Shakespeare In The Marketplace Of Words

This book explores the words, forms, and styles Shakespeare used to interact with the verbal marketplace of early modern England.

This book explores the words, forms, and styles Shakespeare used to interact with the verbal marketplace of early modern England

Shakespeare's plays are pervaded by political and economic words and concepts, not only in the histories and tragedies but also in the comedies and romances. The lexicon of political and economic language in Shakespeare does not consist merely of arcane terms whose shifting meanings require exposition, but includes an enormous number of relatively simple words which possess a structural significance in the configuration of meanings. Often operating by such means as puns, they open up a surprising number of possibilities. The dictionary reveals the conceptual nucleus of each term and explores the contexts in which it is embedded. The overlap between the political and economic dimensions of a word in Shakespeare's drama is particularly exciting as he is highly attuned to the interactions of these two spheres of human activity and their centrality in human affairs.

A vital resource for scholars, students and actors, this book contains glosses and quotes for over 14,000 words that could be misunderstood by or are unknown to a modern audience. Displayed panels look at such areas of Shakespeare's language as greetings, swear-words and terms of address. Plot summaries are included for all Shakespeare's plays and on the facing page is a unique diagramatic representation of the relationships within each play.

Douglas Bruster's provocative study of English Renaissance drama explores its links with Elizabethan and Jacobean economy and society, looking at the status of playwrights such as Shakespeare and the establishment of commercial theatres. He identifies in the drama a materialist vision which has its origins in the climate of uncertainty engendered by the rapidly expanding economy of London. His examples range from the economic importance of cuckoldry to the role of stage props as commodities, and the commercial significance of the Troy story in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and he offers new ways of reading English Renaissance drama, by returning the theatre and the plays performed there, to its basis in the material world.

Seeing Shakespeare’s Style offers new ways for readers to perceive Shakespeare and, by extension, literary texts generally. Organized as a series of studies of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, poetry, and prose, it looks at the inner functioning of language and form in works from all phases of this writer’s career. Because the very concept of literary style has dropped out of so many of our conversations about writing, we need new ways to understand how words, phrases, speeches, and genres in literature work. Responding to this need, this book shows how visual representations of writing can lead to a deeper understanding of language’s textures and effects. Starting with chapters that a beginning reader of Shakespeare can benefit from, its second half puts these tools to use in more in-depth examinations of Shakespeare’s language and style. Although focused on Shakespeare’s works, and the works of his contemporaries, this book provides tools for all readers of literature by defining style as material, graphic, and shaped by the various media in which all writers work.

The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.

This remarkable, innovative book explores the significance in Shakespeare's plays of oaths, vows, contracts, pledges, and the other utterances and acts by which characters commit themselves to the truth of things past, present, and to come. In early modern England, such binding language was everywhere. Oaths of office, marriage vows, legal bonds, and casual, everyday profanity gave shape and texture to life. The proper use of such language, and the extent of its power to bind, was argued over by lawyers, religious writers, and satirists, and these debates inform literature and drama. Shakespeare's Binding Language gives a freshly researched account of these contexts, but it is focused on Shakespeare's plays. What motives should we look for when characters asseverate or promise? How far is binding language self-persuasive or deceptive? When is it allowable to break a vow? How do oaths and promises structure an audience's expectations? Across the sweep of Shakespeare's career, from the early histories to the late romances, this book opens new perspectives on key dramatic moments and illuminates language and action. Each chapter gives an account of a play or group of plays, yet the study builds to a sustained investigation of some of the most important systems, institutions, and controversies in early modern England, and of the wiring of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Scholarly but accessible, and offering startling insights, this is a major contribution to Shakespeare studies by one of the leading figures in the field.