Troilus and Cressida

Description

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Troilus and Cressida, a play that has long been considered difficult but is now popular both on the stage and in criticism, features an expanded and updated introduction and reading list. The first edition has been praised for its careful rethinking of the text, excellent annotation, lively attention to performance and extensive coverage of the play's major concerns. This updated edition retains these characteristics. In addition, Gretchen Minton and Anthony B. Dawson have provided a new account of the critical and theatrical treatment of Troilus and Cressida over the last fifteen years, showing how modern audiences have become attuned to the play's sardonic undercutting of both the medieval romance of the title characters and the Homeric tale of the Trojan War. Recent performance history is placed against a broader background of social change, including shifting attitudes towards war, political decision-making, gender politics, and fear of disease and contagion.

Anthony B. Dawson is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is the author of several books, including The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare's England: A Collaborative Debate (with Paul Yachnin, Cambridge, 2001), Hamlet (Shakespeare in Performance) (1995), Watching Shakespeare: A Playgoers' Guide (1988) and Indirections: Shakespeare and the Art of Illusion (1978). Gretchen Minton is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Montana State University. She is the editor of several books, including John Bale's 'The Image of Both Churches' (2013) and Timon of Athens (with Anthony B. Dawson, 2008). She has also published many articles in journals, including Renaissance and Reformation and Reformation: The Journal of the Tyndale Society.

Review of previous edition: '... [an] excellent companion to this delinquent genius of a play.' Quarto Review of previous edition: '... [a] fine new edition ... Anthony B. Dawson's readable and reliable text, together with his excellent explanatory footnotes and his superb discussion of theatrical adaptations of the play, will make this edition a valuable resource for scholars as well as an attractive text for classroom use.' Shakespeare Quarterly Review of previous edition: 'I commend this new edition particularly for the introductory sections.' Shakespeare at the Centre Magazine Review of previous edition: '... excellent ...' Around the Globe Review of the series: 'I cannot recommend too highly the whole series to all theatre lovers, theatregoers, theatre practitioners, and anybody who enjoys Shakespeare.' Robert Tanitch, What's on in London