- Cover of Shakespeare’s Ideas by David Bevington
August 1, 2008
It’s time to take stock of the latest crop of Shakespeare books. Some of the highlights from this past month include a new work by Shakespearean scholar David Bevington and the latest installments from the Oxford Shakespeare and the Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. Jess Winfield, the co-founder of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has published his debut novel. And Naxos Audiobooks released a CD recording of the Donmar Warehouse’s award winning production of Othello.
Shakespeare’s Ideas: More Things in Heaven and Earth by David Bevington provides an in-depth exploration, through his plays and poems, of the philosophy of Shakespeare as a great poet, a great dramatist and a “great mind”. Bevington discusses Shakespeare’s take on sex and gender, politics and political theory, writing and acting, religious controversy and issues of faith, skepticism and misanthropy, and closure.
Two new important editions of Shakespeare’s play were released in July. The Arden Shakespeare Third Series published Timon of Athens, edited by Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton. This edition accepts and contributes to the growing scholarly consensus that the play is not Shakespeare’s solo work, but is the result of his collaboration with Thomas Middleton, who wrote about a third of it. The editors offer an account of the process of collaboration and discuss the different ways that each author contributes to the play’s relentless look at the corruption and greed of society.
Oxford University Press published Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Roger Warren. This edition offers a complete consideration of all aspects of the text. It interprets the play less as a contribution to a Renaissance literary debate between love and friendship, the traditional academic view, than as a dramatization of competing kinds of love - a theatrical counterpart to Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
On the fiction front, Jess Winfield, co-founder of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, has written his debut novel. My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare. The novel tells the stories of two William Shakespeares. One is a struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student, Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, who is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. When he’s cut off by his father for laziness, Willie agrees to deliver a single, giant psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. Meanwhile, would-be playwright and oppressed Catholic, William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard’s life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome.
The cast of the Donmar Warehouse’s sellout production of Othello has recorded a CD version of the play for Naxos AudioBooks. Othello ran between November 2007 and February 2008 in London’s West End. The cast featured Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello, Ewan McGregor as Iago, and Kelly Reilly as the Desdemona. Chiwetel Ejiofor won the 2008 Olivier Award for best actor for his performance, beating out Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.
The following is a list of Shakespeare-related books released in July. Every attempt was made to be a comprehensive as possible but some books may not be listed. Please note that some of the books may not yet be available despite having an official release date in July.
Criticism and Scholarly Research
Reading the Allegorical Intertext: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
by Judith H. Anderson (Author)
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN-10: 0823228479
ISBN-13: 978-0823228478
Shakespeare’s Ideas (Blackwell Great Minds) (Paperback) - Available in the UK
by David Bevington (Author)
Publisher: WileyBlackwell
Language English
ISBN-10: 1405167963
ISBN-13: 978-1405167963
Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship (Hardcover)
by Patrick Cheney (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10: 0521881668
ISBN-13: 978-0521881661
Medieval and Antique Tradition in the Twelth Night and The Tempest (Paperback) - Available in the UK
by Erika Nagyne Fisi
Publisher: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG
ISBN-10: 3639044703
ISBN-13: 978-3639044706
Shakespeare and the Political Way (Shakespeare Now!) (Paperback)
by Elizabeth Frazer (Author)
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group
ISBN-10: 0826489273
ISBN-13: 978-0826489272
Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity (Hardcover)
by Anthony Guneratne
Publisher: Palgrave Macmilla
ISBN-13: 9781403967886
From Performance to Print in Shakespeare’s England (Paperback)
by Peter Holland (Editor), Stephen Orgel (Editor)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-13: 9780230210134
The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland – 3rd Edition (Hardcover)
by Daniel Hahn (Editor), Nicholas Robins (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN-10: 0198614608
ISBN-13: 978-0198614609
Shakespeare’s As You Like It: Late Elizabethan Culture and Literary Representation (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
by M. Hunt (Author)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-10: 0230603319
ISBN-13: 978-0230603318
Race Matters: Understanding Racial Issues in Shakespeare’s Othello
by Solomon O. Iyasere (Editor), Marla W. Iyasere (Editor)
Publisher: Whitston Publishing Company, Incorporated
ISBN-13: 9780878755158
Shakespeare and Masculinity in Southern Fiction: Faulkner, Simms, Page, and Dixon (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
by J. Keener (Author)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-10: 0230603203
ISBN-13: 978-0230603202
The Hamlet 3×2 Text Research Toolset (Spiral-bound)
Charles Adams Kelly and Cara McBride (Editors)
Publisher: Triple Anvil Press
ISBN-10: 0966212630
ISBN-13: 978-0966212631
The Culture of Obesity in Early and Late Modernity: Body Image in Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Skelton (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
by E. Levy-Navarro (Author)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-10: 0230601235
ISBN-13: 978-0230601239
Henry IV: Parts I and II - The Shakespeare Handbooks Ser. (Hardcover
by James N. Loehlin
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-13: 9780230019102
The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare (Routledge Companions) (Hardcover)
by John Russell BR (Author)
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN-10: 0415400449
ISBN-13: 978-0415400442
Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
by Tom Rutter (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10: 0521884861
ISBN-13: 978-0521884860
Speech and Performance in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Plays (Paperback)
by David Schalkwyk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN-13: 9780521036337
Interpersonal Idiom in Shakespeare, Donne and Early Modern Culture: A Prehistory of the Self (Hardcover)
by Nancy Selleck
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-13: 9781403999061
Henry V (Readers’ Guides to Essential Criticism) (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
by Matthew Woodcock
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-10: 023050079X
ISBN-13: 978-0230500792
Shakespeare Editions
The Complete Works of Shakespeare – 6th Edition (Hardcover)
by David Bevington (Editor)
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
ISBN-13: 9780205606283
As You Like It (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN-13: 9780199536153
Henry IV, Part I (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN-13: 9780199536139
Henry IV Part 1: Oxford School Shakespeare (Paperback)
Roma Gill (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Updated Ed edition
ISBN-10: 0198320914
ISBN-13: 978-0198320913
Henry VI: Pt. 3 (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback) - Available in the UK
by Randall Martin (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN-10: 0199537119
ISBN-13: 978-0199537112
Julius Caesar (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN-13: 9780199536122
Love’s Labour’s Lost (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback) - Available in the UK
G.R. Hibbard (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press; New Ed.
ISBN-10: 0199536813
ISBN-13: 978-0199536818
The Merry Wives of Windsor (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback) - Available in the UK
T.W. Craik (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press; New Ed.
ISBN-10: 0199536821
ISBN-13: 978-0199536825
Pericles (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback) - Available in the UK
Roger Warren (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press; New Ed.
ISBN-10: 019953683X
ISBN-13: 978-0199536832
Timon of Athens (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series)
Anthony B. Dawson (Editor), Gretchen E. Minton (Editor)
Publisher: Arden Shakespeare/Cengage Learning
(Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1903436974
ISBN-13: 978-1903436974
(Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1903436966
ISBN-13: 978-1903436967
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Oxford Shakespeare) (Hardcover) - Available in the UK
Edited by Roger Warren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language English
ISBN-10: 0198123671
ISBN-13: 978-0198123675
Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback)
Brian Vickers (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition
ISBN-10: 0199540799
ISBN-13: 978-0199540792
Four Revenge Tragedies: (The Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger’s Tragedy, The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois, and The Atheist’s Tragedy) (Oxford World’s Classics) (Paperback)
by Katharine Eisaman Maus (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN-10: 0199540535
ISBN-13: 978-0199540532
The Martin Marprelate Tracts: A Modernized and Annotated Edition (Hardcover)
by Joseph L. Black (Editor)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10: 052187579X
ISBN-13: 978-0521875790
Audiobooks
Othello – Donmar Warehouse Production
Read by, Ewan McGregor, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Edition Description: Unabridged, 2 CDs, 3 hrs. 50 min
Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks Ltd.
ISBN-13: 9789626349298
Education
Shakespeare with Children: Six Scripts for Young Players (Paperback)
by Elizabeth Weinstein, Anna Dallam (Illustrator)
Publisher: Smith & Kraus, Inc.
ISBN-13: 9781575255736
Fiction
My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare (Hardcover)
by Jess Winfield
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780446508858
