A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Volume IV : The Poems, Problem Comedies, Late Plays

This four-volume Companion to Shakespeare's Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. Brings together new essays from a mixture of younger and more established scholars from around the world - Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Examines each of Shakespeare’s plays and major poems, using all the resources of contemporary criticism, from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analysis. Volumes are organized in relation to generic categories: namely the histories, the tragedies, the romantic comedies, and the late plays, problem plays and poems. Each volume contains individual essays on all texts in the relevant category, as well as more general essays looking at critical issues and approaches more widely relevant to the genre. Offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twenty-first century. This companion to Shakespeare’s poems, problem comedies and late plays contains original essays on Troilus and Cressida , Measure for Measure , All’s Well That Ends Well , “Venus and Adonis”, “The Rape of Lucrece”, and “The Sonnets”, as well as Pericles , The Winter’s Tale , Cymbeline , The Tempest , and The Two Noble Kinsmen . Notes on Contributors......Page 8 Introduction......Page 13 1 Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the History of Sexuality: A Reception History......Page 16 2 The Book of Changes in a Time of Change: Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Post-Reformation England and Venus and Adonis......Page 39 3 Shakespeare’s Problem Plays and the Drama of His Time: Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measur......Page 58 4 The Privy and Its Double: Scatology and Satire in Shakespeare’s Theatre......Page 81 5 Hymeneal Blood, Interchangeable Women, and the Early Modern Marriage Economy in Measure for Measure and All’s Well That En......Page 101 6 Varieties of Collaboration in Shakespeare’s Problem Plays and Late Plays......Page 118 7 “What’s in a Name?” Tragicomedy, Romance, or Late Comedy......Page 141 8 Fashion: Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher......Page 162 9 Place and Space in Three Late Plays......Page 187 10 The Politics and Technology of Spectacle in the Late Plays......Page 206 11 The Tempest in Performance......Page 228 12 What It Feels Like For a Boy: Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis......Page 252 13 Publishing Shame: The Rape of Lucrece......Page 271 14 The Sonnets: Sequence, Sexuality, and Shakespeare’s Two Loves......Page 287 15 The Two Party System in Troilus and Cressida......Page 314 16 Opening Doubts Upon the Law: Measure for Measure......Page 328 17 “Doctor She”: Healing and Sex in All’s Well That Ends Well......Page 345 18 “You not your child well loving”: Text and Family Structure in Pericles......Page 360 19 “Imagine Me, Gentle Spectators”: Iconomachy and The Winter’s Tale......Page 377 20 Cymbeline: Patriotism and Performance......Page 401 21 “Meaner Ministers”: Mastery, Bondage, and Theatrical Labor in The Tempest......Page 420 22 Queens and the Structure of History in Henry VIII......Page 439 23 Mixed Messages: The Aesthetics of The Two Noble Kinsmen......Page 457 Index......Page 474 Contains original essays on every Shakespearean tragedy from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus. Includes thirteen additional essays on such topics as Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, Shakespeare's tragedies on film, Shakespeare's tragedies of love, Hamlet in performance, and tragic emotion in Shakespeare This text on Shakespeare's problem plays, poems and late plays contains essays on 'Troilus and Cressida', 'Measure for Measure' and 'All's Well That Ends Well'. In addition, it includes twelve essays on his poetry, one of the topics being the reception history of the sonnets * Contains original essays on Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and The Sonnets, as well as Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The four Companions to Shakespeare's Works (Tragedies; Histories; Comedies; Poems, Problem Comedies, Late Plays) were compiled as a single entity designed to offer a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. A four volume work offers offers current research in Shakespeare studies, examining all of Shakespeare's plays and major poems from varied critical perspectives. Most readers of Shakespeare's sonnets today first encounter the poems in the form of a paperback book.