Myriad-minded Shakespeare: Essays on the Tragedies, the Problem Comedies and Shakespeare the Man

Myriad-minded Shakespeare introduces readers to the great variety of approaches to Shakespeare. The political and sexist implications of the plays, their sources, staging issues, textual disputes and the dramatist's character and biography are all analysed here, bringing out the interconnectedness of critical questions. Ernst Honigmann plunges straight into his subjects and shows that it is rarely safe to seek solutions that are narrowly exclusive. For the second edition a new preface places the essays in the context of recent critical debate and a new chapter on Shakespeare's will provides a fascinating insight into Shakespeare's independent spirit. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction: Myriad-minded Shakespeare and the modern reader....Pages 1-3 In search of William Shakespeare: the public and the private man....Pages 4-20 Politics, rhetoric and will-power in Julius Caesar....Pages 21-42 The politics in Hamlet and ‘the world of the play’....Pages 43-59 Trends in the discussion of Shakespeare’s characters: Othello....Pages 60-72 The uniqueness of King Lear: genre and production problems....Pages 73-92 Past, present and future in Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra....Pages 93-111 Shakespeare suppressed: the unfortunate history of Troilus and Cressida....Pages 112-129 All’s Well That Ends Well: a ‘feminist’ play?....Pages 130-146 Shakespeare’s mingled yarn and Measure for Measure....Pages 147-168 On not trusting Shakespeare’s stage-directions....Pages 169-187 Shakespeare at work: preparing, writing, rewriting....Pages 188-221 Shakespeare on his deathbed: the last will and testament....Pages 222-233 Back Matter....Pages 234-253 This collection of essays grapples with timeless problems rather than time-bound movements such as New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, but the essays still admit that problems and movements are linked. Using the problems as a means of focusing more closely upon the plays, these works investigate the building blocks of Shakespearian drama: character, plot, language, genre, response. A new preface places the essays in the context of recent critical debate and a new chapter on Shakespeare's will provides a fascinating insight into his independent spirit. Two images of Shakespeare have come down to us from the seventeenth century.