Shakespeare: A Complete Introduction

Description

Written by an academic and literary scholar with decades of experience in teaching Shakespeare to students at all levels, SHAKESPEARE: A COMPLETE INTRODUCTION is designed to give you everything you need to succeed, all in one place. It covers the key themes and critical concepts that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the ideas in clear jargon-free English, and then providing added-value features like key quotes, chapter recap sections, and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam. The book organizes Shakespeare's work by genre and theme, in order to look closely at the individual plays. It opens with contextualizing information about the original texts, language usage, and how the plays were performed. The book is then grouped into the genres of early and romantic Comedies, Tragedies, Problem Plays, and the Histories. Each chapter will focus on one or two key plays, and foreground the themes and preoccupations that surround critical work on those plays. Throughout the book there will be an emphasis on the historical vs the contemporary approach, and the distinctions between literary and theatrical competencies.

Michael Scott is Director of Oxford-Scott Education Ltd; Honorary Senior Provost of University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter; and Emeritus Professor of English and Theatre Studies at Glyndwr University of which he was the founding Vice Chancellor. He has taught with the Royal Shakespeare Company and at universities around the world, including Georgetown University, Washington DC. Through his numerous publications he has opened up the world of Shakespeare and his contemporaries to students, readers, theatre goers and all.

A very lively and enthusiastic introduction to the full range of Shakespeare's plays. I can think of no better way to encounter the issues that these plays raise and the possibilities that they offer for performance. Michael Scott's wholly admirable strategy is to focus on particular issues that the plays raise, to incorporate into his discussions some aspects of the latest scholarship, and to provide pathways through the texts with a firm eye on the reader's and the spectator's enjoyment. -- John Drakakis, Professor of English, University of Stirling A masterpiece of the genre, written as it is with passion, without condescension, without jargon, thoughtful and open to changing critical theories, but always returning to the plays themselves, plays that fully reveal themselves most in performance. -- Martin Wine, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)