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Since its original appearance in 1949, Irving A. Leonard's pioneering Books of the Brave has endured as the classic account of the introduction of literary culture to the Spanish New World. Leonard's study documents the works of fiction that accompanied and followed the conquistadores to the Americas and argues that popular texts influenced these men and shaped the way they thought and wrote about their experiences. UC Press's 1992 edition combines Leonard's text with a selection of the documents that were his most valuable sources—nine lists of books destined for the Indies. Containing a wealth of information, these lists provide the documentary evidence for what is perhaps Leonard's greatest contribution: his demonstration that royal and inquisitorial prohibitions failed to control the circulation of books and ideas in colonial Spanish America. Rolena Adorno's introduction reaffirms the lasting value of Books of the Brave and chronicles developments in cultural-historical studies that have shed light on the role of books in Spanish American colonial culture. Adorno situates Leonard's work at the threshold between older, triumphalist views of Spanish conquest history and more recent perspectives engendered by studies of native American peoples. With its rich descriptions of the book trade in both Spain and America, Books of the Brave has much to offer historians as well as literary critics. Indeed, it is a highly readable and engaging book for anyone interested in the cultural life of the New World. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

SHAKESPEARE: increasingly irrelevant or lone literary genius of the Western canon?'Powerful and illuminating'James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, winner of the Baillie Gifford'Winner of Winners'2023 Professor Farah Karim-Cooper grew up loving the Bard, perhaps because Romeo and Juliet felt Pakistani to her. But why was being white as a ‘snowy dove'essential to Juliet's beauty? Combining piercing analysis of race, gender and otherness in beloved plays from Othello to The Tempest with a radical reappraisal of Elizabethan London, The Great White Bard entreats us neither to idealise nor to fossilise Shakespeare but instead to look him in the eye and reckon with the discomforts of his plays, playhouses and society. If we persist in reading Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril. But if we dare to bring Shakespeare down from his plinth, we might unveil a playwright for the twenty-first century. We might expand and enrich his extraordinary legacy. We might even fall in love with him all over again. ••• A TIME MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023'Insightful, passionate, piled with facts and has a warm, infectious love for theatre and Shakespeare running through every chapter.'ADRIAN LESTER, CBE'Dive in and your whole cultural landscape will be refreshed and reframed... A challenging, riveting read, The Great White Bard reminds us how powerful the stories we tell can be on our lives.'ADJOA ANDOH'Vivid… a thorough analysis but also a kind of love letter… Karim-Cooper sees Shakespeare as holding a mirror to this society, with his plays interrogating live issues around race, identity and the colonial enterprise… Her arguments come to feel essential and should be absorbed by every theatre director, writer, critic, interested in finding new ways into the work.'GUARDIAN'There are plenty of books on Shakespeare: but this one is different. This is Shakespeare as we've (most of us) never been willing to see him – and the works emerge from the analysis as newly complicit, powerful and yet recuperative.'EMMA SMITH, AUTHOR OF PORTABLE MAGIC

This collection provides an innovative and wide-ranging introduction to the world of Arthur by looking beyond the canonical texts and themes, taking instead a transversal perspective on the Arthurian narrative. Together, its thirty-four chapters explore the continuities that make the material recognizable from one century to another, as well as transformations specific to particular times and places, revealing the astonishing variety of adaptations that have made the Arthurian story popular in large parts of the world.Divided into four parts—The World of Arthur in the British Isles, The European World of Arthur, The Material World of Arthur, and The Transversal World of Arthur — the volume tracks the legend's movement across temporal, geographical, and material boundaries. Broadly chronological, each part views the unfolding Arthurian story through its own lens, while temporal and geographical overlaps between the sections underscore the proximity of these developments in the legend's history.Ranging from early Latin chronicles and Welsh poetry to twenty-first century anime and political conspiracies, this comprehensive and illuminating book will be of interest to anyone researching Arthurian literature or tracing the evolution of medievalism through literature, the visual arts, and popular culture.

This book explores the work of Cervantes in relation to the ideas about the mind that circulated in early modern Europe and were propelled by thinkers such as Juan Luis Vives, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Oliva Sabuco, Andrés Laguna, Andrés Velásquez, Marsilio Ficino, and Gómez Pereira.The editors bring together humanists and scientists: literary scholars and doctors whose interdisciplinary research integrates diverse types of sources (philosophical and medical treatises, natural histories, rhetoric manuals, pharmacopoeias, etc.) alongside Cervantes's works to examine themes and areas including emotion, human development, animal vs. human consciousness, pathologies of the mind, and mind-altering substances. Their chapters trace the cognitive themes and points of inquiry that Cervantes shares with other early modern thinkers, showing how he both echoes and contributes to early modern views of the mind.

This 14-volume set contains titles originally published between 1926 and 1992. An eclectic mix, this collection examines Shakespeare's work from a number of different perspectives, looking at history, language, performance and more it includes references to many of his plays as well as his sonnets.

This book examines apian imagery—bees, drones, honey, and the hive—in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary and oral traditions. In England and the New World colonies during a critical period of expansion, the metaphor of this communal society faced unprecedented challenges even as it came to emblematize the process of colonization itself. The beehive connected the labor of those marginalized by race, class, gender, or species to larger considerations of sovereignty. This study examines the works of William Shakespeare; Francis Daniel Pastorius; Hopi, Wyandotte, and Pocasset cultures; John Milton; Hester Pulter; and Bernard Mandeville. Its contribution lies in its exploration of the simultaneously recuperative and destructive narratives that place the bee at the nexus of the human, the animal, and the environment. The book argues that bees play a central representational and physical role in shaping conflicts over hierarchies of the early transatlantic world.

What is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor's work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage.

This book is a close taxonomic study of the pivotal role of games in early modern drama. The presence of the game motif has often been noticed, but this study, the most comprehensive of its kind, shows how games operate in more complex ways than simple metaphor and can be syntheses of emblem and dramatic device. Drawing on seventeenth-century treatises, including Francis Willughby's Book of Games, which only became available in print in 2003, and divided into chapters on Dice, Cards, Tables (Backgammon), and Chess, the book brings back into focus the symbolism and divinatory origins of games. The work of more than ten dramatists is analysed, from the Shakespeare and Middleton canon to rarer plays such as The Spanish Curate, The Two Angry Women of Abington and The Cittie Gallant. Games and theatre share common ground in terms of performance, deceit, plotting, risk and chance, and the early modern playhouse provided apt conditions for vicariousplay. From the romantic chase to the financial gamble, and in legal contest and war, the twenty-first century is still engaging the game. With its extensive appendices, the book will appeal to readers interested in period games and those teaching or studying early modern drama, including theatre producers, and awareness of the vocabulary of period games will allow further references to be understood in non-dramatic texts.

Shakespeare: A Playgoer's & Reader's Guide is your essential companion to all Shakespeare's extant works (as well as those known to be lost). Two of our most eminent Shakespeare scholars guide us through his sonnets, his poems, and his plays, providing the reader with detailed scene-by-scene plot synopses, cast lists, notes on the texts and sources, discussions of artistic features, and accounts of significant productions on stage and screen. Derived from the acclaimed Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, and fully updated to reflect the latest scholarship and most recent notable productions, it is the ideal compact guide for students and theatre-goers needing a helpful plot summary, or readers wishing to browse on fascinating background information.

Shakespeare's plays have a long and varied performance history. The relevance of his plays in literary studies cannot be understated, but only recently have scholars been looking into the presence and significance of animals within the canon. Readers will quickly find—without having to do extensive research—that the plays are teeming with animals! In this Handbook, Karen Raber and Holly Dugan delve deep into Shakespeare's World to illuminate and understand the use of animals in his span of work. This volume supplies a valuable resource, offering a broad and thorough grounding in the many ways animal references and the appearance of actual animals in the plays can be interpreted. It provides a thorough overview; demonstrates rigorous, original research; and charts new frontiers in the field through a broad variety of contributions from an international group of well-known and respected scholars.

In Spanish Modernism and the Poetics of Youth: From Miguel de Unamuno to La Joven Literatura, Leslie J. Harkema analyzes the literature of the modernist period in Spain in light of the emergence of youth culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Harkema argues for the prominent role played by Miguel de Unamuno—as a poet, essayist, and public figure—in Spanish writers'response to this phenomenon. She demonstrates how early twentieth-century Spanish literature participated in the glorification of adolescence and questioning of Bildung seen elsewhere in European modernism, in ways that were not only aesthetic but also political. Harkema critically re-examines the relationship between Unamuno and several Spanish writers associated with the so-called Generation of 1927 (known as at the time as “la joven literatura” or “the young literature”). By situating this period within the wider framework of European modernism, Spanish Modernism and the Poetics of Youth brings to light the central role that the early twentieth century's re-imagining of adolescence and youth played in the development of literary modernism in Spain.

Applying recent developments in new historicism and cultural materialism - along with the new perspectives opened up by the current debate on intertextuality and the construction of the theatrical text - the essays collected here reconsider the pervasive influence of Italian culture, literature, and traditions on early modern English drama. The volume focuses strongly on Shakespeare but also includes contributions on Marston, Middleton, Ford, Brome, Aretino, and other early modern dramatists. The pervasive influence of Italian culture, literature, and traditions on the European Renaissance, it is argued here, offers a valuable opportunity to study the intertextual dynamics that contributed to the construction of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical canon. In the specific area of theatrical discourse, the drama of the early modern period is characterized by the systematic appropriation of a complex Italian iconology, exploited both as the origin of poetry and art and as the site of intrigue, vice, and political corruption. Focusing on the construction and the political implications of the dramatic text, this collection analyses early modern English drama within the context of three categories of cultural and ideological appropriation: the rewriting, remaking, and refashioning of the English theatrical tradition in its iconic, thematic, historical, and literary aspects.

Anxieties of Interiority and Dissection in Early Modern Spain brings the study of Europe's “culture of dissection” to the Iberian peninsula, presenting a neglected episode in the development of the modern concept of the self. Enrique Fernandez explores the ways in which sixteenth and seventeenth-century anatomical research stimulated both a sense of interiority and a fear of that interior's exposure and punishment by the early modern state.Examining works by Miguel de Cervantes, María de Zayas, Fray Luis de Granada, and Francisco de Quevedo, Fernandez highlights the existence of narratives in which the author creates a surrogate self on paper, then “dissects” it. He argues that these texts share a fearful awareness of having a complex inner self in a country where one's interiority was under permanent threat of punitive exposure by the Inquisition or the state. A sophisticated analysis of literary, religious, and medical practice in early modern Spain, Fernandez's work will interest scholars working on questions of early modern science, medicine, and body politics.

This is the first collection of criticism on Shakespeare's romances to register the impact of modern literary theory on interpretations of these plays. Kiernan Ryan brings together the most important recent essays on Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, the greatest of the `last plays', staging a dynamic debate between feminist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic and new historicist views of the masterpieces Shakespeare wrote at the close of his career.The book aims not only to anthologise accounts of the last plays by leading Shakespearean critics, including Stephen Greenblatt, Janet Adelman, Leah Marcus, Howard Felperin and Steven Mullaney, but also to dramatise what is at stake in the choice of a particular critical approach. It allows the student to compare the strengths and limitations of a deconstructive and a feminist reading of the same romance, or to test the plausibility of one psychoanalytic angle on the last plays against another. The headnotes that preface the essays highlight their distinctive slants on Shakespearean romance, unpack the theoretical assumptions that steer their interpretations, and throw into relief the key points at which their authors collide or converge.The editor's introduction places the essays in the context of twentieth-century criticism of the last plays and makes a powerful case for a fundamental reappraisal of Shakespearean romance. The comprehensive, fully annotated bibliography provides an unrivalled guide to further reading on all four plays.

Shipwrecked: Disaster and Transformation in Homer, Shakespeare, Defoe, and the Modern World presents the first comparative study of notable literary shipwrecks from the past four thousand years, focusing on Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. James V. Morrison considers the historical context as well as the “triggers” (such as the 1609 Bermuda shipwreck) that inspired some of these works, and modern responses such as novels (Golding's Lord of the Flies, Coetzee's Foe, and Gordon's First on Mars, a science fiction version of the Crusoe story), movies, television (Forbidden Planet, Cast Away, and Lost), and the poetry and plays of Caribbean poets Derek Walcott and Aimé Césaire. The recurrent treatment of shipwrecks in the creative arts demonstrates an enduring fascination with this archetypal scene: a shipwreck survivor confronting the elements. It is remarkable, for example, that the characters in the 2004 television show Lost share so many features with those from Homer's Odyssey and Shakespeare's The Tempest. For survivors who are stranded on an island for some period of time, shipwrecks often present the possibility of a change in political and social status—as well as romance and even paradise. In each of the major shipwreck narratives examined, the poet or novelist links the castaways'arrival on a new shore with the possibility of a new sort of life. Readers will come to appreciate the shift in attitude toward the opportunities offered by shipwreck: older texts such as the Odyssey reveals a trajectory of returning to the previous order. In spite of enticing new temptations, Odysseus—and some of the survivors in The Tempest—revert to their previous lives, rejecting what many might consider paradise. Odysseus is reestablished as king; Prospero travels back to Milan. In such situations, we may more properly speak of potential transformations. In contrast, many recent shipwreck narratives instead embrace the possibility of a new sort of existence. That even now the shipwreck theme continues to be treated, in multiple media, testifies to its long-lasting appeal to a very wide audience.

With an A-Z of over 300 entries, Music in Shakespeare is the most comprehensive study of all the musical terms found in Shakespeare's complete works. It includes a definition of each musical term in itshistorical and theoretical context, and explores the diverse extent of musical imagery across the full range of Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic work, as well as analysing the usage of instruments and sound effects on the Shakespearean stage. This is a comprehensive reference guide for scholars and students with interests in the thematic and allegorical relevance of music in Shakespeare, and the history of performance. Identifying all musical terms found in the Shakespeare canon, it will also be of use to the growing number of directors and actors concerned with recovering the staging conditions of the early modern theatre.

What's the worst thing you can do to Shakespeare? The answer is simple: don't read him. To that end, Richard Burt and Julian Yates embark on a project of un/reading the Bard, turning the conventional challenges into a roadmap for textual analysis and a thorough reconsideration of the plays in light of their absorption into global culture.

In romances—Renaissance England's version of the fantasy novel—characters often discover books that turn out to be magical or prophetic, and to offer insights into their readers'selves. The Immaterial Book examines scenes of reading in important romance texts across genres: Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Cymbeline and The Tempest, Wroth's Urania, and Cervantes'Don Quixote. It offers a response to “material book studies” by calling for a new focus on imaginary or “immaterial” books and argues that early modern romance authors, rather than replicating contemporary reading practices within their texts, are reviving ancient and medieval ideas of the book as a conceptual framework, which they use to investigate urgent, new ideas about the self and the self-conscious mind.

The Slovenian dramatist, poet, literary critic and essayist Ivan Cankar (1876-1918) was one of the greatest Slovenian writers and stylists, as well as the pioneer of modern Slovenian literature. This book, a follow-up to the author's study Mirror of Reality and Dreams: Stories and Confessions of Ivan Cankar, is the second English-language monograph on Cankar's literary œuvre. Whereas the first study focused on Cankar's social and moral criticism, this monograph sheds light on the mother and woman as portrayed in his works. Through the figure of the mother, Cankar reveals his delicate and subtle relation to weaker individuals in general; the figure of woman in his works illustrates his complicated, often two-fold, internally contradictory relation to love and sexuality.

Arjan Plaisier believes audiences who view Shakespeare performances and readers who study the plays deserve better than some of the recent interpretations of the Bard's work. In their attempt to be'modern,'these interpreters commit historical amnesia by slighting the Christian ethos of the early Renaissance period in which Shakespeare wrote and by riding roughshod over the religious underpinnings of his plays. This neglect skews the playwright's intentions, confuses the audience, and diminishes the full effect of the play. Plaisier, too, is modern--and in a more profound sense. He sets forth how Shakespeare shapes his plots to conform at an ultimate level to timeless biblical narrative patterns (like Northrop Frye, he regards the Bible as a'code book'), so that there is a'right'ending to the work. And in an Appendix, Plaisier provides some kindly advice to his fellow pastors. You do well, he says to them, to enrich your noble calling with attention to literature. To do this, he says, you will find Shakespeare most helpful. Yes, and Plaisier's perceptive essays point to the deep wisdom in Shakespeare by which we can all live.

This study on New World-utopian politics in The Tempest traces paradigm shifts in literary criticism over the past six decades that have all but reinscribed the text into a political document. This book challenges the view that the play has a dominant New World dimension and demonstrates through close textual readings how an unstable setting at the same time enables and effaces discursively over-invested New World interpretations. Almost no critical attention has been paid to the play's vacuum of power, and this work interprets pastoral, utopian, and'American'tensions in light of the play's forever-ambiguous setting as well as through a'presentist'post-1989 lens, an oft-neglected historical and political paradigm shift in Shakespeare criticism.

Includes indexes.

Shakespeare without Boundaries: Essays in Honor of Dieter Mehl offers a wide-ranging collection of essays written by an international team of distinguished scholars who attempt to define, to challenge, and to erode boundaries that currently inhibit understanding of Shakespeare, and to exemplify how approaches that defy traditional bounds of study and criticism may enhance understanding and enjoyment of a dramatist who acknowledged no boundaries in art. The Volume is published in tribute to Professor Dieter Mehl, whose critical and scholarly work on authors from Chaucer through Shakespeare to D. H. Lawrence has transcended temporal and national boundaries in its range and scope, and who, as Ann Jennalie Cook writes, has contributed significantly to the erasure of political boundaries that have endangered the unity of German literary scholarship and, more broadly, through his work for the International Shakespeare Association, to the globalization of Shakespeare studies. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Exploring Shakespeare's intellectual interest in placing both characters and audiences in a state of uncertainty, mystery, and doubt, this book interrogates the use of paradox in Shakespeare's plays and in performance. By adopting this discourse-one in which opposites can co-exist and perspectives can be altered, and one that asks accepted opinions, beliefs, and truths to be reconsidered-Shakespeare used paradox to question love, gender, knowledge, and truth from multiple perspectives. Committed to situating literature within the larger culture, Peter Platt begins by examining the Renaissance culture of paradox in both the classical and Christian traditions. He then looks at selected plays in terms of paradox, including the geographical site of Venice in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, and equity law in The Comedy of Errors, Merchant, and Measure for Measure. Platt also considers the paradoxes of theater and live performance that were central to Shakespearean drama, such as the duality of the player, the boy-actor and gender, and the play/audience relationship in the Henriad, Hamlet, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In showing that Shakespeare's plays create and are created by a culture of paradox, Platt offers an exciting and innovative investigation of Shakespeare's cognitive and affective power over his audience.

Text & Presentation is an annual publication devoted to all aspects of theatre scholarship. It represents a selection of the best research presented at the international, interdisciplinary Comparative Drama Conference. This anthology includes papers from the 32nd annual conference held in Los Angeles, California. Topics covered include masculinity in the plays of Tennessee Williams and Frederico Garcia Lorca; Moliere's revolutionary dramaturgy; motherhood in Medea; Electronovision and Richard Burton's Hamlet; and Jose Carrasquillo's all-nude production of Macbeth, among many others.

With an A-Z of over 300 entries, Music in Shakespeare is the most comprehensive study of all the musical terms found in Shakespeare's complete works. It includes a definition of each musical term in itshistorical and theoretical context, and explores the diverse extent of musical imagery across the full range of Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic work, as well as analysing the usage of instruments and sound effects on the Shakespearean stage. This is a comprehensive reference guide for scholars and students with interests in the thematic and allegorical relevance of music in Shakespeare, and the history of performance. Identifying all musical terms found in the Shakespeare canon, it will also be of use to the growing number of directors and actors concerned with recovering the staging conditions of the early modern theatre.

Who's Who in Shakespeare presents a complete and handy guide to the men and women who throng Shakespeare's plays. It provides:• detailed biographical information on each leading figure• analyses of the role and significance of each minor figure• a reliable guide to the huge Shakespearian canon for student and teacher• quotations from famous critics• useful information on some of Shakespeare's sources.From Antonio to Yorick, Macbeth to Mercutio, this book embraces the breadth and depth of the world's most important playwright.

The Tempest: Critical Essays traces the history of Shakespeare's controversial late romance from its early reception (and adaptation) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the present. The volume reprints influential criticism, and it also offers eight originalessays which study The Tempest from a variety of contemporary perspectives, including cultural materialism, feminism, deconstruction, performance theory, and postcolonial studies. Unlike recent anthologies about The Tempest which reprint contemporary articles along with a few new essays, this volume contains a mixture of old and new materials pertaining to the play's use in the theater and in literary history.

This introductory volume provides an overview of the history of Literature as a cultural concept, and reflects on the contemporary nature, place and function of what the literary might mean for us today. Literature: • offers a concise history of the canonic concept of'literature'from its earliest origins • illustrates the kinds of theoretical issues which are currently invoked by the term'literary'• provides a definition of the'literary'for the twenty-first century With Literature Peter Widdowson provides a thought-provoking essay on the contemporary relevance of the'literary'for students.

Originally published in 1987,'Fanned and Winnowed Opinions'celebrates the scholarship of Professor Harold Jenkins, one of this century's foremost editors and critics of Shakespeare. All of the essays address Shakespearean topics, and many of the sixteen focus on the years between 1595 and 1605, the period on which much of Professor Jenkin's work centers: there are, appropriately, three essays on Hamlet. A variety of critical approaches is represented, including the Freudian and the feminist; some essays focus on one play, while others take a thematic approach. Comedies, histories, and tragedies all come under consideration.The contributors include many distinguished scholars, some of whom studied under Professor Jenkins or edited volumes of the Arden Shakespeare under his direction. All of the contributions were specifically written for the Festschrift and had not appeared in print before. In addition to the scholarly essays, the volume features an introduction with an appreciative review of Harold Jenkins'career and a complete bibliography of his works.

Conflict is at the heart of much of Shakespeare's drama. Frequently there is an overt setting of violence, as in Macbeth, but, more significantly there is often ‘interior'conflict. Many of Shakespeare's most striking and important characters – Hamlet and Othello are good examples – are at war with themselves.Originally published in 1987, S. C. Boorman makes this ‘warfare of our nature'the central theme of his stimulating approach to Shakespeare. He points to the moral context within which Shakespeare wrote, in part comprising earlier notions of human nature, in part the new tentative perceptions of his own age. Boorman shows Shakespeare's great skill in developing the traditional ideas of proper conduct to show the tensions these ideas produce in real life. In consequence, Shakespeare's characters are not the clear-cut figures of earlier drama, rehearsing the set speeches of their moral types – they are so often complex and doubting, deeply disturbed by their discordant natures. The great merit of this fine book is that it displays the ways in which Shakespeare conjured up living beings of flesh and blood, making his plays as full of dramatic power and appeal for modern audiences as for those of his own day. In short, this book presents a human approach to Shakespeare, one which stresses that truth of mankind's inner conflict which links virtually all his plays.

In this useful guide, Leah Scragg indicates some of the ways in which meaning is generated in Shakespearian drama and the kinds of approaches that might lead to a fuller understanding of the plays. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of the dramatic composition, such as verse and prose, imagery and spectacle, and the use of soliloquy, and explores how this contributes to the overall meaning. Written in a clear and helpful style, Discovering Shakespearian Meaning enables students to discover the meaning for themselves.

George Hibbard has always endorsed T.S. Eliot's idea that'we must know all of Shakespeare's work in order to know any of it,'and this idea, implicit in the first essay in this volume, informs the whole collection, written in honour of one of Canada's leading Shakespearian editors and scholars. The two essays which begin the collection present broad overviews of Elizabethan drama and discuss Shakespeare's first great editor, Theobald. Together with the final essay – on publication and performance in early Stuart drama – these form the frame of the mirror held up to Shakespeare in the other eighteen essays, whether they of general themes running through some or all of Shakespeare's plays or the plays his contemporaries, or whether they treat of specific plays. There is an especially rich concentration on Macbeth and Coriolanus.