Shakespeare: Titles in Countess

Roman Polanski director.

Castle Rock Entertainment presents a Dakota Films/Imminent Films production ; adapted for the screen by Oliver Parker ; produced by Luc Roeg and David Barron ; directed by Oliver Parker.

Prospero's books envisions a magical realm of exquisite beauty, where the innocence of love and dreams of revenge collide to create a tempest.

Macbeth is the chef in a 3-star restaurant; Beatrice and Benedict are rival co-anchors; Titania and Bottom carouse in a tawdry theme resort; and Petruchio sets out to tame the conservative Kate in a politically incorrect marriage of convenience.

by Jonathan Miller; Jack Gold; Warren Mitchell; Gemma Jones; John Franklyn-Robbins; Susan Jameson; William Shakespeare; British Broadcasting Corporation. Television Service.; Time-Life Television.; Ambrose Video Publishing.;

More than 200 articles, most accompanied by vivid illustrations, combine rich historical detail with informative, insightful descriptions on the form and function of obscure and everyday items found in Shakespeare's works.

Becoming Shakespearebegins where most Shakespeare stories end--with his death in 1616--and relates the fascinating story of his unlikely transformation from provincial playwright to universal Bard. Unlike later literary giants, Shakespeare created no stir when he died. Though he'd once had a string of hit plays, he had been retired in the country for six years, and only his family, friends, and business partners seemed to care that he was gone. Within a few years he was nearly forgotten. And when London's theaters were shut down in 1642, he seemed destined for oblivion. With the Restoration in 1660, though, the theaters were open once again, and Shakespeare began his long ascent: No longer merely one playwright among many, he became the transcendent genius at the heart of English culture. Fifty years after the Restoration scholars began taking him seriously. Fifty years after that he was considered England's greatest genius. And by 1800 he was practically divine. Jack Lynch vividly chronicles Shakespeare's afterlife--from the revival of his plays to the decades when his work was co-opted and "improved" by politicians and other playwrights, and culminating with the "Bardolatry" of the Stratford celebration of Shakespeare's three-hundredth birthday in 1864.Becoming Shakespeareis not only essential reading for anyone intrigued by Shakespeare, but it also offers a consideration of the vagaries of fame.

This book proceeds from the assumption that Shakespeare, so often perceived as the one writer who appears to have transcended the limits of gender, inevitably writes from the perspective of his own gender. From this perspective, whatever represents the Self is necessarily male; and the Other, which challenges the Self, is female. The author's approach gives us a fresh understanding of both Shakespeare's characters and the structure of the plays. The author defines genre in terms of the nature of the challenge offered by the Other to the Self. Using specific plays and characters of Shakespeare, the author shows how in tragedy the Other betrays or appears to betray the Self; in comedy the Other evades the social hierarchies dominated by versions of the male Self; in romance the Other comes and goes, leaving the Self bereft when she is gone and astounding him with happiness when she reappears. History is defined as a genre in which the masculine heroes confront no challenge from the Other but only from each other, from other versions of the Self. The book consists of a long theoretical introduction followed by chapters on comedy, history, and some individual plays: Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and The Tempest.

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare is the most comprehensive reference work yet produced about Shakespeare's works, times, life, and afterlives. A team of internationally renowned scholars offer lucid, stimulating and authoritative coverage of every aspect of Shakespeare and his writings, including their reinterpretation in the theatre, in criticism, and on film. New in paperback, this authoritative reference includes all Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, a wide range of short, readable entries, none longer than 3500 words, a chronology, an accessible guide to further reading, maps, and a thematic contents list. Students and academics of literature and drama will find this an essential tool for their studies, and the Shakespearean theatre-going public will also enjoy its accessibility and comprehensive detail.

In 2012 Annette Carson formed part of the team that discovered King Richard III's mortal remains, verified in 2013 by forensics including DNA matching. In response to the recent upsurge of interest, her 2009 paperback has been updated with details of the discovery plus new illustrations, and a larger typeface for easier readability. Carson's premise is that for centuries the vision of Richard III has been dominated by the fictional creations of Thomas More and Shakespeare. Many voices, some of them eminent and scholarly, have urged a more reasoned view to replace the traditional black portrait. This book seeks to redress the balance by examining the events of his reign as they actually happened, based on reports in the original sources. Eschewing the overlay of assumptions so beloved by historians, she instead traces actions and activities of the principal characters, using facts and time-lines revealed in documentary evidence. In the process Carson dares to investigate areas where historians fear to tread, and raises many controversial questions.

Standard biography of Richard III

The first full-length study of Shakespeare's Roman plays offers fresh, detailed readings and identifies new sources which are analyzed from a historical feminist perspective.

Germaine Greer examines Shakespeare's plays in detail, revealing how he dramatized moral and intellectual issues in such a way that his audience became dazzlingly aware of an imaginative dimension to daily life. Greer argues that as long as Shakespeare remains central to English cultural life, the country will retain the values that make it unique in the world, namely tolerance, pluralism, and a profound commitment to democracy.

"Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is an analysis of the central work of the Western canon, and of the playwright who not only invented the English language, but also, as Bloom argues, created human nature as we know it today. Before Shakespeare there was characterization; after Shakespeare, there were characters, men and women capable of change, with highly individual personalities." "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is a companion to Shakespeare's work, and just as much an inquiry into what it means to be human. It explains why Shakespeare has remained our most popular and universal dramatist for more than four centuries, and in helping us to better understand ourselves through Shakespeare, it restores the role of the literary critic to one of central importance in our culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Shakespeare wrote more than fifty parts for children, amounting to the first comprehensive portrait of childhood in the English theatre. Focusing mostly on boys, he put sons against fathers, servants against masters, innocence against experience, testing the notion of masculinity, manners, morals, and the limits of patriarchal power. He explored the nature of relationships and ideas about parenting in terms of nature and nurture, permissiveness and discipline, innocence and evil. He wrote about education, adolescent rebellion, delinquency, fostering, and child-killing, as well as the idea of the redemptive child who a'curesa? diseased adult imaginations. a?Childnessa? a? the essential nature of being a child a? remains a vital critical issue for us today. In Shakespeare and Childa's-Play Carol Rutter shows how recent performances on stage and film have used the range of Shakespearea's insights in order to re-examine and re-think these issues in terms oftodaya's society and culture.

Towards the end of the 1980s it looked as if television had displaced cinema as the photographic medium for bringing Shakespeare to the modern audience. In recent years there has been a renaissance of Shakespearian cinema, including Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books and Christine Edzard's As You Like It. In this volume a range of writers study the best known and most entertaining film, television and video versions of Shakespeare's plays. Particular attention is given to the work of Olivier, Zeffirelli and Kurosawa, and to the BBC Television series. In addition the volume includes a survey of previous scholarship and an invaluable filmography.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE NATURE OF WOMEN was the first full-length feminist analysis of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Its arguments for the feminism both of the drama and the early modern period caused instant controversy. Dusinberre claims that Puritan teaching on sexuality and spiritual equality raises questions about women which feed into the drama, where the role of women in relation to authority structures is constantly renegotiated. SHAKESPEARE AND THE NATURE OF WOMEN claimed for women a right to speak about the literary text from their own place in history and culture. The author's Preface to the Second Edition traces contemporary developments in feminist scholarship, which still wrestles with the book's main thesis: Renaissance feminism, feminist Shakespeare.

"Unlike previous studies of Shakespeare's cinematic history, Shakespeare in the Movies proceeds chronologically, in the order that the plays were written, allowing the reader to trace the development of Shakespeare as an author - and an auteur - and to see how the changing cultural climate of the Elizabethans flowered into film centuries later. Douglas Brode provides historical background, production details, contemporary critical reactions, and his own incisive analysis, covering everything from the acting of Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, and Gwyneth Paltrow, to the direction of Orson Welles, Kenneth Branagh, and others. Brode also considers the many films that, though not strict adaptations, contain significant Shakespearean content, such as West Side Story and Kurosawa's Ran and Throne of Blood. And Brode does not ignore the ignoble treatment the master has sometimes received. We learn, for instance, that the 1929 version of The Taming of the Shrew (which featured the eyebrow-raising writing credit: "By William Shakespeare, with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor") opens not so trippingly on the tongue - PETRUCHIO: "Howdy Kate." KATE: "Katherine to you, mug."" "For anyone wishing to cast a backward glance over the poet's film career and to understand his current big-screen popularity better, Shakespeare in the Movies is a definitive guide."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Shakespeare is now enjoying perhaps his most glorious--certainly his most popular--filmic incarnation. Indeed, the Bard has been splashed across the big screen to great effect in recent adaptations ofHamlet, Henry V, Othello, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, RichardII, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and of course in the hugely successfulShakespeare in Love. Unlike previous studies of Shakespeare's cinematic history,Shakespeare in the Moviesproceeds chronologically, in the order that plays were written, allowing the reader to trace the development of Shakespeare as an author--and anauteur--and to see how the changing cultural climate of the Elizabethans flowered into film centuries later. Prolific film writer Douglas Brode provides historical background, production details, contemporary critical reactions, and his own incisive analysis, covering everything from the acting of Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, and Gwyneth Paltrow, to the direction of Orson Welles, Kenneth Branagh, and others. Brode also considers the many films which, though not strict adaptations, contain significant Shakespearean content, such asWest Side Storyand Kurosawa'sRanandThrone of Blood. Nor does Brode ignore the ignoble treatment the master has sometimes received. We learn, for instance, that the 1929 version ofThe Taming of the Shrew(which featured the eyebrow-raising writing credit: "By William Shakespeare, with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor"), opens not so trippingly on the tongue--PETRUCHIO: "Howdy Kate." KATE: "Katherine to you, mug." For anyone wishing to cast a backward glance over the poet's film career and to better understand his current big-screen popularity, Shakespeare in the Movies is a delightful and definitive guide.

This comprehensive guide covers approximately 400 feature-length films, documentaries, spin-offs, educational films, and excerpts of Shakespeare's plays. A full entry is provided for each major film, including cast, credits, and critical commentary. There are also sections on film and videos on Shakespeare's life and times, theater, poetry, plays, actors, and directors. Also included are an extensive bibliography, a list of archive and resource centers, and distributors. Separate indexes list directors and producers, major series, actors, and production personnel.

Shakespeare lovers have long lamented that so few songs in his plays survive with original music; of about sixty song lyrics, only a handful have come down to us with musical settings. For over 150 years, scholars have aspired ”without success ”to fill that gap. In Shakespeare's Songbook, Ross W. Duffin does just that. Eight years in the making, Shakespeare's Songbook is a meticulously researched collection of 160 songs ”ballads and narratives, drinking songs, love songs, and rounds ”that appear in, are quoted in, or alluded to in Shakespeare's plays. Drawing substantially on the unmatched resources of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Duffin brings complete lyrics (many newly recovered) and music notation together for the first time, and in the process sheds new light on Shakespeare's dramatic art. With performances by leading early-music singers and instrumentalists, the accompanying audio CD brings the songbook to life. Shakespeare's Songbook is the perfect gift for lovers of Shakespeare and an invaluable reference for singers, actors, directors, and scholars.

Little is known about Ann Hathaway, the wife of England's greatest playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare's will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself.
While Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage-repeatedly in his plays, constant wives redeem unjust and deluded husbands-scholars persist in positing the worst about the writer's own spouse. In Shakespeare's Wife, Germaine Greer boldly breaks new ground, combining literary-historical techniques with documentary evidence about life in Stratford, to reset the story of Shakespeare's marriage in its social context. With deep insight and intelligence, she offers daring and thoughtful new theories about the farmer's daughter who married England's greatest poet, painting a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman.
A passionate and perceptive work of first-rate scholarship that reclaims this maligned figure from generations of scholarly neglect and misogyny, Shakespeare's Wife poses bold questions and opens new fields of investigation and research.

Hundreds of entries discuss adaptations and performances of Shakespeare's plays over the last century.

The Merchant of Venice, even in its own time, was considered Shakespeare's most controversial play. Now, one of the most popularly read and performed works, the play raises even more important issues for our day, particularly anti-Semitism and the treatment of Jews. Shakespeare scholar Jay Halio brings together his fascinating literary insights and his considerable knowledge of Shakespeare's world to this student casebook. His analysis of the play helps students interpret Shakespeare's plot and interwoven subplots, the sources that helped shape the play and the characters, and the thematic issues relating to justice, mercy and the myriad bonds of human relationships. These themes serve as starting points for a broader understanding of the issues discussed and documented: Elizabethan marriage and women's matrimonial rights; Renaissance concepts of male friendship; legal, moral and religious views of usury; and the treatment of Jews in Venice and beyond. The concerns raised by the play are put into context with historical materials including Sir Francis Bacon's essay "Of Friendship," excerpts from Henry Smith's 1591 A Preparative to Marriage, extracts from Phillip Stubbes' 1583 Anatomy of Abuses, and Travel Accounts by Fynes Moryson that describe Venice and how Jews lived there in the early 1600s. This casebook also considers contemporary applications, with essays and editorials on current hate groups in the United States, the treatment of women, and male bonding. This section, culminating with a poignant interview in which actor Hal Halbrook discusses his stage portrayal of Shylock, will leave readers with an appreciation for how profoundly relevant The Merchant of Venice remains for our time. This casebook introduces students to the many issues in the play with a Literary and Dramatic Analysis chapter. Six topic chapters examine the play in its historical context, combining expert discussion and primary documents, making this ideal for interdisciplinary study. Each topic section contains ideas for classroom discussions, research papers, and further suggested readings to help students get the most out of their study of The Merchant of Venice.

While The Tempest has always been one of Shakespeare's most entertaining and enchanting plays, it continues to stir up passionate debate throughout the world because of its ideas and attitudes toward race, class, political power, and colonialism. This casebook systematically examines these issues, as well as several others, from dramatic and historical perspectives and through parallel contemporary applications. Readers are first introduced to the play with a dramatic analysis that situates the work within Shakespeare's canon and within the romantic tradition. This fresh interpretation also casts much light on the use of imagery and language in setting, character, and thematic development. This casebook draws on the themes and issues introduced, and examines each one in turn with insightful original essays and primary documents. The shipwreck that sets the play in motion is examined in terms of the discovery of the new world, and the prevailing attitudes toward colonialism. A brief chronology of New World events helps situate the historical excerpts. Another intriguing topic explored in the casebook is the diverging Elizabethan views on science and religion, with a particular focus on the role of magic. Primary documents that help readers appreciate the significance of matters of sorcery and the supernatural include excerpts from Reginald Scott's 1584 The Discovery of Witchcraft, James I's Demonology (1597) as well as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Other topic chapters examine political power and treachery, as well as society in terms of marriage and the court. A full chapter is also devoted to performance and interpretation of the play. The final Contemporary Applications section investigates current global concerns that parallel those in the play, and help readers appreciate Shakespeare's play in relation to the world around us. Readers are shown dramatically contrasting perspectives on colonialism in Zimbawe. The casebook concludes with a fascinating discussion of the parallel elements of fantasy in The Tempest and in literary works by popular contemporary writers J.R.R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling. Understanding The Tempest follows the successful casebook format developed specifically for the Literature in Context series. Following a dramatic analysis, each topic chapter presents an important historical issue in the play, with insightful narrative essays supported by primary documents. In several chapters, brief chronologies of significant related events help readers understand the historical context of the play and its thematic concerns. As a tool for student research and classroom work, educators will appreciate the numerous topics for written and oral discussion suggested at the conclusion of each unit. Suggested readings further complement the content and research applications of the casebook.