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Description

While over the past four hundred years numerous opinions have been voiced as to Shakespeare's identity, these eleven essays widen the scope of the investigation by regarding Shakespeare, his world, and his works in their interaction with one another. Instead of restricting the search for bits and pieces of evidence from his works that seem to match what he may have experienced, these essays focus on the contemporary milieu—political developments, social and theater history, and cultural and religious pressures—as well as the domestic conditions within Shakespeare's family that shaped his personality and are featured in his works. The authors of these essays, employing the tenets of critical theory and practice as well as intuitive and informed insight, endeavor to look behind the masks, thus challenging the reader to adjudicate among the possible, the probable, the likely, and the unlikely. With the exception of the editor’s own piece on Hamlet, Shakespeare the Man: New Decipherings presents previously unpublished essays, inviting the reader to embark upon an intellectual adventure into the fascinating terrain of Shakespeare's mind and art.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
R. W. Desai
Shakespeare’s Playwrights
Grace Tiffany
The History of the Shakespeares and the Shakespeares in the Histories
Joseph Candido
1592-1594: Shakespeare’s “Other” Lost Years
R. S. White
Greene, Harvey, Nashe, and the “Making” of Falstaff
Mythili Kaul
“Look in the calendar”: Julius Caesar and Shakespeare’s Cultural-Political Moment
Subhajit Sen Gupta
“But I have that within which passeth show”: Shakespeare’s Ambivalence toward His Profession
R. W. Desai
“Those lips that love’s own hand did make”: Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis
Shormishtha Panja
Shakespeare’s Churches
Lisa Hopkins
Shakespeare and the Rhythms of Devotion
Stuart Sillars
Outbraving Luther: Shakespeare’s Final Evolution through the Tragedies into the Last Plays
John O’Meara
Shakespeare among the Jesuits
John Mahon
Was Shakespeare a “Church Papist” or a Prayer Book Anglican?
Charles R. Forker
Index
Contributor Biographies

Product details

Published Mar 13 2014
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 308
ISBN 9781611476750
Imprint Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

R. W. Desai

Contributor

Joseph Candido

Contributor

Lisa Hopkins

Contributor

Mythili Kaul

Contributor

John Mahon

Contributor

John O’Meara

Contributor

Stuart Sillars

Contributor

Grace Tiffany

Contributor

R. S. White

Related Titles

Environment: Staging