A compellingly readable and intelligent book. . . . Both authors write with impressive energy.--Rowan Williams, New Statesman

In this fresh investigation, Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips explore how the second chance has been an essential feature of the literary imagination and a promise so central to our existence that we try to reproduce it again and again. Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realization or failure of second chances--outcomes that depend on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone.

Through a series of illuminating readings, the authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter. Both Shakespeare and Freud believed that we can narrate our life stories as tales of transformation, of momentous shifts, constrained by time and place but often still possible. Ranging from The Comedy of Errors to The Winter's Tale, and from D. W. Winnicott to Marcel Proust, the authors challenge readers to imagine how, as Phillips writes, it is the mending that matters.

A new account of Shakespearean tragedy as a response to life in an uncertain world

In Shakespeare's Tragic Art, Rhodri Lewis offers a powerfully original reassessment of tragedy as Shakespeare wrote it--of what drew him toward tragic drama, what makes his tragedies distinctive, and why they matter.

After reconstructing tragic theory and practice as Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew them, Lewis considers in detail each of Shakespeare's tragedies from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus. He argues that these plays are a series of experiments whose greatness lies in their author's nerve-straining determination to represent the experience of living in a world that eludes rational analysis. They explore not just our inability to know ourselves as we would like to, but the compensatory and generally unacknowledged fictions to which we bind ourselves in our hunger for meaning--from the political, philosophical, social, and religious to the racial, sexual, personal, and familial. Lewis's Shakespeare not only creates tragedies that exceed those written before them. Through his art, he also affirms and invigorates the kinds of knowing that are available to intelligent animals like us.

A major reevaluation of Shakespeare's tragedies, Shakespeare's Tragic Art is essential reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare, tragedy, or the capacity of literature to help us navigate the perplexities of the human condition.

Now, almost two decades after the original volume, Oxford is proud to announce a thoroughly updated second edition, including for the first time the texts of The Reign of Edward III and Sir Thomas More, recognizing these two plays officially as authentic works by Shakespeare. This beautiful collection is the product of years of full-time research by a team of British and American scholars and represents the most thorough examination ever undertaken of the nature and authority of Shakespeare's work. The editors reconsidered every detail of the text in the light of modern scholarship and they thoroughly re-examined the earliest printed versions of the plays, firmly establishing the canon and chronological order of composition. All stage directions have been reconsidered in light of original staging, and many new directions for essential action have been added. This superb volume also features a brief introduction to each work as well as an illuminating General Introduction. Finally, the editors have added a wealth of secondary material, including an essay on language, a list of contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, an index of Shakespearean characters, a glossary, a consolidated bibliography, and an index of first lines of the Sonnets.

Compiled by the world's leading authorities, packed with information, and attractively designed, The Oxford Shakespeare is the gold standard of Shakespearean anthologies.

'Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.'
'Make not your thoughts your prisons.'
'Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.'
'And I have heard it said, unbidden guests are often welcomest when they're gone.'

With a quote for every day of the year, this beautiful book gathers the finest lines from the lesser-known corners of Shakespeare's plays and poems. While you may not be familiar with these 400-year-old phrases, you will be surprised by the immediate, easy resonance they have with modern day-to-day life and, hopefully, inspired to learn a few quotes, say them out loud, and drop them into conversation.

Each page bears a gift of Shakespearean delight - around which lies a treasure trove of trivia, miscellaneous fact, and opportunities for reflection.

The Crystals - son and father - draw attention to points of daily life, literary, linguistic, and theatrical interest through their entertaining commentary. They offer notes of context for anyone who wants to know who originally said the words, in which play, and why. And finally, the authors provide three indexes, allowing readers to help find the right quote for a task, or to follow-up on a quote's original source.

Shakespeare's words are a mirror for us to peer into, to see if any part of ourselves, familiar or strange, is visible. Each day as you read his lines, you'll get glimpses of loves you've known, jealousies you've felt, relationships you've had, and situations you've encountered that bring a smile - or a wince - of familiarity.

Everyday Shakespeare shares the simple lines that encapsulate the wondrous complexity of life, and the enduring appeal of the Bard.

Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time. - Ben Jonson

This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Shakespeare, with:

- Every play and poem from Shakespeare's canon, including lost plays and less well-known works of poetry
- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Shakespeare Book is the perfect introduction to the entire canon of Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and other poetry, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover the complete works, from The Comedy of Errors, to the great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.

Your Shakespeare Questions, Simply Explained

This is a brilliant, innovative exploration of the entire canon of Shakespeare plays, sonnets, and other poetry with detailed plot summaries and a full analysis of the major characters and themes. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the works of one of the greatest writers in the English language, The Shakespeare Book presents key information in a simple layout. Every work is covered, from the comedies of Twelfth Night and As You Like It to the tragedies of Julius Caesar and Hamlet, with easy-to-understand graphics and illustrations bringing the themes, plots, characters, and language of Shakespeare to life.

The Big Ideas Series

With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Shakespeare Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

William Shakespeare has undergone psychological analyses ever since Freud diagnosed Hamlet with an Oedipus complex. But now, two psychologists propose to turn the tables by telling how Shakespeare himself understood human behavior and the innermost workings of the human mind.

This must now be the edition of first resort. - Review of English Studies

Shakespeare's Sonnets are universally loved and much-quoted throughout the world. First published in 1997 to much critical acclaim, the Sonnets has been a consistent best-seller in the Arden Shakespeare series. Katherine Duncan-Jones tackles the controversies and mysteries surrounding these beautiful poems head on, and explores the issues of sexuality to be found in them, making this a truly modern edition for today's readers and students.

This revised edition has been updated and corrected in the light of new scholarship and critical thinking since its first publication.

This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Shakespeare, with:

- Every play and poem from Shakespeare's canon, including lost plays and less well-known works of poetry
- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Shakespeare Book is the perfect introduction to the entire canon of Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and other poetry, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover the complete works, from The Comedy of Errors, to the great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.

Your Shakespeare Questions, Simply Explained

This is a brilliant, innovative exploration of the entire canon of Shakespeare plays, sonnets, and other poetry with detailed plot summaries and a full analysis of the major characters and themes. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the works of one of the greatest writers in the English language, The Shakespeare Book presents key information in a simple layout. Every work is covered, from the comedies of Twelfth Night and As You Like It to the tragedies of Julius Caesar and Hamlet, with easy-to-understand graphics and illustrations bringing the themes, plots, characters, and language of Shakespeare to life.

The Big Ideas Series

With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Shakespeare Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Links early modern English drama and empire studies, exploring how staged scenes of maritime peril created a new form of economic uncertainty

Imperial Ventures links early modern English drama and empire studies, exploring how staged scenes of maritime peril created a new form of economic uncertainty around the turn of the seventeenth century, amid London's explosion in commercial colonialism.

While the hazards of global maritime trade became increasingly apparent during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the word risk did not enter English usage until around 1660. The prevailing scholarly narrative has linked uncertainty to concepts such as chance, accident, and providence, but this book reveals that these fragmentary concepts were reordered into an economic abstraction, and that the theater was a key site for that process. Playwrights reached for ways to represent this new uncertainty, and audiences watched perilous voyages set in colonial contexts and dramatized in increasingly typical forms. Imperial Ventures is organized by these forms, with five chapters examining scenes of shipwreck, pirates, enslavement, colonial subjection, and perilous news across a wide range of early modern plays.

Benjamin VanWagoner shows how maritime drama connected English venturing to economic vulnerability in increasingly systematic ways, helping to develop the economic logic that would come to be codified as risk. In revealing this process, Imperial Ventures establishes the unique protocolonial status of early modern England--in the theater and at sea--and demonstrates how risk became a perverse instrument for justifying Anglophone imperialism.

How early modern theatrical practice helped construct the category of pagan as a tool of European self-definition and colonial ambition

In Making Pagans, John Kuhn argues that drama played a powerful role in the articulation of religious difference in the seventeenth century. Tracing connections between the history of stagecraft and ethnological disciplines such as ethnography, antiquarianism, and early comparative religious writing, Kuhn shows how early modern repertory systems that leaned heavily on thrift and reuse produced an enduring theatrical vocabulary for understanding religious difference through the representation of paganism--a key term in the new taxonomy of world religions emerging at this time, and a frequent subject and motif in English drama of the era.

Combining properties such as triumphal chariots, trick altars, and moving statues with music, special effects, and other elements, the spectacular set-pieces that were mostly developed for plays set in antiquity, depicting England's pre-Christian past, were frequently repurposed in new plays, in representations of Native Americans and Africans in colonial contact zones. Kuhn argues that the recycling of these set-pieces encouraged audiences to process new cultural sites through the lens of old performance tropes, and helped produce fictitious, quasi-ethnographic knowledge for spectators, generating the idea of a homogeneous, trans-historical, trans-geographical paganism. Examining the common scenes of pagan ritual that filled England's seventeenth-century stages--magical conjurations, oracular prophecies, barbaric triumphal parades, and group suicides--Kuhn traces these tropes across dozens of plays, from a range of authors including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden, and Philip Massinger.

Drawing together theater history, Atlantic studies, and the history of comparative religion, Making Pagans reconceptualizes the material and iterative practices of the theater as central to the construction of radical religious difference in early modernity and of the category of paganism as a tool of European self-definition and colonial ambition.

Much Ado About Nothing presents a battle of the sexes in more ways than one: as both a lightning-fast skirmish of wits between two famously disputatious lovers, and a near-deadly conflict built on conventions of gender and male rivalry.

Claire McEachern's new introduction brings this best-seller right up to date, analysing recent developments in criticism and the latest productions of this comedy.

Examining the psyche--and psychoses--of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, and Coriolanus, Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the disasters visited upon the societies over which these characters rule. Tyrant shows that Shakespeare's work remains vitally relevant today, not least in its probing of the unquenchable, narcissistic appetites of demagogues and the self-destructive willingness of collaborators who indulge their appetites.