RICHARD DANSON BROWN and DAVID JOHNSON are both Lecturers in Literature at the Open University. Richard Brown is the author of The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spenser's Complaints and David Johnson is the author of Shakespeare and South Africa.

'...an excellent and varied collection of textual sources and critical material.' - Dr Julie Sanders, University of Keele 'Taken together, the trilogy attempts in some sense to 'manage' the study of Shakespeare by breaking his work down into task-specific ideas and categories...The breadth of what is possible in a university-level Shakespeare/ Renaissance literature course is the great merit of the trilogy, and many will be excited by its variety.' - Claire Preston, Times Higher Education Supplement

• Preface Acknowledgements PART ONE: SOURCES AND ANALOGUES A Midsummer Night's Dream: from The Discoverie of Witchcraft; R. Scott From Metamorphoses Book IV; Ovid Richard II: from A Myrroure for Magistrates Macbeth: from Chronicles; R. Holinshed Antony and Cleopatra: from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Hamlet: from The Spanish Tragedy; T. Kyd Of Revenge; F. Bacon Twelfth Night: from Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession; B. Riche Measure for Measure: from Hecatommithi; G.B. Giraldi Cinthio King Lear: from The Faerie Queene; E. Spenser From Arcadia; P. Sidney The Tempest: from 'The Strachey Letter' From Metamorphoses; Ovid PART TWO: CRITICAL READINGS The Imperial Votaress; L. Montrose The Staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream; J. L. Halio The Elizabethan Drama; R. Weimann The Political Background of Shakespeare's Richard II and Henry IV; J. D. Wilson Richard II; J. E. Howard and P. Rackin How Many Children had Lady Macbeth?; L. C. Knights Macbeth: History, Ideology and Intellectuals; A. Sinfield Macbeth on Film: Politics; E. Pearlman Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra; H. Neville Davies Squeaking Cleopatras: Gender and Performance in Antony and Cleopatra; J. Dusinberre Spatial Politics; A. Loomba What is an Editor?; S. Orgel Hamlet the Mona Lisa of Literature; J. Rose Telmah; T. Hawkes Testing Courtesy and Humanity in Twelfth Night; C. L. Barber The Two Antonios and Same-Sex Love in Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice; J. Pequigney Measure for Measure; F. R. Leavis London; L. Marcus From Hamlet to Lear; A. Kettle The Absent Mother in King Lear; C. Kahn Grigori Kozintsev's King Lear; A. Leggatt 'What Cares These Roarers for the Name of King?': Language and Utopia in The Tempest; D. Norbrook African and Caribbean Appropriations of The Tempest; R. Nixon PART THREE: CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS The Present Tense; G. Taylor The National Poet; J. Bate New Ways to Play Old Texts: Discourses of the Past; S. Bennett Index.