Uniquely, this guide analyses the play's critical and performance history and recent criticism, as well as including five essays offering radically new paths for contemporary interpretation. The subject matter of these essays is rich and diverse, ranging across the play's philosophical identification of sexual love with self-realization, the hermeneutic implications of an editor's textual choices, the minor characters of the play in relation to Renaissance performance traditions, Romeo and Juliet in opera and ballet, and the play's Italian sources and afterlives. The guide also contains a chapter on the key resources available, including scholarly editions and easily available DVDs, and discusses the ways in which they can be used in the classroom to aid understanding and provoke further debate. Edited by leading scholar Julia Reinhard Lupton, this is an essential guide for both students and scholars of Shakespeare.

ARDEN RENAISSANCE DRAMA GUIDES offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars provide invaluable insights into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: Essays on the play's critical and performance history A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play A selection of new essays by leading scholars A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online Regularly performed and studied, Macbeth is not only one of Shakespeare's most popular plays but also provides us with one of the literary canon's most compellingly conflicted tragic figures. This guide offers fresh new ways into the play.

Hamlet remains the most-studied of all Shakespeare's great tragedies. This collection of newly-commissioned essays gives readers an overview of past critical views of the play as well as new writing about the play from today's leading scholars. The range of perspectives offered makes the book an invaluable companion to anyone studying the play at an advanced level. The final chapter on learning and teaching resources is particularly useful as a guide for further study.

An anthology of critical essays that provide a wide range of information and opinion about the sixteenth-century play "Romeo and Juliet," and it's author William Shakespeare.

Arden Early Modern Drama Guides offer students and academics practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performance contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Essays from leading international scholars give invaluable insight into the text by presenting a range of critical perspectives, making the books ideal companions for study and research. Key features include: - Essays on the play's critical and performance history - A keynote essay on current research and thinking about the play - A selection of new essays by leading scholars A survey of resources to direct students' further reading about the play in print and online Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice has often been labelled a 'problem play', and throughout the ages it has been an object of both fascination and repulsion. Without neglecting the socio-political and religious issues that are at the heart of the play, this collection of critical essays invites readers to rediscover the variety of approaches that this multifaceted work calls for, exploring its gender aspects, its rich mythological background, its legal matters and the ways in which it has been adapted to the screen. Essays consider the play in relation to its sources, genre and religion, historical and socio-political context and its critical reception and performance history.

Exam Board: SQA Level: Higher Subject: English First Teaching: September 2014 First Exam: June 2015 A comprehensive working guide to the Critical Reading section of Higher English for CfE - worth 40% of available marks in the exam. Critical Reading (made up of two sections: Scottish Text and Critical Essay) is a very significant element of the new Higher English qualification. This book provides you with the support and advice you will need to succeed in this vital area, with a top expert guiding you through the course and suggesting approaches to the exam, so that you achieve the best grades you can. By focusing on specific examples of Scottish texts, this book enables you to increase your knowledge and approach any text with greater skill. - Become more secure in your knowledge of texts - Develop your analysis and essay writing skills through studying specific examples of texts, with exam-style questions - Includes revision tips to help you approach the exam with confidence and succeed on the day

Is 'Romeo and Juliet' really a love story, or is it a play about young people living in dangerous circumstances? How might life under occupation produce a new reading of 'Julius Caesar'? What choices must a group of Palestinian students make, when putting on a play which has Jewish protagonists? And why might a young Palestinian student refuse to read? For five months at the start of 2013, Tom Sperlinger taught English literature at the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University in the Occupied West Bank. In this account of the semester, Sperlinger explores his students' encounters with works from 'Hamlet' and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' to Kafka and Malcolm X. By placing stories from the classroom alongside anecdotes about life in the West Bank, Sperlinger shows how his own ideas about literature and teaching changed during his time in Palestine, and asks what such encounters might reveal about the nature of pedagogy and the role of a university under occupation.