Gary Taylor – författare

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - ''our other Shakespeare'' - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created lasting masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London (the unique history play A Game at Chess ). His range extends beyond these traditional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare,Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representationsof the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God.The Oxford Middleton, prepared by more than sixty scholars from a dozen countries, follows the precedent of The Oxford Shakespeare in being published in two volumes, an innovative but accessible Collected Works and a comprehensive scholarly Companion. Though closely connected, each volume can be used independently of the other.The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton''s works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton''s life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the variedtheatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new information on Middleton''s life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously ''federal edition'', The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorialpractice.

This book is about the search for a lost play. Celebrating the quatercentenary of publication of the first translation of Don Quixote, it is the first collection of essays entirely devoted to The History of Cardenio, a play based on Cervantes and probably written in that same year. It was said to be written by Shakespeare and the young man who was taking his place, John Fletcher, the most successful English playwright of the seventeenth century. Thebook brings together leading scholars, critics, and theatre practitioners to discuss the lost (or partially lost) play. It also re-examines Lewis Theobald''s 1727 Double Falsehood, allegedly based on Cardenio. A range of approaches -new archival evidence, employment of advanced computer-aided stylometric tests forauthorship attribution, early modern theatre history, literary and theatrical analysis, musicology, and recent theatrical productions and adaptations - produces new research findings about the play, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the early modern relationship between Spanish and English culture. The book establishes the dates, venues, and audience for two performances of Cardenio by the King''s Men in 1613, and identifies glimpses of the play in several seventeenth-centurydocuments. It also provides much new evidence and analysis of Double Falsehood, which Theobald claimed was based on previously unknown manuscripts of a play by Shakespeare. His enemies, especially Pope, denied the Shakespeare attribution. Debate has continued ever since. While some contributors advocate scepticalcaution, new research provides stronger evidence than ever before that a lost Fletcher/Shakespeare Cardenio can be discerned within Double Falsehood. Uniquely, this collection combines archival research and literary analysis with accounts of recent theatrical experiments, which explore the Cardenio problem by reviving or adapting Double Falsehood, and demonstrate that such practical theatrical work throws valuable light on some of the problems that haveobstructed traditional scholarly approaches. It thus offers a new paradigm for the creative interaction of scholarship and performance.

The New Oxford Shakespeare is a landmark print and online project, which for the first time provides fully edited and annotated texts of all extant versions of all Shakespeare's works, including collaborations, revisions, and adaptations. Based on a fresh examination of the surviving original documents, it draws upon the latest interdisciplinary scholarship, supplemented by new research undertaken by a diverse international team. Although closely connected and systematically cross-referenced, each part can be used independently of the others. The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works: Critical Reference Edition collects the same versions of the same works found in the Modern Critical Edition, keyed to the same line-numbering. But the Critical Reference Edition emphasizes book history and the documentary origins of each text. It preserves the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviations, typographical contrasts, ambiguities, and inconsistencies of the early documents. Introductions focus on early modern manuscript and print culture, setting each text within the material circumstances of its production, transmission, and early reception. The works are arranged in the chronological order of the surviving texts: the first volume covers documents manufactured in Shakespeare's lifetime, and the second covers documents made between 1622 and 1728. The illustrated general introduction presents an overview of the texts available to editors and describes how they define Shakespeare. An essay on error surveys kinds of error characteristic of these early text technologies. It is followed by a general introduction to the music of Shakespeare's plays. Introductions to individual works and an extensive foot-of-the-page textual apparatus record and discuss editorial corrections of scribal and printing errors in the early documents; marginal notes record press variants and key variants in different documents. Original music notation is provided for the songs (where available). Because the plays were written and copied within the framework of theatrical requirements, casting charts identify the length and type of each role, discuss potential doubling possibilities, and note essential props. The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP's high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.

The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition is part of the landmark New Oxford Shakespeare--an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare''s works, edited afresh from all the surviving original versions of his work, and drawing on the latest literary, textual, and theatrical scholarship. In one attractive volume, the Modern Critical Edition gives today''s students and playgoers the very best resources they need to understand and enjoy all Shakespeare''s works. The authoritative text is accompanied by extensive explanatory and performance notes, and innovative introductory materials which lead the reader into exploring questions about interpretation, textual variants, literary criticism, and performance, for themselves.The Modern Critical Edition presents the plays and poetry in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them, so that readers can follow the development of his imagination, his engagement with a rapidly evolving culture and theatre, and his relationship to his literary contemporaries.The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP''s high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.

This companion volume to The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works concentrates on the issues of canon and chronology--currently the most active and controversial debates in the field of Shakespeare editing. It presents in full the evidence behind the choices made in The Complete Works about which works Shakespeare wrote, in whole or part. A major new contribution to attribution studies, the Authorship Companion illuminates the work and methodology underpinning the groundbreaking New Oxford Shakespeare, and casts new light on the professional working practices, and creative endeavours, of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We now know that Shakespeare collaborated with his literary and dramatic contemporaries, and that others adapted his works before they reached printed publication. The Authorship Companion''s essays explore and explain these processes, laying out everything we currently know about the works'' authorship. Using a variety of different attribution methods, The New Oxford Shakespeare has confirmed the presence of other writers'' hands in plays that until recently were thought to be Shakespeare''s solo work. Taking this process further with meticulous, fresh scholarship, essays in the Authorship Companion show why we must now add new plays to the accepted Shakespeare canon and reattribute certain parts of familiar Shakespeare plays to other writers. The technical arguments for these decisions about Shakespeare''s creativity are carefully laid out in language that anyone interested in the topic can understand. The latest methods for authorship attribution are explained in simple but accurate terms and all the linguistic data on which the conclusions are based is provided.The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP''s high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.

'He must leave to live that we may love' Arden of Faversham is based on the murder of Thomas Arden in Faversham in 1551 by his wife, Alice. The play depicts Alice Arden's increasingly desperate attempts to kill her husband so as to be with her lover, Mosby. It is a collaborative play, but also Shakespeare's earliest 'domestic tragedy'. Complete with explanatory notes, a full chronology, and author biography, Iman Sheeha's introduction explores Arden of Faversham's place within the genres of tragedy and true crime, as well as how the play portrays gender, class, race, household service, and neighbourly relationships.The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'He must leave to live that we may love' Arden of Faversham is based on the murder of Thomas Arden in Faversham in 1551 by his wife, Alice. The play depicts Alice Arden's increasingly desperate attempts to kill her husband so as to be with her lover, Mosby. It is a collaborative play, but also Shakespeare's earliest 'domestic tragedy'. Complete with explanatory notes, a full chronology, and author biography, Iman Sheeha's introduction explores Arden of Faversham's place within the genres of tragedy and true crime, as well as how the play portrays gender, class, race, household service, and neighbourly relationships. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'He must leave to live that we may love' Arden of Faversham is based on the murder of Thomas Arden in Faversham in 1551 by his wife, Alice. The play depicts Alice Arden's increasingly desperate attempts to kill her husband so as to be with her lover, Mosby. It is a collaborative play, but also Shakespeare's earliest 'domestic tragedy'. Complete with explanatory notes, a full chronology, and author biography, Iman Sheeha's introduction explores Arden of Faversham's place within the genres of tragedy and true crime, as well as how the play portrays gender, class, race, household service, and neighbourly relationships. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Born in a tempest when my mother died! This world to me is as a lasting storm.'Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a tale of adventure, fateful journeys, true love, and marvels. The play recycles a millennia-old story of a prince who sails around a mythic Mediterranean, starts a family, loses his wife and daughter, and is miraculously reunited with them years later. It packs in exciting incidents, from shipwreck to storms to murder, and a colourful cast of characters including knights, assassins, pirates, brothelkeepers, and the goddess of chastity. Written by Shakespeare and George Wilkins, Pericles capitalises on the seventeenth-century vogue for tragicomic romance and it proved to be a hit on the stage and in print. In the twenty-first century, Pericles has again surged in popularity. Inspiring novels by bestselling writers and theatrical adaptations around the globe, this ancient story is used to explore contemporary concerns such as displacement, the treatment of women, the abuse of authority, and the persistence of hope in the face of tragedy. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Gary Taylor and John Jowett explore the ways in which Shakespeare's texts were reshaped in his lifetime and up till the publication of the First Folio, and the kinds of outside interference to which they were subjected. As well as the powers of censorship of the Master of the Revels, in this period these included moves to expurgate profanity; major changes in theatrical conventions, notably the imposition of act divisions; and the late introduction of material by other hands.Political censorship of individual plays has already been studied in some depth: Shakespeare Reshaped concentrates on the forms of interference - expurgation, Act division, interpolation - which can usefully be examined across the whole canon, and which resulted in 'late reshaping'. These influences were at work between May 1606 and November 1623, and - unlike the political censorship, which would have come into effect immediately the plays were submitted for a licence - affected the texts years after they were first written. There is a major central study of Measure for Measure, which underwent posthumous interpolation: the book makes a strong claim for this being at the hands of Thomas Middleton.Shakespeare Reshaped will be important to all future textual scholars and editors of the plays.

Henry V, the climax of Shakespeare's sequence of English history plays, is an inspiring, often comic celebration of a young warrior-king. But it is also a study of the costly exhilarations of war, and of the penalties as well as the glories of human greatness. Introducing this brilliantly innovative edition, Gary Taylor shows how Shakespeare shaped his historical material, examines controversial critical interpretations, discusses the play's fluctuating fortunes in performance, and analyses the range and variety of Shakespeare's characterization. The first Folio text is radically rethought, making original use of the First Quarto (1600).

Modernizing Shakespeare's Spelling With Three Studies of the Text of `Henry V'

Twelve specially commissioned essays re-examine the early texts of King Lear from a series of interlocking perspectives, in a wide-ranging discussion with profound implications for all readers of Shakespeare.

Here in handy paperback format are all Shakespeare's Histories, Comedies, and TragediesExcellent brief introductionsTexts established by the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, re-edited afresh from the original editions

Here in a handy paperback format are all Shakespeare's Comedies (there are companion volumes of the Histories and Tragedies), with excellent brief introduction, and the texts established by the Complete Oxford Shakespeare, which was re-edited afresh from the original editions. Critics acclaimed it as `the most ambitious edition of the works ever attempted' (Times Higher Education Supplement) and `the most interesting edition of Shakespeare since the First Folio ... here are the plays as they were acted by Shakespeare's company' (John Carey, Sunday Times).

Here in a handy paperback format are all Shakespeare's Tragedies (there are companion volumes of the Histories and Comedies), with excellent brief introduction, and the texts established by the Complete Oxford Shakespeare, which was re-edited afresh from the original editions. Critics acclaimed it as `the most ambitious edition of the works ever attempted' (Times Higher Education Supplement) and `the most interesting edition of Shakespeare since the First Folio ... here are the plays as they were acted by Shakespeare's company' (John Carey, Sunday Times).

The 37 essays in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton reinterpret the English Renaissance through the lens of one of its most original, and least understood, geniuses. Shakespeare's younger contemporary and collaborator, Middleton wrote modern comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, history plays, masques, pageants, pamphlets, and poetry. The largest collection of new Middleton criticism ever assembled, this ambitious Handbook provides a comprehensive, in-depth, cutting-edge reaction to OUP's Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, winner of the 2009 MLA prize for editing, the first complete scholarly text of his voluminous and diverse oeuvre. The Handbook brings together an international, cross-generational team of experts to discuss all these genres through an equally diverse range of critical approaches, from feminism to stylistics, ecocriticism to performance studies, Aristotle to Zizek. Reinterpretations of canonical plays such as The Changeling, Women Beware Women, The Roaring Girl, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside mingle with explorations of neglected or recently-identified works. Middleton's dramatic use of dance, music, and clothing, Middletonian adaptation, his relationships to the classical world and to continental Europe, his fascinating explorations of sexuality and religion, all receive attention. The collection also provides new essays on modern and postmodern reactions to Middleton, including recent Middleton revivals and films, and living artists' responses to his work-responses that range from the actresses who play Middleton's women to writers in various genres who have been freeired by his artistry. The Handbook establishes an authoritative foundation for the rapidly-expanding growth of interest in this extraordinarily protean, funny, moving, disturbing, and modern writer.

'Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.'In Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, the Roman general Titus incurs the wrath of the Queen of the Goths when he enslaves her and kills one of her sons. The shocking violence of her revenge and his retaliation earn Titus its reputation as Shakespeare's bloodiest play. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition offers a range of critical approaches to the play, considering its initial popularity in the theatre, the authors' engagement with narrative sources and Roman history, and the ongoing problems scholars and theatremakers have had with the play's presentation of violence, rape, and racial difference. Throughout, it incorporates up-to-date scholarship and close readings of a number of landmark productions to consider the play's place in Shakespeare's canon and to illustrate Titus Andronicus's enduring value in interrogating some of wider culture's darkest and most challenging concerns.The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.'In Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, the Roman general Titus incurs the wrath of the Queen of the Goths when he enslaves her and kills one of her sons. The shocking violence of her revenge and his retaliation earn Titus its reputation as Shakespeare's bloodiest play. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition offers a range of critical approaches to the play, considering its initial popularity in the theatre, the authors' engagement with narrative sources and Roman history, and the ongoing problems scholars and theatremakers have had with the play's presentation of violence, rape, and racial difference. Throughout, it incorporates up-to-date scholarship and close readings of a number of landmark productions to consider the play's place in Shakespeare's canon and to illustrate Titus Andronicus's enduring value in interrogating some of wider culture's darkest and most challenging concerns.The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.'In Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, the Roman general Titus incurs the wrath of the Queen of the Goths when he enslaves her and kills one of her sons. The shocking violence of her revenge and his retaliation earn Titus its reputation as Shakespeare's bloodiest play. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition offers a range of critical approaches to the play, considering its initial popularity in the theatre, the authors' engagement with narrative sources and Roman history, and the ongoing problems scholars and theatremakers have had with the play's presentation of violence, rape, and racial difference. Throughout, it incorporates up-to-date scholarship and close readings of a number of landmark productions to consider the play's place in Shakespeare's canon and to illustrate Titus Andronicus's enduring value in interrogating some of wider culture's darkest and most challenging concerns.The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Anglo-American Military Relationship explores military cooperation since the end of the Cold War. Much of the literature on the Anglo-American ''Special Relationship'' has focused on the personal linkages between American Presidents and British Prime Ministers. This book argues that much of what is special between the two countries has resided in their military cooperation. This has provided the ballast that has underpinned other aspects of the political and economic relationship and given it durability. The book focuses on how the British armed services have worked alongside a superpower, in both peacetime and conflict. This military cooperation has been a challenging task, not least because it has occurred within a dynamic strategic context in which the nature of conflict has been evolving. British armed forces have engaged with their American allies in high intensity warfare, as well as in developing military doctrines to address insurgency, peace enforcement, and nation-building tasks. Working so closely with the US military has generated risks as well as benefits for Britain''s armed forces. It has led them to engage in tasks that have weighed heavily upon their resources and has resulted in numerous tensions between the two sides.

'The moon's an arrant thief,And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.'How should society treat its bankrupts? What are the ethics of debt collection? What does it mean to be rich, to be poor? And can you ever really buy friendship? In Timon of Athens, Shakespeare and Middleton pose these and other questions as they chart the dramatic downfall of an Athenian nobleman, exposing the corrosive effects of money and status. At once a critique of wealth inequality and a meditation on the fragility of human bonds, the play presents Timon as one of the playwright's most puzzling and enigmatic creations. In her introduction, Sophie Battell connects early modern debates on usury to the continuing reverberations of the recent financial crisis and global recession. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'The moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.' How should society treat its bankrupts? What are the ethics of debt collection? What does it mean to be rich, to be poor? And can you ever really buy friendship? In Timon of Athens, Shakespeare and Middleton pose these and other questions as they chart the dramatic downfall of an Athenian nobleman, exposing the corrosive effects of money and status. At once a critique of wealth inequality and a meditation on the fragility of human bonds, the play presents Timon as one of the playwright's most puzzling and enigmatic creations. In her introduction, Sophie Battell connects early modern debates on usury to the continuing reverberations of the recent financial crisis and global recession. The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A compact edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare. It combines impeccable scholarship with beautifully written editorial material and a user-friendly layout of the text. Also included is a foreword, list of contents, general introduction, essay on language, contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, glossary, consolidated bibliography and index of first lines of Sonnets.

The second Oxford edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works reconsiders every detail of their text and presentation in the light of modern scholarship. The nature and authority of the early documents are re-examined, and the canon and chronological order of composition freshly established. Spelling and punctuation are modernized, and there is a brief introduction to each work, as well as an illuminating and informative General Introduction. Included here for the first time is the play The Reign of King Edward the Third as well as the full text of Sir Thomas More. This new edition also features an essay on Shakespeare's language by David Crystal, and a bibliography of foundational works.

Henry V, the climax of Shakespeare's sequence of English history plays, is an inspiring, often comic celebration of a young warrior-king. But it is also a study of the costly exhilarations of war, and of the penalties as well as the glories of human greatness.Introducing this brilliantly innovative edition, Gary Taylor shows how Shakespeare shaped his historical material, examines controversial critical interpretations, discusses the play's fluctuating fortunes in performance, and analyses the range and variety of Shakespeare's characterization. The first Folio text is radically rethought, making original use of the First Quarto (1600). ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The 37 essays in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton reinterpret the English Renaissance through the lens of one of its most original, and least understood, geniuses. Shakespeare's younger contemporary and collaborator, Middleton wrote modern comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, history plays, masques, pageants, pamphlets, and poetry. The largest collection of new Middleton criticism ever assembled, this ambitious Handbook provides a comprehensive, in-depth, cutting-edge reaction to OUP's Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, winner of the 2009 MLA prize for editing, the first complete scholarly text of his voluminous and diverse oeuvre. The Handbook brings together an international, cross-generational team of experts to discuss all these genres through an equally diverse range of critical approaches, from feminism to stylistics, ecocriticism to performance studies, Aristotle to Zizek. Reinterpretations of canonical plays such as The Changeling, Women Beware Women, The Roaring Girl, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside mingle with explorations of neglected or recently-identified works. Middleton's dramatic use of dance, music, and clothing, Middletonian adaptation, his relationships to the classical world and to continental Europe, his fascinating explorations of sexuality and religion, all receive attention. The collection also provides new essays on modern and postmodern reactions to Middleton, including recent Middleton revivals and films, and living artists' responses to his work-responses that range from the actresses who play Middleton's women to writers in various genres who have been inspired by his artistry. The Handbook establishes an authoritative foundation for the rapidly-expanding growth of interest in this extraordinarily protean, funny, moving, disturbing, and modern writer.

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) - 'our other Shakespeare' - is the only other Renaissance playwright who created lasting masterpieces of both comedy and tragedy; he also wrote the greatest box-office hit of early modern London (the unique history play A Game at Chess ). His range extends beyond these traditional genres to tragicomedies, masques, pageants, pamphlets, epigrams, and Biblical and political commentaries, written alone or in collaboration with Shakespeare, Webster, Dekker, Ford, Heywood, Rowley, and others. Compared by critics to Aristophanes and Ibsen, Racine and Joe Orton, he has influenced writers as diverse as Aphra Behn and T. S. Eliot. Though repeatedly censored in his own time, he has since come to be particularly admired for his representations of the intertwined pursuits of sex, money, power, and God.The Oxford Middleton, prepared by more than sixty scholars from a dozen countries, follows the precedent of The Oxford Shakespeare in being published in two volumes, an innovative but accessible Collected Works and a comprehensive scholarly Companion. Though closely connected, each volume can be used independently of the other.The Collected Works brings together for the first time in a single volume all the works currently attributed to Middleton. It is the first edition of Middleton's works since 1886. The texts are printed in modern spelling and punctuation, with critical introductions and foot-of-the-page commentaries; they are arranged in chronological order, with a special section of Juvenilia. The volume is introduced by essays on Middleton's life and reputation, on early modern London, and on the varied theatres of the English Renaissance. Extensively illustrated, it incorporates much new information on Middleton's life, canon, texts, and contexts. A self-consciously 'federal edition', The Collected Works applies contemporary theories about the nature of literature and the history of the book to editorial practice.

The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition is part of the landmark New Oxford Shakespeare--an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare's works, edited afresh from all the surviving original versions of his work, and drawing on the latest literary, textual, and theatrical scholarship. In one attractive volume, the Modern Critical Edition gives today's students and playgoers the very best resources they need to understand and enjoy all Shakespeare's works. The authoritative text is accompanied by extensive explanatory and performance notes, and innovative introductory materials which lead the reader into exploring questions about interpretation, textual variants, literary criticism, and performance, for themselves.The Modern Critical Edition presents the plays and poetry in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them, so that readers can follow the development of his imagination, his engagement with a rapidly evolving culture and theatre, and his relationship to his literary contemporaries.The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP's high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.