A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
196 books about Shakespeare and 14
start with M
196 books about Shakespeare and 14
196 books about Shakespeare
14 start with M start with M
14 start with M start with M
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2021
In Migdalia Cruz’s Macbeth, the Witches run the world. The Macbeths live out a dark cautionary tale of love, greed, and power, falling from glory into calamity as the Witches spin their fate. Translating Shakespeare’s language for a modern audience, Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz rewrites Macbeth with all the passion of the Bronx.
This translation of Macbeth was presented in 2018 as part of the Play On! Shakespeare project, an ambitious undertaking from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that commissioned new translations of 39 Shakespeare plays. These translations present the Bard’s work in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
[more]
The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio
Emma Smith
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2015
Shakespeare is synonymous with English literature. Well-loved the world over, his work endures for its ability to speak powerfully to the follies and foibles of human nature. We endlessly debate not only the finer points of each of his plays and sonnets but also the identity of the Bard himself. Yet no fanfare surrounded the initial publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio—no queue of eager readers, no launch to the top of the best seller list. It wasn’t until four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death that the book would be the subject of a national book tour.
The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio offers the first comprehensive biography of the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. In November 1623, the book arrived in the bookshop of the London publisher Edward Blount at the Black Bear. Long in the making, Master William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies—as the First Folio was then known—appeared seven years after Shakespeare’s death. Nearly one thousand pages in length, the collection comprised thirty-six plays, half of which had never been previously published. Emma Smith tells the story of the First Folio’s origins, locating it within the social and political context of Jacobean London and bringing in the latest scholarship on the seventeenth-century book trade.
Extensively illustrated, The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio is a landmark addition to the copious literature on Shakespeare. It will shed much-needed light on the birth of the First Folio—of which fewer than 250 copies remain—and the birth of Shakespeare’s towering reputation.
The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio offers the first comprehensive biography of the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. In November 1623, the book arrived in the bookshop of the London publisher Edward Blount at the Black Bear. Long in the making, Master William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies—as the First Folio was then known—appeared seven years after Shakespeare’s death. Nearly one thousand pages in length, the collection comprised thirty-six plays, half of which had never been previously published. Emma Smith tells the story of the First Folio’s origins, locating it within the social and political context of Jacobean London and bringing in the latest scholarship on the seventeenth-century book trade.
Extensively illustrated, The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio is a landmark addition to the copious literature on Shakespeare. It will shed much-needed light on the birth of the First Folio—of which fewer than 250 copies remain—and the birth of Shakespeare’s towering reputation.
[more]
Mapping Shakespeare's World
Peter Whitfield
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2015
Shakespeare never set a play in his own Elizabethan London. From the castle in Elsinore where Hamlet avenges his father’s death to Cleopatra’s Alexandria at the height of the Roman Empire to the seaport town in Cyprus where we await the arrival of Othello, each of Shakespeare’s plays is set in a time or space remote from his primary audience. Why is this? How much did the Bard and his contemporaries know about the foreign lands his characters often inhabit? What expectations did an audience have if the curtains rose on a play which claimed to take place in ancient Troy or the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre in northern Spain?
Mapping Shakespeare’s World explores these questions with surprising results. It has often been said that setting is irrelevant to Shakespeare’s plays—that, wherever they are set, their enduring appeal lies in their ability to speak to broad questions of human nature. Peter Whitfield shows that, on the contrary, many of Shakespeare’s locations were carefully chosen for their ability to convey subtle meanings an Elizabethan audience would have picked up on and understood. Through the use of paintings, drawings, contemporary maps and geographical texts, Whitfield suggests answers to such questions as where Illyria was located, why The Merry Wives of Windsor could only have taken place in Windsor, and how two utterly different comedies—The Comedy of Errors and Pericles, Prince of Tyre—both came to take place in ancient Ephesus.
Just when one might think there was nothing more to be said about Shakespeare, with Mapping Shakespeare’s World, Whitfield offers a fascinating new point of view.
Mapping Shakespeare’s World explores these questions with surprising results. It has often been said that setting is irrelevant to Shakespeare’s plays—that, wherever they are set, their enduring appeal lies in their ability to speak to broad questions of human nature. Peter Whitfield shows that, on the contrary, many of Shakespeare’s locations were carefully chosen for their ability to convey subtle meanings an Elizabethan audience would have picked up on and understood. Through the use of paintings, drawings, contemporary maps and geographical texts, Whitfield suggests answers to such questions as where Illyria was located, why The Merry Wives of Windsor could only have taken place in Windsor, and how two utterly different comedies—The Comedy of Errors and Pericles, Prince of Tyre—both came to take place in ancient Ephesus.
Just when one might think there was nothing more to be said about Shakespeare, with Mapping Shakespeare’s World, Whitfield offers a fascinating new point of view.
[more]
Marketing the Bard
Shakespeare in Performance and Print, 1660-1740
Don-John Dugas
University of Missouri Press, 2006
To posterity, William Shakespeare may be the Bard of Avon, but to mid-seventeenth-century theatergoers he was just another dramatist. Yet barely a century later, he was England’s most popular playwright and a household name. In this intriguing study, Don-John Dugas explains how these changes came about and sealed Shakespeare’s reputation even before David Garrick performed his work on the London stage.
Marketing the Bard considers the ways that performance and publication affected Shakespeare’s popularity. Dugas takes readers inside London’s theaters and print shops to show how the practices of these intersecting enterprises helped transform Shakespeare from a run-of-the-mill author into the most performed playwright of all time—persuasively demonstrating that by the 1730s commerce, not criticism, was the principal force driving Shakespeare’s cultural dominance.
Displaying an impressive command of theater and publishing history, Dugas explains why adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays succeeded or failed on the stage and shows that theatrical and publishing concerns exerted a greater influence than aesthetics on the playwright’s popularity. He tells how revivals and adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays while he was relatively unknown fueled an interest in publication—exploited by the Tonson publishing firm with expensive collected editions marketed to affluent readers—which eventually led to competition between pricey collections and cheap single-play editions. The resulting price war flooded the market with Shakespeare, which in turn stimulated stage revivals of even his most obscure plays.
In tracing this curious reemergence of Shakespeare, Dugas considers why the Tonsons acquired the copyright to the plays, how the famous edition of 1709 differed from earlier ones, and what effect its publication had on Shakespeare’s popularity. He records all known performances of Shakespeare between 1660 and 1705 to document productions by various companies and to show how their performances shaped the public’s taste for Shakespeare. He also discloses a previously overlooked eighteenth-century engraving that sheds new light on the price war and Shakespeare’s reputation.
Marketing the Bard is a thoroughly engaging book that ranges widely over the Restoration landscape, containing a wealth of information and insight for anyone interested in theater history, the history of the book, the origins of copyright, and of course Shakespeare himself. Dugas’s analysis of the complex factors that transformed a prolific playwright into the inimitable Bard clearly shows how business produces and packages great art in order to sell it.
[more]
The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1
Harold C. Goddard
University of Chicago Press, 1960
In two magnificent and authoritative volumes, Harold C. Goddard takes readers on a tour through the works of William Shakespeare, celebrating his incomparable plays and unsurpassed literary genius.
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The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 2
Harold C. Goddard
University of Chicago Press, 1960
In two magnificent and authoritative volumes, Harold C. Goddard takes readers on a tour through the works of William Shakespeare, celebrating his incomparable plays and unsurpassed literary genius.
[more]
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2023
An accessible new translation of one of Shakespeare’s most interesting and challenging plays.
One of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays, Measure for Measure has long challenged performers and audiences alike. In reworking the play in her translation, Aditi Brennan Kapil honors the structure, rhythms, and themes of Shakespeare’s original. Kapil’s updated language makes this cautionary fable about frailty, power, and the perils of legislating morality accessible for today’s audiences.
This translation of Measure for Measure was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
One of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays, Measure for Measure has long challenged performers and audiences alike. In reworking the play in her translation, Aditi Brennan Kapil honors the structure, rhythms, and themes of Shakespeare’s original. Kapil’s updated language makes this cautionary fable about frailty, power, and the perils of legislating morality accessible for today’s audiences.
This translation of Measure for Measure was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
[more]
The Media Players
Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News
Stephen Wittek
University of Michigan Press, 2015
The Media Players: Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News builds a case for the central, formative function of Shakespeare’s theater in the news culture of early modern England. In an analysis that combines historical research with recent developments in public sphere theory, Dr. Stephen Wittek argues that the unique discursive space created by commercial theater helped to foster the conceptual framework that made news possible.
Dr. Wittek’s analysis focuses on the years between 1590 and 1630, an era of extraordinary advances in English news culture that begins with the first instance of serialized news in England and ends with the emergence of news as a regular, permanent fixture of the marketplace. Notably, this period of expansion in news culture coincided with a correspondingly extraordinary era of theatrical production and innovation, an era that marks the beginning of commercial theater in London, and has left us with the plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton.
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The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2021
An updated version of The Merchant of Venice that speaks to our contemporary reckoning with racism and injustice.
Elise Thoron’s translation of Shakespeare’s searing The Merchant of Venice cuts straight to the heart of today’s fraught issues of social justice and systemic racism. Thoron’s clear, compelling contemporary verse translation retains the power of the original iambic pentameter while allowing readers and audiences to fully comprehend and directly experience the brutal dilemmas of Shakespeare’s Venice, where prejudice and privilege reign unchallenged. As the author of three acclaimed music-theater works on the Jewish experience and informed by her work directing cross-cultural projects in locations as different as Russia, Japan, Cuba, and New York City, Thoron brings to her Merchant an immediacy that speaks directly to the present reckoning with race in America.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
Elise Thoron’s translation of Shakespeare’s searing The Merchant of Venice cuts straight to the heart of today’s fraught issues of social justice and systemic racism. Thoron’s clear, compelling contemporary verse translation retains the power of the original iambic pentameter while allowing readers and audiences to fully comprehend and directly experience the brutal dilemmas of Shakespeare’s Venice, where prejudice and privilege reign unchallenged. As the author of three acclaimed music-theater works on the Jewish experience and informed by her work directing cross-cultural projects in locations as different as Russia, Japan, Cuba, and New York City, Thoron brings to her Merchant an immediacy that speaks directly to the present reckoning with race in America.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
[more]
The Merry Wives of Windsor
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2023
A modern translation that will appeal to new audiences.
In her translation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Dipika Guha updates the language of Shakespeare’s comedy through the lens of our current moment. Guha maintains the humor at the heart of the play while making it accessible for both performers and audiences.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
In her translation of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Dipika Guha updates the language of Shakespeare’s comedy through the lens of our current moment. Guha maintains the humor at the heart of the play while making it accessible for both performers and audiences.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
[more]
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare William
St. Augustine's Press, 2024
"This edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes the comedy seriously. Like my previous Hackett editions, it gives full weight to Shakespeare’s dramatic setting, which other editors (and scholars) almost always ignore or at least fail adequately to consider. Ancient Athens is the core, not the mere background, of Midsummer Night's Dream. As we shall see, Shakespeare focuses, in particular, on the love of the beautiful and the triumph of learning and art, along with the rise of democracy, which, as Pericles’ famously claims, are the hallmarks of Athens. 'We are lovers of the beautiful with thrift, and lovers of wisdom without softness' (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.40.1). […]
Failure to consider classical Athens as central to Midsummer Night's Dream will cause a reader to miss not only the play’s remarkable substance, but much of its sparkling comedy as well. Far from impeding the play’s humor, focusing on Athens helps to bring out multi-layers of comedy that Shakespeare put there."
[more]
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2021
Shakespeare’s most spirited play, adapted for new audiences by Jeffrey Whitty.
Tony Award–winning and Oscar-nominated storyteller Jeffrey Whitty offers his adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mindfully adapted into modern language. Matching the Bard line for line, rhyme for rhyme, Whitty illuminates Shakespeare’s meaning for modern audiences while maintaining the play’s storytelling architecture, emotional texture, and freewheeling humor. Designed to supplement, not supplant, the original, Whitty’s Midsummer cuts through the centuries to bring audiences a fresh, moment-by-moment take, designed to flow as effortlessly for modern audiences as Shakespeare’s beloved classic played to the Elizabethans.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
Tony Award–winning and Oscar-nominated storyteller Jeffrey Whitty offers his adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mindfully adapted into modern language. Matching the Bard line for line, rhyme for rhyme, Whitty illuminates Shakespeare’s meaning for modern audiences while maintaining the play’s storytelling architecture, emotional texture, and freewheeling humor. Designed to supplement, not supplant, the original, Whitty’s Midsummer cuts through the centuries to bring audiences a fresh, moment-by-moment take, designed to flow as effortlessly for modern audiences as Shakespeare’s beloved classic played to the Elizabethans.
This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
[more]
Modern Hamlets & Soliloquies
An Expanded Edition
Mary Z. Maher
University of Iowa Press, 2003
In Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies (Iowa, 1992), Mary Maher examined how modern actors have chosen to perform Hamlet’s soliloquies, and why they made the choices they made, within the context of their specific productions of the play.
Adding to original interviews with, among others, Derek Jacobi, David Warner, Kevin Kline, and Ben Kingsley, Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies: An Expanded Edition offers two new and insightful interviews, one with Kenneth Branagh, focusing on his 1997 film production of the play, and one with Simon Russell Beale, discussing his 2000-2001 run as Hamlet at the Royal National Theatre.
[more]
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2021
Ranjit Bolt updates Much Ado About Nothing with a merry new translation.
In Much Ado About Nothing, a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings spiral out of control, leaving two sets of lovers to untangle their words and their hearts. Ranjit Bolt, an accomplished translator, takes on Shakespeare’s well-loved comedy to update much of the obscure language while maintaining the humor, characterization, and wit that audiences know and love. For modern readers, Beatrice, Benedick, Hero, and Claudio are just as enchanting as always—and perhaps funnier than ever before.
This translation of Much Ado About Nothing was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
In Much Ado About Nothing, a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings spiral out of control, leaving two sets of lovers to untangle their words and their hearts. Ranjit Bolt, an accomplished translator, takes on Shakespeare’s well-loved comedy to update much of the obscure language while maintaining the humor, characterization, and wit that audiences know and love. For modern readers, Beatrice, Benedick, Hero, and Claudio are just as enchanting as always—and perhaps funnier than ever before.
This translation of Much Ado About Nothing was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.
[more]
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