Overview

Oxford Shakespeare Topics provides students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide to further reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. William Shakespeare lived and worked during an extraordinary quarter-century in the history of English drama, which saw the development of new kinds of tragedy and comedy, and the birth of the entirely new genre of tragicomedy. Beginning with the institutional foundations that were laid with the emergence of the commercial theatre business in 1570s London, Shakespeare and the Drama of His Time describes the principal audience fashions, artistic conventions, and professional circumstances which defined, and enabled, his plays and those of his colleagues: plays of a range and sophistication undreamed of by earlier generations, and rarely equalled since. Throughout, Shakespeare's plays are shown to be intimately associated with those of his contemporaries, notably Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, George Chapman, Ben Jonson, John Marston, and John Fletcher.

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9780198711612

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Extremely informative ... There are some nice touches here, and Wiggins is good on the effects of the cultural shifts that he describes, making telling comparisons such as: 'To the Elizabethans, Marlowe's plays must have had all the aural impact of a symphony orchestra taking over from a barrel-organ'. Modern Language Review Oxford University Press offer a mix of engagingly written introductions to a variety of Topics intended largely for undergraduates. Each author has clearly been reading and listening to the most recent scholarship, but they wear their learning lightly. Ruth Morse, Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Martin M. Wiggins is a Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon.

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