Course Information
Syllabus
Screenings
Shakespeare's Time
Chronology of Plays
Study Questions
Discussion Forum
Reserve List
Resource Links
Sample Essays
Books on 24-hour Reserve in Baker/Berry Library
Shakespeare's plays have given rise to an overwhelming amount of criticism. The selections listed below will be helpful in broadening and sharpening your responses to the plays, but no criticism should ever become a substitute for sensitive and attentive reading of the plays themselves.In addition to the titles listed below, I have also placed on reserve two recent complete editions of the plays and poems, The Norton Shakespeare and The Riverside Shakespeare. Both editions are valuable for historical contexts and critical material. In general, the introductions and essays in The Norton are more recent contributions than those in The Riverside. Both also offer selected lists of critical articles and books on each play--good places to start your critical reading.
Belsey, Catherine. Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The Construction of Family Values in early Modern Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999.
Bly, Mary. Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy. 3rd Edition. New York: St. Martin's, 1992.
Cavell, Stanley. Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Dollimore, Jonathan & Alan Sinfield, eds. Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Drakakis, John, ed. Alternative Shakespeares. London; New York: Methuen, 1985.
Ferguson, Margaret, et al. Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. New York: Random House, 1979.
De Grazia, Margreta & Stanley Wells, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642. Cambridge University Press, 3rd. ed., 1992.
Gurr, Andrew. Play-going in Shakespeare's London. 2nd ed. 1996.
Gurr, Andrew and Mariko Ichikawa. Staging Shakespeare's Theatres. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Hawkes, Terence, ed. Alternative Shakespeares. Volume 2. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Hopkins, Lisa. The Shakespearean Marriage: Merry Wives and Heavy Husbands. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Hinman, Charlton. Norton Facsimile of the First Folio. 1996.
Howard, Jean E. Shakespeare's Art of Orchestration: Stage Technique and Audience Response. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Howard, Jean E. Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Kastan, David Scott. Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time. Hanover [N.H.]: University Press of New England, 1982.
Kerrigan, Wiliam. Shakespeare's Promises. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
Lenz, Carolyn et al., eds. The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.
Loomba, Ania, & Martin Orkin, eds., Post-colonial Shakespeares. London: Routledge, 1998.
Mullaney, Steven. The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Ornstein, Robert. A Kingdom for a Stage; The Achievement of Shakespeare's History Plays. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Palliser, D.M. The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors. London; New York: Longman, 1983.
Saccio, Peter. Shakespeare's English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press 2000.
Schoenbaum, Samuel. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. New York: Oxford University Press, rev. ed., 1987.
Schwartz, Murray M. & Coppelia Khan, eds. Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
Smith, Bruce R. Shakespeare and Masculinity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Sutherland, John. Henry V, War Criminal? and Other Shakespeare Puzzles. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Taylor, Michael, ed. Shakespearean Criticism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare's History Plays. London: Chatto & Windus, 1944.
