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English plays of the mid-sixteenth century tended to be spoken entirely in rhyme. This led to the creation of a whole dramatic mode: rhyming verse form was a way of signaling to the audience and deepening their understanding of the play world they were entering. This article discusses the ways in which this powerful mode operated, reading rhyme as an overt signifier of moral character, status, and power dynamic and examining the ways in which it can increase our understanding of this theater's doubling practices and metatheatrical humor. It also posits these techniques and styles as vital predecessors for the more canonical Renaissance theater. The continuously rhyming drama of the midsixteenth century set up a series of expectations and patterns, which William Shakespeare and other early modern playwrights would exploit when they made the crucial shift toward a drama that used rhyme as special effect rather than norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the annotations offered by English literary critic George Henry Lewes to the second edition of Charles Knight's "The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakspere," with particular focus on William Shakespeare's play "Cymbeline." Topics explored include the initial categorization of the play as a tragedy, the marginal comments given by Lewes to the lines and scenes of the play, and the critical attitude demonstrated by Lewes to the play.

This essay reconsiders the significance of Cyprus as the location of Othello, arguing that awareness of the island's capture by Ottoman forces in 1571 will have been central to the play's early reception. This context broadens the significance of the tragedy beyond the original domestic focus of a plot borrowed by Shakespeare from an Italian novella by Cinthio – one that, significantly, plays out during a period of peace rather than war. Beginning with an analysis of the affective power of the alarm bells that ring out in the riot scene (2.3), it argues that through a combination of internal and external contextual signs, Shakespeare's original Jacobean audiences will have become united in perspective with the people of Cyprus. The significance of the loss of Othello as the island's most capable defender, combined with the inadequacy of Cassio as his replacement, is highlighted throughout the play. This enables the specific tragic potential of Cyprus as a location to be exploited by Shakespeare in a way that was simply unavailable to Cinthio, and that may not be automatically understood by later audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical studies of Sir John Oldcastle often view the play in relation to Shakespeare's more familiar plays, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. Such studies draw attention to a famous controversy, which involves the alteration of Shakespeare's character from Sir John Oldcastle to Falstaff. In a review of the sources that record that episode, along with select passages from the script to Oldcastle, I contend that an Oldcastle/Falstaff controversy does not adequately account for the ways that the Admiral's Men's production responded to their rival company. I also argue that the playwrights had separate interests in Oldcastle, particularly his divided historical reception. In selecting and composing their material, the playwrights emphasized prominent controversies over events that took place during Oldcastle's life. I give special consideration to Anthony Munday, who appears to have revisited the materials he consulted when he composed his 1584 pamphlet, A Watch-woord to Englande to beware of traytours, including his account of the Ficket Field insurgency, and his passing attention to William Murley, brewer from Dunstable. On the whole, the playwrights evade the religious and political controversies highlighted throughout their script, in favour of chase sequences and disguise plots that make up the play's final crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1898, the year of the foundation of the theatre company Intimate Theatre, to his work at the New Company of Catalan Theatre around the 1910s, to his last stagings as head of the Catalan School of Drama in the early 1930s, Adrià Gual is recognized as a pioneer of Spanish and Catalan theatre direction. In this period of over thirty years, Gual produced dozens of shows that ranged from the classical plays of Greek theatre to the latest texts from European, Spanish and Catalan playwrights. And among these, strategically translated into Catalan, a few of Shakespeare's dramas helped Gual to develop his project to renovate the Barcelona stage and provide a theatrical model that would encourage the development of Catalan culture. This article analyses the way Gual's Shakespearean productions were intimately connected at the local level with the educated Catalan elites and the establishment of their cultural identity while, connected to a larger continental perspective, Shakespeare's plays functioned within Intimate Theatre, New Company of Catalan Theatre and the Catalan School of Drama as an instrument to renovate theatrical practice by resorting to the models provided by European stage directors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers a literary-theoretical problem—how a dramatic work manages the relation between its phenomenal finitude and its artifactual durability—through an analysis of William Shakespeare's efforts in Antony and Cleopatra to recover tragic possibilities from the triumphalist political and religious histories with which the suicides of his protagonists had become entangled. A novel mode of allusion, which serves to explode connections rather than to make them, brings these histories into view as limits beyond which members of the audience cannot see. In this way, the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra are reconstituted beyond the interpretive horizons that had originally denied their force as endings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the influence of author Mary Sidney on the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," by William Shakespeare. Influences on the play "Pyramus and Thisbe," by Shakespeare; Contention of Goran Stanivukovic on who influenced the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Influences of Thomas Mouffet on the play.

As to the risks of what I call the 'triangulation' of both public power and private emotion, I extend my earlier treatment of 'mediation' in The Merchant of Venice to Measure for Measure, King Lear, Hamlet, and The Tempest, linking to them Shakespeare's Sonnet 134. For Shakespeare, whether poet or playwright, a private triangulation of direct romantic obligation is as nettlesome as the public official's similar behaviour - as when the Duke 'outsources' Viennese power to Angelo - and the results are quite as disastrous. The complex and highly legalistic sonnet concerns the triangulation of passion from the speaker to a friend. The beloved winds up ensnaring both through 'the statute of [her] beauty'. The word 'surety' - used centrally in the poem and twice in Merchant - pinpoints, through the delegation to a third party of obligations otherwise charged directly to two committed parties, the underlying Shakespearean problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews a play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" directed by Erica Whyman and played by Ncuti Gatwa and Ankur Bahl at Barbican Theatre, London, Great Britain on May 19, 2016.

The article reviews the evolution of Shakespeare studies over the last 50 years and proposes a narrative to trace its development since the commemoration of Shakespeare’s birth in 1964 in three phases: first, the unfolding from the 1970s to the 1990s of what I have called the postmodern paradigm in Shakespeare studies, which I argue breaks with previous humanist universalising readings of his plays; second, the serious consideration of Shakespeare on screen in the 1990s and the 2000s, an academic field that grows in the context of performance and popular culture studies; and, third, the scholarly analysis of Shakespeare’s plays in the digital media in the new millennium, a period that also witnesses the study of the bard on the global stage of world cultures, with the continued perception that his work is both core British heritage and inevitable global commodity. These most recent trends in Shakespeare studies were present in the overall approach to the celebration of the bard during the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad, an event with Shakespeare at its centre that can be seen as the forerunner of the explosion of activities in 2016 for the 400th commemoration of his death. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the influence that William Shakespeare's writings had on the illustrations by English artist and author William Blake, including in the book "For Children: The Gates of Paradise," by Blake and in regard to Shakespeare's depiction of the dead in his drama. The influence that the play "MacBeth," by Shakespeare had on Blake artistic works, including Blake's illustrations of the Three Witches from the play, is discussed.

The article offers literary criticism of the novel "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel. Topics include the role of the preservation of art and cultural objects in the novel, the notion of the novel postapocalyptic in relation to its possible classification as science fiction, and the representation of work by playwright William Shakespeare in the novel. The depiction of a Museum of Civilization in the novel is addressed.

The critical dispute in the interpretive history of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is traditionally polarised between whether Katherina is - at the end of the play - tamed or not. This article examines part of this interpretive history as a barometer of cultural coding of domestic love. Instead of deciding yet again if Katherina is sincere, or just acting obedient, I want to see how different cultural contexts choose their reading of a canonic play in popular culture. The article shows how and where the social codes of these cultural contexts become visible in selecting their interpretive arguments from a virtually endless line of possibilities. The material of this analysis is a double transmediation: of literature to film, and of film to film posters. Among some well known adaptations and remakes of The Taming of the Shrew, I also examine a lesser-known Romanian filmic reference to this intertext. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shakespeare's presence in the Romanian culture has been mainly ensured, for a long time, by translations and theatrical performances. Yet, nowadays, in a context in which reading the classics (or, in general, reading literature) in print seems to be losing ground to digital media and the theatre, as an institution, is subject to a major crisis, relying only on these 'highbrow' forms of cultural appropriation of Shakespeare's works is no longer enough to preserve the interest in Shakespeare as a literary icon and a cultural phenomenon; other forms of intertextual encounter with Shakespeare that belong to popular culture may, hopefully, contribute to propagating the 'Shakespeare myth' among mass Romanian audiences. Focusing on one particular product of contemporary popular culture, namely TV advertising, the paper explores the few Shakespeare-related TV commercials aired on various Romanian TV channels during the first decades of the new millennium, to see to what extent the re-contextualisation of Shakespearean words, images, characters or themes in these cultural products may function as an effective means to reinforce Shakespeare's cultural authority in the Romanian collective consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was only some hours later, after she'd made her report back at the station and returned to her apartment, that Meg recalled why that had worried her so horribly - Richard hadn't even looked at his brother once. All his attention had been focused on her reaction. Almost as if he'd planned for it. Almost as if ... But it didn't make any sense. She typed Richard York's name into Google and clicked on his law firm's website. There wasn't anything she hadn't already known. He'd graduated from Harvard Law summa cum laude and taken a job at Neville & Warwick, where, in just three years, he'd become the darling of their criminal defense group. And, considering the scum he'd defended, it was maybe not that surprising that he'd stoop to trying to kill his own brothers. The question was, why? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented on the Irish author Nahum Tate's play adaptations "The Ingratitude of a Common-Wealth; Or, the Fall of Caius Martius Coriolanus" and "History of King Lear." The plays' adaptations from the dramatic works of playwright William Shakespeare are discussed. Tate's use of the human body as metaphors for British national identity and politics is discussed.

The article explores the feature butterflies found in the plays of William Shakespeare and their purpose. Topics discussed are the symbolism of hopefulness, humanity's capacity for kindness, paradoxical power, represented by gilded butterflies in the plays "King Lear" and "Coriolanus," and the element of transformation or metamorphosis in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which is said to be have been borrowed in the Ovidian poem "Metamorphoses."

The beginning of Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV takes the form of an address to the audience, as a single figure enters the stage and speaks a choric prologue directly to the auditorium. The performance technique that is enacted here is familiar enough from many other plays in the period, especially those that deal with history. However, this one is not content simply with raising the issue of the representation of prior historical events. It goes a stage further, playing with the inevitability of such events being misconstrued: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses papers and poems in the current issue of "English" journal with topics such as the misrepresentation of meaning in the plays by William Shakespeare, the types of gratefulness in the work of devotional poet George Herbert and on the success of the poet John Clare in finding a way to write on the issue of imaginative failure.

The paper looks at Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado about Nothing, as well as two film adaptations of the play, from a reader-oriented perspective, offering samples of an expert reading of the play, an initiated reading and a so-called 'innocent' reading. We compare the three approaches taking into consideration the reception of the play's motifs (such as the bedtrick) and the conventional reaction of the readers to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers Elisabethains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the references to the works of poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the plays of poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Topics discussed include the issue on how Shakespeare became acquainted with the works of Chaucer including the latter's Minor Poems, and the connection of the Earl of Oxford to Chaucer's works. Also discussed are Chaucer's works referenced by Shakespeare which include "The House of Fame," "Parliament of Fowls," and "The Nun's Priest's Tale."

The article discusses the influences of ancient Greek tragedy to the works of poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Topics discussed include the reluctance of critics to recognize the knowledge of Shakespeare on Greek drama, and the influences of Greek tragedy to Shakespeare's plays including "Oresteia" to "Hamlet," and "Macbeth," "Oedipus at Colonus" to "Timon of Athens," and "The Alcestis" to "The Winter's Tale."

Usury occupies a centrality in early modern culture that no mere professional practice, however innovative or controversial, could have occupied. As recent scholarship has shown, the reason has to do with the fact that, in the final analysis, usury constitutes a mental disposition, a worldview. This article seeks to refine our understanding of the psychological phenomenon of usury by examining its troubled relationship with theft as enacted in Shakespeare’s Venetian plays. BothThe Merchant of VeniceandOthellolink the usurious mindset to an anxious sense of dispossession: Shylock is represented as a householder whose paranoid concern with burglars has not been sufficiently emphasised; usurious Iago is revealed to act on a compulsive need to instil into his victims, most notably Othello, an equally irrational fear of theft. The article argues that the emergent monetary economy is thus associated with a nightmarish dread of deprivation that is shown to destabilise the domestic space of theoikos. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent times, researchers across a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have been interested in the human ability to process embedded mindstates, also known as ‘multiple-order intentionality’ (MOI): A believes that B thinks that C intends (etc.). This task is considered increasingly cognitively demanding with every order of embedding added. However, we argue that the way in which the information relevant to the task is represented in language (in particular, using a narrative) greatly influences how well people are able to deal with MOI cognitively. This effect can be illustrated by paraphrasing situations presented by a play such as Shakespeare’s Othello: by the end of Act II the audience has to understand that Iago intends that Cassio believes that Desdemona intends that Othello believes that Cassio did not intend to disturb the peace. Formulated this way, using sentence embedding to express the intentional relationships, this is highly opaque. At the same time, we know that Othello has been understood and appreciated by innumerable different audiences for ages. What is it that the play’s text does to make the audience understand all these embedded mindstates without undue cognitive strain? In this article we discuss six ‘expository strategies’ relevant to the representation of MOI and illustrate their working with examples from Shakespeare’s Othello. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the possible Irish or Italian origins of the "Concolinel" song referenced in Act 3 of the Shakespearean play "Love's Labor's Lost." It is noted that a French comical erotic chanson about genitalia identified by Claire van Kampen and documented by Adrian de Launay may have been the actual song. The lyrics of the "Qvand Colinet" chanson the character Moth may have sang to Don Armado are also presented.

The article discusses the history of editing of modern plays, with particular focus on the nine volume book "Works of William Shakespeare" edited and published by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, which is considered to be the first edited modern drama. Nicholas Leate's 1622 transcription of the manuscript of Sir Francis Verney's play "The Tragedy of Antipo" is also explored. Other topics include textual alterations in edited plays, differences between printed and performed drama, and reader engagement.

Copyright of Italian Studies in Southern Africa / Studi d'Italianistica nell'Africa Australe is the property of Association of Professional Italianists / Associazione Professori d'Italiano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay examines the representation of Ireland and Celtic culture within the British Isles in Shakespeare's works. It argues that Shakespeare was interested in ideas of colonisation and savagery and based his perceptions on contemporary events, the history of the British Isles and important literary works such as William Baldwin's prose fiction, Beware the Cat. His plays, notably The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth, represent Protestant England as an isolated culture surrounded by hostile Celtic forces which form a threatening shadowy state. The second part of the essay explores Shakespeare's influence on Irish culture after his death, arguing that he was absorbed into Anglo-Irish culture and played a major role in establishing Ireland's Anglophone literary identity. Shakespeare imported the culture of the British Isles into his works - and then, as his fame spread, his plays exported what he had understood back again, an important feature of Anglo- Irish literary identity, as many subsequent writers have understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report on a conference on English playwright William Shakespeare, organized in honor of his 450th birthday by the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft (DSG) literary society in Weimar, Germany, from April 24-27, 2014. Topics of discussion included the history of the DSG, comparative perspectives on Shakespeare anniversaries in various countries, and the representation of celebrations and festivities in Shakespeare's plays, for example "Macbeth," "Henry VIII," and "Anthony and Cleopatra."

An essay is presented on modern drama. It focuses in the theatrical interpretations, reflections in the fascination for Shakespeare drama, and significance and growing series of writing in critical publications. Also discussed the eighteenth-century cultural fascination in producing national poet, restoration of traditions of dramatic literature in modern age, and early modern dramatists.

The article reviews the two separate performances of the role of King Lear by actors Jack Willis and Michael Winters in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival theatre's theatrical production "King Lear" written by William Shakespeare and directed by Bill Rauch, performed in Oregon in 2013.

The article presents a response to the essay "The Winter's Tale" by literary theorist Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski, which discusses the perception of the audience of English playwright William Shakespeare's plays. Topics covered include understanding of other people's actions, cognitive literary theory, and audience attention, empathy, and reaction to vitality. The author refers to the Shakespearean plays "The Winter's Tale" and "Othello."

Copyright of Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme is the property of Iter Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The problems of rendering Shakespeare's plays into Russian are addressed in an analysis of the contrasting translation methods of Boris Pasternak and the scholar and editor Alexander Smirnov, whose personal and professional disagreements on the matter are described and contextualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a consideration of the various meanings of “distraction”, this essay explores the ways in which the temporary form of forgetting known as distraction lies at the heart of Shakespeare stagecraft. Shakespeare's plays explore in an infinite variety of registers the ethics of the distracted self. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is a summary of the main issues raised in an online discussion hosted by the IATEFL Literature, Media and Cultural Studies (LMCS) Special Interest Group (SIG) and fielded by Ben Crystal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]