Explains the historical, legendary, and mythological background of 38 plays and 2 narrative poems.

"Much of the action takes place on an almost clinically bare stage, and the fear and violence in the usurping Duke's court, where everyone wears formal black Elizabethan dress, is chilling. With his lame eye and air of festering resentment, Sandy Neilson's Duke Frederick has a touch of the psychotic about him ... Boyd ... shows us the bloody reality of rural life as the shepherd Corin (excellent Geoffrey Freshwater) slowly skins and beheads a dead...

Setting itself apart from the usual discussions about Hamlet, Hunt here demonstrates that Hamlet is much more than we take him to be. Much more than the sum of his parts -- more than just tragic, sexy youth and more than just vain cruelty -- Hamlet is a reflection of our own aspirations and neuroses. This book investigates the many searches for Hamlet, from their origins in Danish mythology through the complex problems of early printed texts, through...

Contains all 38 plays.

Shakespeare was acutely aware of our struggles with aging. His dramatic characters either prosper or suffer according to their relationship with maturity, and his sonnets explore time's ravaging effects. "Wrinkled deep in time" is how the queen describes herself in Antony and Cleopatra, and at the end of King Lear, there is a tragic sense that both the king and Gloucester have acquired a wisdom they otherwise lacked at the beginning of the play. Even...

A critical study of the plays.

Thomas Marc Parrott offers readers introductions to Shakespeare's works, groupings according to genre and a play-by-play recital of the Shakespeare canon, and a notation of success or failure of the plays as determined by sixteenth century and modern audiences with the expectation that readers can clearly understand the method of Shakespeare's comedies.

" ... Provides a convenient and annotated checklist of the most important criticism on Shakespeare in the twentieth century."--Preface.