Shakespeare

Acknowledgements; A note on style; Chronology; Introduction; How Shakespeare's works come down to us; Part One. Dramatic Genres; Chapter One. Comedies: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598); Transformation, translation, and plays to pass the time; Much Ado About Nothing; Soldiers turned lovers; Determining genre; Dirty jokes and sexual mores; Chapter Two. Histories: Richard 2 and Henry 5; This England; Providence; Serialized history and the Tudor Myth; The order of composition; What kind of king is Henry 5?; Chapter Three. Tragedies: Hamlet and Othello; Large and small affairs in Hamlet; Sex, suicide, and scepticism; Testing the supernatural; The character of Othello in isolation; The character of Othello in the world; Racial difference -- cultural difference -- multiculturalism; Chapter Four. Problem plays and Romances: All's Well that Ends Well and The Winter's Tale; Not Hamlet in a dress, nor Helen in breeches; Choosing among the men; Helen's quest; Unsuitable husbands; Do Hermione and Polixenes paddle palms?; The Winter's Tale as proto-novel; Summer/Winter -- Man/Woman -- Land/Class; Part Two. Critical Approaches; Chapter Five. Authority and authorship: Measure for Measure; History: Then; Proposing to Isabella; Being a nun; Meaning: Now; Recovering Shakespeare's version; Chapter Six. Performance: Macbeth; The witches; The timing of exits and entrances; The bipolar stage; The apparitions; Indeterminacy; Chapter Seven. Identities: The Tempest; The identity of Caliban; Nature/Nurture; The New World; Colonialism in general; Ariel as subaltern; Chapter Eight. Materialism: Timon of Athens; Base and superstructure; Timon as unaccommodated man; Money, gold, and g(u)ilt: Shakespearian alchemy; The second law of thermodynamics; The new materialism versus Gaia; Conclusion; Student Resources; Electronic Resources and Reference Resources; Glossary; Guide to Further Reading.

Gabriel Egan