Shakespearean Issues

Download Shakespearean Issues full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Shakespearean Issues ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Shakespearean Issues

Author : Richard Strier
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 1512823228
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (128 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespearean Issues by : Richard Strier

Download or read book Shakespearean Issues written by Richard Strier and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Shakespearean Issues, Richard Strier has written a set of linked essays bound by a learned view of how to think about Shakespeare’s plays and also how to write literary criticism on them. The essays vary in their foci—from dealing with passages and key lines to dealing with whole plays, and to dealing with multiple plays in thematic conversation with each other. Strier treats the political, social, and philosophical themes of Shakespeare’s plays through recursive and revisionary close reading, revisiting plays from different angles and often contravening prevailing views. Part I focuses on characters. Moments of bad faith, of unconscious self-revelation, and of semi-conscious self-revelation are analyzed, along with the problem of describing characters psychologically and ethically. In an essay on “Happy Hamlet,” the famous melancholy of the prince is questioned, as is the villainy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, while another essay asks the reader to reconsider moral judgments and negative assessments of characters who may be flawed but do not seem obviously wicked, such as Edgar and Gloucester in King Lear. Part II moves to systems, arguing that Henry IV, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice raise doubts about fundamental features of legal systems, such as impartiality, punishments, and respect for contracts. Strier reveals King Lear’s radicalism, analyzing its concentration on poverty and its insistence on the existence and legitimacy of a material substratum to human life. Essays on The Tempest offer original takes on the play’s presentation of coercive power, of civilization and its discontents, and of humanist ideals. Part III turns to religious and epistemological beliefs, with Strier challenging prevailing views of Shakespeare’s relation to both. A culminating reading sees The Winter’s Tale as ultimately affirming the mind’s capacities, and as finding a place for something like religion within the world. Anyone interested in Shakespeare’s plays will find Shakespearean Issues bracing and thought-provoking.

Shakespeare and Outsiders

Author : Marianne Novy
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019166491X
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and Outsiders by : Marianne Novy

Download or read book Shakespeare and Outsiders written by Marianne Novy and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. This book traces Shakespeare's portrayal of outsiders in some of his most famous plays. Some of Shakespeare's most memorable characters are treated as outsiders in at least part of their plays—Othello, Shylock, Malvolio, Katherine (the 'Shrew') , Edmund, Caliban, and many others. Marked as different and regarded with hostility by some in their society, many of these characters have become icons of group identity. While many critics use the term 'outsider,' this is the first book to analyse it as a relative identity and not a fixed one, a position that characters move into and out of, to show some characters affirming their places as relative insiders by the way they treat others as more outsiders than they are, and to compare characters who are outsiders not just in terms of race and religion but also in terms of gender, age, poverty, illegitimate birth, psychology, morality, and other issues. Are male characters who love other men outsiders for that reason in Shakespeare? How is the suspicion of women presented differently than suspicion of racial or religious outsiders? How do the speeches in which various outsiders stand up for the rights of their group compare? Can an outsider be admired? How and why do the plays shift sympathy for or against outsiders? How and why do they show similarities between outsiders and insiders? With chapters on Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, and women as outsiders and insiders, this book considers such questions with attention both to recent historical research on Shakespeare's time and to specifics of the language of Shakespeare's plays and how they work on stage and screen.

Shakespeare and Literary Theory

Author : Jonathan Gil Harris
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191614416
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and Literary Theory by : Jonathan Gil Harris

Download or read book Shakespeare and Literary Theory written by Jonathan Gil Harris and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. How is it that the British literary critic Terry Eagleton can say that 'it is difficult to read Shakespeare without feeling that he was almost certainly familiar with the writings of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein and Derrida', or that the Slovenian psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek can observe that 'Shakespeare without doubt had read Lacan'? Shakespeare and Literary Theory argues that literary theory is less an external set of ideas anachronistically imposed on Shakespeare's texts than a mode - or several modes - of critical reflection inspired by, and emerging from, his writing. These modes together constitute what we might call 'Shakespearian theory': theory that is not just about Shakespeare but also derives its energy from Shakespeare. To name just a few examples: Karl Marx was an avid reader of Shakespeare and used Timon of Athens to illustrate aspects of his economic theory; psychoanalytic theorists from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan have explained some of their most axiomatic positions with reference to Hamlet; Michel Foucault's early theoretical writing on dreams and madness returns repeatedly to Macbeth; Jacques Derrida's deconstructive philosophy is articulated in dialogue with Shakespeare's plays, including Romeo and Juliet; French feminism's best-known essay is Hélène Cixous's meditation on Antony and Cleopatra; certain strands of queer theory derive their impetus from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's reading of the Sonnets; Gilles Deleuze alights on Richard III as an exemplary instance of his theory of the war machine; and postcolonial theory owes a large debt to Aimé Césaire's revision of The Tempest. By reading what theoretical movements from formalism and structuralism to cultural materialism and actor-network theory have had to say about and in concert with Shakespeare, we can begin to get a sense of how much the DNA of contemporary literary theory contains a startling abundance of chromosomes - concepts, preoccupations, ways of using language - that are of Shakespearian provenance.

Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation

Author : Margaret Jane Kidnie
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 0415308674
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (153 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation by : Margaret Jane Kidnie

Download or read book Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation written by Margaret Jane Kidnie and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2009 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kidnie brings current debates in performance criticism in contact with recent developments in textual studies to explore what it is that distinguishes Shakespearean work from its apparent other, the adaptation.

Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies

Author : David F. McCandless
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253113344
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (133 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies by : David F. McCandless

Download or read book Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies written by David F. McCandless and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-12-22 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is exactly the kind of work, with its synthesis of theory, close reading, and deconstructive performance criticism that many of us in the profession have been looking for." -- Joel B. Altman, University of California, Berkeley "McCandless's book represents an inventive and illuminating account that not only produces a theoretically activated text but also explores a range of options for staging it, turning theoretical into theatrical meanings." -- Barbara Hodgdon, Drake University "The writing is clear, snappy, wonderfully informed with a vivid and experienced theatrical imagination... a book that taught me a good deal about the problem comedies, especially from the vantage point of performance, though the insights into performance are fully and incisively integrated with, and they richly illuminate, formal, thematic, and psychological vantage points on the play." -- Richard P. Wheeler, University of Illinois Composed at a critical moment in English history, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida -- Shakespeare's problem plays -- dramatize a crisis in the sex-gender system. They register a male dread of emasculation and engulfment, a fear of female authority and sexuality. In these plays males identify desire for a female as dangerous and unmanly, females contend and confound traditional femininity. David McCandless's book is a unique and invigorating example of performance criticism that illuminates these difficult, sometimes-overlooked tragicomedies. It is an original and timely contribution to Shakespearean theater scholarship.

Being and Having in Shakespeare

Author : Katharine Eisaman Maus
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199698007
Total Pages : 150 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Being and Having in Shakespeare by : Katharine Eisaman Maus

Download or read book Being and Having in Shakespeare written by Katharine Eisaman Maus and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being and Having in Shakespeare is a revised and expanded version of the 2010 Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lectures exploring the politics of authority and ownership in Shakespeare's plays.

Shakespeare and the Bible

Author : Steven Marx
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780198184409
Total Pages : 165 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (844 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and the Bible by : Steven Marx

Download or read book Shakespeare and the Bible written by Steven Marx and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Shakespeare Topics provides students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide tofurther reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. Despite the presence of hundreds of Biblical allusions in Shakespeare, this is the first book to explore the pattern and significance of those references in relation to a selection of his greatest plays. It reveals the Bible as a rich source for Shakespeare's uses of myth, history, comedy andtragedy, his techniques of staging, and his ways of characterizing rulers, magicians and teachers in the image of the Bible's multifaceted God. This book also discloses ways in which Shakespeare's plays offer both pious and irreverent interpretations of the Scriptures comparable to those presentedby his contemporary writers, artists, philosophers and politicians. After an opening chapter comparing the Bible as a fragmented yet unified collection of 46 books with the fragmented yet unified First Folio collection of Shakespeare's 36 plays, each of the following six chapters matches a book of the Bible with a representative play: the creation myth of Genesiswith the first play in the Folio, The Tempest, the historical epic of Exodus with Henry V, the tragedy of Job with King Lear, the tragicomedy of the Gospel of Matthew with Measure for Measure, the homiletic disputation of Paul's Epistle to the Romans with The Merchant of Venice, and the apocalypticmasque of the Book of Revelation with The Tempest again. Though its subject matter and style appeal to a broad audience, this book is grounded in recent scholarship in Shakespeare and Biblical studies. Its intertextual readings are framed by descriptions of the historical circumstances of each work's composition and reception and by an emergent theory ofallusion as a principle of creation and understanding.

Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation

Author : Margaret Jane Kidnie
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134393644
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (343 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation by : Margaret Jane Kidnie

Download or read book Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation written by Margaret Jane Kidnie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Kidnie's study presents original, sophisticated, and profoundly intelligent answers to important questions.' - Lukas Erne, University of Geneva 'This is a fine and productive book, one that will surely draw significant attention and commentary well beyond the precincts of Shakespeare studies.' - W.B. Worthen, Columbia University Shakespeare’s plays continue to be circulated on a massive scale in a variety of guises – as editions, performances, and adaptations – and it is by means of such mediation that we come to know his drama. Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation addresses fundamental questions about this process of mediation, making use of the fraught category of adaptation to explore how we currently understand the Shakespearean work. To adapt implies there exists something to alter, but what constitutes the category of the ‘play’, and how does it relate to adaptation? How do ‘play’ and ‘adaptation’ relate to drama’s twin media, text and performance? What impact might answers to these questions have on current editorial, performance, and adaptation studies? Margaret Jane Kidnie argues that ‘play’ and ‘adaptation’ are provisional categories - mutually dependent processes that evolve over time in accordance with the needs of users. This theoretical argument about the identity of works and the nature of text and performance is pursued in relation to diverse examples, including theatrical productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told, the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and recent print editions of the complete works. These new readings build up a persuasive picture of the cultural and intellectual processes that determine how the authentically Shakespearean is distinguished from the fraudulent and adaptive. Adaptation thus emerges as the conceptually necessary but culturally problematic category that results from partial or occasional failures to recognize a shifting work in its textual-theatrical instance.

Shakespeare and Social Theory

Author : BRADD. SHORE
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9781032017174
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (171 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and Social Theory by : BRADD. SHORE

Download or read book Shakespeare and Social Theory written by BRADD. SHORE and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a bridge between Shakespeare Studies and classical social theory, opening up readings of Shakespeare to a new audience outside of literary studies and the humanities. Shakespeare has long been known as a 'great thinker' and this book reads his plays through the lens of an anthropologist, revealing new connections between Shakespeare's plays and the lives we now lead. Close readings of a selection of frequently studied plays - Hamlet, The Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar and King Lear - engage with the plays in detail while connecting them with some of the biggest questions we all ask ourselves, about love, friendship, ritual, language, human interactions and the world around us. The plays are examined through various social theories including performance theory, cognitive theory, semiotics, exchange theory and structuralism. The book concludes with a consideration of how "the new astronomy" of his day and developments in optics changed the very idea of "perspective," and shaped Shakespeare's approach to embedding social theory in his dramatic texts. This accessible and engaging book will appeal to those approaching Shakespeare from outside literary studies, but will also be valuable to literature students approaching Shakespeare for the first time, or looking for a new angle on the plays.

Tragic Views of the Human Condition

Author : Lourens Minnema
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441151044
Total Pages : 586 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Tragic Views of the Human Condition by : Lourens Minnema

Download or read book Tragic Views of the Human Condition written by Lourens Minnema and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can tragic views of the human condition as known to Westerners through Greek and Shakespearean tragedy be identified outside European culture, in the Indian culture of Hindu epic drama? In what respects can the Mahabharata epic's and the Bhagavadgita's views of the human condition be called 'tragic' in the Greek and Shakespearean senses of the word? Tragic views of the human condition are primarily embedded in stories. Only afterwards are these views expounded in theories of tragedy and in philosophical anthropologies. Minnema identifies these embedded views of human nature by discussing the ways in which tragic stories raise a variety of anthropological issues-issues such as coping with evil, suffering, war, death, values, power, sacrifice, ritual, communication, gender, honour, injustice, knowledge, fate, freedom. Each chapter represents one cluster of tragic issues that are explored in terms of their particular (Greek, English, Indian) settings before being compared cross-culturally. In the end, the underlying question is: are Indian views of the human condition very different from Western views?

Shakespeare and the Law

Author : Bradin Cormack
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022637856X
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and the Law by : Bradin Cormack

Download or read book Shakespeare and the Law written by Bradin Cormack and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William Shakespeare is inextricably linked with the law. Legal documents make up most of the records we have of his life; trials, lawsuits, and legal terms permeate his plays. Gathering an extraordinary team of literary and legal scholars, philosophers, and even sitting judges, Shakespeare and the Law demonstrates that Shakespeare's thinking about legal concepts and legal practice points to a deep and sometimes vexed engagement with the law's technical workings, its underlying premises, and its social effects. Shakespeare and the Law opens with three essays that provide useful frameworks for approaching the topic, offering perspectives on law and literature that emphasize both the continuities and the contrasts between the two fields. In its second section, the book considers Shakespeare's awareness of common-law thinking and practice through examinations of Measure for Measure and Othello. Building and expanding on this question, the third part inquires into Shakespeare's general attitudes toward legal systems. A judge and former solicitor general rule on Shylock's demand for enforcement of his odd contract; and two essays by literary scholars take contrasting views on whether Shakespeare could imagine a functioning legal system. The fourth section looks at how law enters into conversation with issues of politics and community, both in the plays and in our own world. The volume concludes with a freewheeling colloquy among Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Judge Richard A. Posner, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Strier that covers everything from the ghost in Hamlet to the nature of judicial discretion"--Jacket.

Shakespeare and Women

Author : Phyllis Rackin
Publisher : Oxford Shakespeare Topics
ISBN 13 : 0198186940
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (981 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare and Women by : Phyllis Rackin

Download or read book Shakespeare and Women written by Phyllis Rackin and published by Oxford Shakespeare Topics. This book was released on 2005 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Shakespeare and Women' challenges a number of current assumptions about Shakespeare and women. It argues that the current scholarly emphasis on patriarchal power, male misogyny, and women's oppression may tell us more about ourselves than about the world Shakespeare inhabited and the worlds he created in his plays.

Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres

Author : Lawrence Danson
Publisher : Oxford Shakespeare Topics
ISBN 13 : 9780198711728
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (117 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres by : Lawrence Danson

Download or read book Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres written by Lawrence Danson and published by Oxford Shakespeare Topics. This book was released on 2000 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Shakespeare Topics provides students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide to further reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. The history of the genres, or kinds, of drama is one of contradictory traditions and complex cultural assumptions. The divisions established by the original edition of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (the First Folio, 1623) give shape to whole curricula; but, as Lawrence Danson reminds us in this lively book, there is nothing inevitable, and much unsatisfying, about that tripartite scheme. Yet students of Shakespeare cannot avoid thinking about questions of genre; often they are the unspoken reason why classrooms full of smart people fail to agree on basic interpretative issues. Danson's guide to the kinds of Shakespearian drama provides an accessible account of genre-theory in Shakespeare's day, an overview of the genres on the Elizabethan stage, and a provocative look at the full range of Shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies.

The Shakespearean Dramaturg

Author : A. Hartley
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1403981027
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (39 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Shakespearean Dramaturg by : A. Hartley

Download or read book The Shakespearean Dramaturg written by A. Hartley and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-11-04 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book marries a theoretical analysis of the issues underlying the role of the dramaturg with a thorough sense of the material conditions of theatrical production, from script editing and rehearsal room interactions to the preparation of programme notes and audience lectures. Central to the project is a notion of authority defined not by text or author, but by the theatre itself. The result is a guide for the prospective dramaturg which also provides for the more general reader a unique case study of the nexus between the methods and assumptions of literary criticism and those of practical theatre.

Early Modern Drama in Performance

Author : Mark Netzloff
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 161149513X
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Early Modern Drama in Performance by : Mark Netzloff

Download or read book Early Modern Drama in Performance written by Mark Netzloff and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Modern Drama in Performance is a collection of essays in honor of Lois Potter, the distinguished author of five monographs, including most recently The Life of William Shakespeare (2012), and numerous articles, edited collections, and editions. This collection’s emphasis on Shakespearean and early modern drama reflects the area for which Potter is most widely known, as a performance critic, editor, and literary scholar. The essays by a diverse group of scholars who have been influenced by Potter address recurring themes in her work: Shakespeare and non-Shakespearean early modern drama, performance history and theatre practice, theatrical performance across cultures, play reviewing, and playreading. What unifies them most, though, is that they carry on the spirit of Potter’s work: her ability to meet a text, a performance, or a historical period on its own terms, to give scrupulous attention to specific details and elegantly show how these details generate larger meaning, and to recover and preserve the fleeting and the ephemeral.

Is There a Shakespeare Problem?

Author : Sir Granville George Greenwood
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 656 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (6 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Is There a Shakespeare Problem? by : Sir Granville George Greenwood

Download or read book Is There a Shakespeare Problem? written by Sir Granville George Greenwood and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays

Author : Nicholas Marsh
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1403919178
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (39 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays by : Nicholas Marsh

Download or read book Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays written by Nicholas Marsh and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in 1602-4, between Hamlet and the other great tragedies, Shakespeare's three Problem Plays are so called because they do not fit easily into the other groups of plays. They are awkward dramas, full of unresolved controversies, which leave audiences and readers unsettled by contradictory responses. Nicholas Marsh uses close analysis of extracts from the plays to explore how Shakespeare maintains competing discourses within a single text. In the first part of his study, Marsh highlights the multiple interpretations these plays provoke and provides useful sections on methods of analysis to encourage readers to develop their views independently. The second part of the book discusses the Problem Plays in relation to the playwright's other works, and examines their cultural and historical contexts. A comparison of five modern critical views and helpful suggestions for further reading provide a bridge to continuing study. In this essential guide to a complex set of plays, Marsh does not seek to reconcile the thorny issues these dramas leave open: rather, he equips the reader with the necessary critical tools to fashion their own synthesis.