Raphael Lyne addresses a crucial Shakespearean question: why do characters in the grip of emotional crises deliver such extraordinarily beautiful and ambitious speeches? How do they manage to be so inventive when they are perplexed? Their dense, complex, articulate speeches at intensely dramatic moments are often seen as psychological - they uncover and investigate inwardness, character and motivation - and as rhetorical - they involve heightened language, deploying recognisable techniques...

This book uses theories of memory derived from cognitive science to offer new ways of understanding how literary works remember other literary works. Using terms derived from psychology – implicit and explicit memory, interference and forgetting – Raphael Lyne shows how works by Renaissance writers such as Wyatt, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Milton interact with their sources. The poems and plays in question are themselves sources of insight into the workings of memory, sharing and anticipatin...

Although best known for his plays, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was also a poet who achieved extraordinary depth and variety in only a few key works. This edition of his poetry provides detailed notes, commentary and appendices resulting in an academically thorough and equally accessible edition to Shakespeare’s poetry.The editors present his non-dramatic poems in the chronological order of their print publication: the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape...

The Signet Classics edition of William Shakespeare's incomparable tragic play."To be, or not to be: that is the question"There is arguably no work of fiction quoted as often as William Shakespeare's Hamlet. This haunting tragedy of a troubled Danish prince devoted to avenging his father's death has captivated audiences for centuries.This title in the Signet Classics Shakespeare series includes:• An overview of Shakespeare's...

'The Mona Lisa of literature' T. S. EliotIn Shakespeare's verbally dazzling and eternally enigmatic exploration of conscience, madness and the nature of humanity, a young prince meets his father's ghost in the middle of the night, who accuses his own brother - now married to his widow - of murdering him. The prince devises a scheme to test the truth of the ghost's accusation, feigning wild insanity while plotting revenge. But his actions soon begin to wreak havoc on innocent and gu...

The bestselling, authoritative Folger Shakespeare Library edition of Hamlet—a tragedy of family, murder, ghosts, and revenge—featuring Shakespeare's complete original text, expert annotations, scene-by-scene summaries, and trusted scholarship for students, teachers, and general readers.For more than seventy years, the Folger Shakespeare Library editions have been the standard classroom and reading editions of Shakespeare's plays. Used in high schools, coll...

The bestselling, authoritative Folger Shakespeare Library edition of Macbeth, featuring Shakespeare's complete original text, expert annotations, scene-by-scene summaries, and trusted scholarship for students, teachers, and general readers.For more than seventy years, the Folger Shakespeare Library editions have been the standard classroom and reading editions of Shakespeare's plays. Used in high schools, colleges, universities, and theaters around the wor...

The Signet Classics edition of one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.Full of cruelty and betrayal, King Lear is the timeless and tragic story of a kingdom held in the thrall of an aging ruler’s descent into madness. Desperate for praise, he banishes those who would guide him with honesty and surrounds himself with sycophants—an action that leads to his ultimate downfall....This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such...

'Shakespeare invented the human as we continue to know it' Harold BloomSet in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Shakespeare's immortal drama tells the story of star-crossed lovers, rival dynasties and bloody revenge. Romeo and Juliet is a hymn to youth and the thrill of forbidden love, charged with sexual passion and violence, but also a warning of death: a dazzling combination of bawdy comedy and high tragedy.Used and Recommended by the National Theatre...

The bestselling, authoritative Folger Shakespeare Library edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring Shakespeare's complete original text, expert annotations, scene-by-scene summaries, and trusted scholarship for students, teachers, and general readers.For more than seventy years, the Folger Shakespeare Library editions have been the standard classroom and reading editions of Shakespeare's plays. Used in high schools, colleges, universities, and theat...

One of the most frequently read and performed of all stage works, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is unsurpassed in its complexity and richness. Now the first fully annotated version of Hamlet makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. It has been carefully assembled with students, teachers, and the general reader in mind.Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary and usage of Elizabethan En...

'He could mingle sublimity with pathos, bitterness with joy and peace and love' Aldous HuxleyIn one of Shakespeare's most perennially popular comedies a young woman, Hermia, flees ancient Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites take an interest in human affairs, dispensing magical love potions and casting mischievous spells. Slapstick collides with c...