himself. |
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The Shakespeare Wars | | Ron Rosenbaum | | 2006 |
| Ron Rosenbaum gives us a Shakespeare book like no other. Rather
than raking over worn-out fragments of biography, Rosenbaum
focuses on cutting-edge controversies about the true source
of Shakespeare's enchantment and illumination - the astonishing
language itself. With quicksilver wit and provocative insight,
Rosenbaum takes readers into the midst of fierce battles among
the most brilliant Shakespearean scholars and directors over
just how to delve deeper into the Shakespearean experience -
deeper into the mind of Shakespeare. |
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1599: A Year In The Life Of William Shakespeare | | James Shapiro | | 2005 |
| How did Shakespeare become one of the greatest writers who
ever lived? In one exhilarating year, 1599, we follow what he
read and wrote, what he saw and who he worked with as he invested
in the new Globe theatre and created four of his most famous
plays. James Shapiro illuminates not only Shakespeare's staggering
achievement but also what Elizabethans experienced in the course
of 1599. This book brings the news and intrigue of the times
together with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked
as an actor, businessman and playwright. |
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Walking Shakespeare's London | | Nicholas Robins | | 2004 |
| This book brings together 20 walks exploring 16th century
London. They cover the whole of Central London from Shoreditch
to Deptford. As well as exploring the London that Shakespeare
knew, the walks also cover the theatres of modern London, where
great directors have succesfully staged Shakespeare's plays
over many centuries. This guide is illustrated with specially-commissioned
full-colour photographs and is enriched with atmospheric 16th
century engravings. Each walk is supported with an easy-to-follow
map highlighting places of interest along each route. |
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Will In The World | | Stephen Greenblatt | | 2004 |
| Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and
feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by
the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the
world's greatest playwright. Stephen Greenblatt recovers the
links between Shakespeare and his world and gives us a full
and vital portrait of the man. He takes us on a journey through
Shakespeare's unfolding imagination and humanity - his ability
to enter into his characters, to confer upon them his own strength
of spirit and to make them live and breathe as independent human
beings. |
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In Search Of Shakespeare | | Michael Wood | | 2003 |
| In this absorbing historical detective story Michael Wood
takes a fresh approach to Shakespeare's life, brilliantly recreating
the turbulent times through which the poet lived. Wood takes us
back into Elizabethan England to reveal a man who is the product
of his time - a period of tremendous upheaval that straddled
the medieval and modern worlds. This book presents us with a
Shakespeare for the twenty-first century: a man of the theatre,
a thinking artist, playful and cunning, who held up a mirror
to his age, but who was also 'not of an age, but for all time'. |
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Shakespeare For All Time | | Stanley Wells | | 2002 |
| This enthralling and splendidly illustrated book tells the
story of Shakespeare's life, his writings and his afterlife.
Drawing on a lifetime's experience of studying, teaching, editing
and writing about Shakespeare, Stanley Wells combines scholarly
authority with authorial flair in a book that will appeal equally
to the specialist and the untutored enthusiast. Rich in anecdote
and insight, authoritative and informative in equal measure,
this magnificent book triumphantly proves Ben Jonson's assertion
that his friend Shakespeare 'was not of an age, but for all
time'. |
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The Late Mr Shakespeare | | Robert Nye | | 1999 |
| From a dingy attic above a brothel in Restoration London,
aged actor Pickleherring tells all that's fit to know - and
much that's not - about the life of the Bard. A child actor
in Shakespeare's troupe, Pickleherring has heard every salacious
story about the playwright's life - and is generous-spirited
enough to repeat them all. From his vantage point as one of
Shakespeare's favourite actors, Pickleherring has the answers
to every question ever asked about his mentor. Audacious, bawdy
and jaw-droppingly ingenious, this book is a bravura performance
by one of our finest living novelists. |
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Woza Shakespeare! | | Antony Sher and Gregory Doran | | 1996 |
| In 1995 the renowned actor Antony Sher made his professional
stage debut in his native South Africa, playing Titus Andronicus
in a production directed by his partner Gregory Doran. Woza
Shakespeare!, which tells the story of this production,
is hair-raising, moving and funny. As Sher and Doran hand the
story-telling back and forth, fascinating portraits emerge of
their relationship, both professional and personal; of the production's
multi-racial cast; of theatre in South Africa as it emerges
from the dark ages of apartheid; and of Shakespeare's bloodiest
tragedy. |
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Playing Shakespeare | | John Barton | | 1984 |
| John Barton attempts a reasonably objective analysis of how
Shakespeare's text actually works, examining the use of verse
and prose, set speeches and soliloquies, language and character.
He also concentrates on the more subjective areas such as irony
and ambiguity, passion and coolness. The book springs from a
tv series, in which these various topics were investigated by
Barton and a group of Shakespearean actors. Useful for actors
and scholars, this book will also aid teachers and students
working on Shakespeare's plays in the classroom. |
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Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets | | Don Paterson | | 2010 |
| In this illuminating and often irreverent guide, Don Paterson
offers a fresh and direct approach to the Sonnets, asking what
they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader. In a
series of fascinating and highly entertaining commentaries placed
alongside the poems themselves, Don Paterson discusses the meaning,
technique, hidden structure and feverish narrative of the Sonnets,
as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader.
Most importantly, however, he looks at what they tell us about
William Shakespeare the lover - and what they might still tell
us about ourselves. |
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Contested Will | | James Shapiro | | 2010 |
For 200 years after Shakespeare's death, no one thought to
argue that somebody else had written his plays. Since then dozens
of rival candidates have been proposed as their true author.
This book unravels the mystery of when and why so many people
began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays.
James Shapiro's fascinating search for the source of this controversy
retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for
trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception
and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined. |
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Shakespeare And Elizabeth | | Helen Hackett | | 2009 |
| Helen Hackett follows the history of meetings between Shakespeare
and Elizabeth through historical novels, plays, paintings, and
films. Raising intriguing questions about the boundaries separating
scholarship and fiction, she looks at biographers and critics
who continue to delve into links between the queen and the poet.
She uncovers the reasons behind the lasting appeal of their
combined reputations, and she locates the interest in their
enigmatic sexual identities, as well as in the ways they represent
political tensions and national aspirations. |
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Soul Of The Age | | Jonathan Bate | | 2008 |
How did plague turn Shakespeare from a hack into a courtly
poet? How did Bottom's dream rewrite the Bible? How did Shakespeare's
plays lead to the deaths of an earl and a king? Why was he the
one dramatist of his time never to be imprisoned?
Weaving a dazzling tapestry of Elizabethan beliefs and obsessions,
private passions and political intrigues, Jonathan Bate's Soul
Of The Age leads us on a breathtaking tour of the extraordinary,
colourful and often violent world that shaped and informed Shakespeare's
thinking. |
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Shakespeare Revealed | | René Weis | | 2007 |
| René Weis brings Shakespeare the man and his milieu to the
fore in a compelling reassessment. Breaking with tradition,
he reveals how the plays and poems themselves contain a rich
seam of clues about Shakespeare's life, from his heretical dalliances
with Catholicism to his grief at the death of his son Hamnet.
If there is a code in his works, Shakespeare intended it to
be broken. These startling new textual findings are consolidated
by scrupulous archival research. This is a bold and provocative
book that presents an intimate view of the interior world of
a genius. |
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100 Shakespeare Films | | Daniel Rosenthal | | 2007 |
| Shakespeare's plays have inspired spaghetti Westerns and British
Oscar-winners, Bollywood thrillers and Soviet epics. Covering
twenty plays, this selection of 100 Shakespeare films spans
a century of cinema, from a silent The Tempest (1907)
to Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It (2006). The introduction
traces the history of screen Shakespeare and analyses the pros
and cons of adaptation. Presented alphabetically by Shakespeare
play, each chapter begins with a synopsis. The film essays explore
cinematography, design, dialogue, music and performance. |
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Studying Shakespeare On Film | | Maurice Hindle | | 2007 |
| This book provides students with a 'hands-on' introductory
guide to this relatively new domain of Shakespeare studies.
Written in a clear and accessible style, the book consists of
five stimulating parts. At every stage students are given the
critical knowledge and vocabulary to analyse and discuss Shakespeare
on screen. With a helpful Glossary of Terms, Further Reading
and List of Useful Websites to aid study, this is an essential
resource for anyone with an interest in the various film and
television representations of Shakespeare's plays. |
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Shakespeare's Wife | | Germaine Greer | | 2007 |
| Germaine Greer combines literary-historical techniques with
documentary evidence about life in Stratford, striving to re-embed
the story of Shakespeare's marriage in its social context. Her
book presents a new and more fruitful set of hypotheses about
the life and career of the farmer's daughter who married our
greatest poet. This is a compelling, insightful book, which
already goes some way to right the wrongs done to Anne Shakespeare.
Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new
questions and opens new fields of investigation and research. |
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Will | | Christopher Rush | | 2007 |
| In this unforgettable blend of scholarship and imagination
poet and novelist Christopher Rush takes us right into the mind
of the Bard, a man whose almost superhuman art was forged from
very human frailties and misfortunes. Cutting through all the
pieties which encrust Shakespeare, Rush has created a compelling
and utterly convincing figure, irrepressible, bawdy, witty and
wise, his every word steeped in the situations and phrases of
his own plays, yet tormented by the question whether his towering
talent was a blessing or a curse. His captivating voice speaks
to us across 400 years. |
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Searching For Shakespeare | | Stanley Wells, James Shapiro and Tarnya Cooper | | 2006 |
| This book looks at six contested portraits of William Shakespeare
and examines their authenticity. Stanley Wells and James Shapiro
piece together Shakespeare's personal and professional life,
while Tarnya Cooper explores contemporary understanding of portraiture
and Shakespeare's interest in the visual arts. Richly illustrated
with portraits, costumes, manuscripts and maps, this book provides
fascinating insights into the life of Shakespeare, as well as
into the lives of his fellow actors, entertainers and playwrights,
and of his patrons and audiences. |
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Will & Me | | Dominic Dromgoole | | 2006 |
| Shakespeare has always been part of Dominic Dromgoole's life.
From school plays to adolescent angst, from his love of Stratford
to his experiences as a director, the shadowy figure of the
Bard has always been there. Here Dromgoole recounts the story
of his life through Shakespeare, and in turn shows us what Shakespeare
can tell us about the world. A poignant, revealing and often
bawdy book, by turns soliloquy, tragedy and comedy, Will
& Me is a glorious appreciation of how a life can be illuminated
through encounters with Shakespeare's rough and ready genius. |
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Shakespeare: The Biography | | Peter Ackroyd | | 2005 |
| Peter Ackroyd's marvellous biography is a living attempt to
reach into the world and heart of Shakespeare. He creates an
intimate and immediate connection with his subject, so that
the book reads like the work of a contemporary - meeting Shakespeare
afresh on his own ground. This biography is neither an academic
description nor a didactic analysis. Written with intuition
and imagination unique to Peter Ackroyd, a book by a writer
about a writer, brilliant and straightforward, it vividly presents
the reader with the circumstances of Shakespeare's life and
art. |
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Year Of The King | | Antony Sher | | 2004 |
| Antony Sher's stunning performance for the Royal Shakespeare
Company as a Richard III on crutches - the so-called 'bottled
spider' - won him both the Laurence Olivier and Evening Standard
Awards for Best Actor. This book records - in the actor's own
words and drawings - the making of this historic theatrical
event. This new edition is published on the twentieth anniversary
of the premiere. It includes a new introduction in which Sher
looks back somewhat bemusedly at how much has happened to him
and to the world in the intervening years. |
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A History Of Shakespeare On Screen | | Kenneth S. Rothwell | | 2004 |
| This book chronicles how film-makers have re-imagined Shakespeare's
plays from the earliest exhibitions in music halls and nickelodeons
to today's multi-million dollar productions shown in megaplexes.
Topics include the silent era, Hollywood in the Golden Age,
the films of Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles, television -
including the BBC plays -, the avant-garde cinema of Jarman
and Greenaway, and non-Anglophone contributions from Japan and
elsewhere. This second edition updates the chronology to the
year 2003 and includes a new chapter on recent films. |
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Shakespeare's Words | | David & Ben Crystal | | 2002 |
| This book is for people who love Shakespeare, or who love
language, or both. The authors have created an immensely practical
and enlightening guide to understanding Shakespeare's language
for readers, audiences, students, directors and actors. They
have collected over 14,000 words that can cause difficulty or
be ambiguous to the modern reader. Each word is glossed and
illustrated by at least one quotation. This book will greatly
enrich every reader's understanding and appreciation of the
plays, and will encourage a new generation to treasure them. |
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Shakespeare's Language | | Frank Kermode | | 2000 |
| At a time when most critics seem more concerned with theories
of politics and psychology than with poetry, Frank Kermode takes
us back to the essence of Shakespeare - his words. Shakespeare's
revolutionary use of language is where the true power of his
plays lies. Yet how could he be so wildly experimental with
the English language and still remain a popular dramatist? If
we sometimes find his plays hard to understand today, was it
any easier for an Elizabethan theatregoer? This study distils
a lifetime's thinking to unlock the secrets of Shakespeare's
'wild and whirling words'. |
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The Nation's Favourite Shakespeare | | Emma Shackleton (editor) | | 1999 |
| William Shakespeare is one of the most enduring and influential
writers of all time. This delightful celebration of his work
brings together over a hundred best-loved speeches, scenes and
sonnets, all of which are guaranteed to appeal both to seasoned
Shakespeare enthusiasts and to the uninitiated alike. Here are
many old favourites to be re-discovered: Romeo's wonderfully
romantic accolade to Juliet's beauty, Macbeth's haunted musings
after killing Duncan, Henry V's rousing and poignant battle
speech to his troops, and Shakespeare's most romantic sonnets. |
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Shakespeare: Court, Crowd And Playhouse | | François Laroque | | 1993 |
A universal master whose achievement is timeless, Shakespeare
is nevertheless inseparable from his age - the brilliant pageant
of Elizabethan England, glorified by Queen and courtiers, soldiers
and explorers, Renaissance poets and scholars. Theatrical professional
and consummate dramatist, Shakespeare wove the human comedy
being played all around him into masterpieces which have shaped
the English language to this day.
The author of this book teaches English literature at the university
of the Sorbonne nouvelle in Paris. |
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Shakespeare Our Contemporary | | Jan Kott | | 1965 |
| This is a new and brilliantly original interpretation of Shakespeare
which has already influenced directors of Shakespeare's plays
in Europe and America. For Jan Kott, a Pole who suffered both
the Nazi terror and the Stalinist repression, the violence of
Shakespeare's world offers many close parallels to our own.
He sees Hamlet and Prospero not as romantic characters, but
as modern man facing the despair that so many of his contemporaries
have known. This is the best, the most alive, radical book about
Shakespeare in at least a generation. |
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