Reviews Plays: Troilus and Cressida, Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, as You like it, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet, The Antipodes, Romeu e Julieta, Coriolanus, All's Well That Ends Well, Un Roméo et Juliette, Le Marchand de Venise, La Nuit des Rois, Le tombeau de Richard G. (une furieuse foire d'empoigne), Falstaff, Hamlet

2000 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-108
Author(s):  
Peter J. Smith ◽  
Lisa Hopkins ◽  
Peter J. Smith ◽  
Peter J. Smith ◽  
Peter J. Smith ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari

While ecocritical approaches to literary texts receive more and more attention, climate-related issues remain fairly neglected, particularly in the field of Shakespeare studies. This monograph explores the importance of weather and changing skies in early modern England while acknowledging the fact that traditional representations and religious beliefs still fashioned people’s relations to meteorological phenomena. At the same time, a growing number of literati stood against determinism and defended free will, thereby insisting on man’s ability to act upon celestial forces. Yet, in doing so, they began to give precedence to a counter-intuitive approach to Nature. Sophie Chiari argues that Shakespeare reconciles the scholarly views of his time with more popular ideas rooted in superstition and that he promotes a sensitive, pragmatic understanding of climatic events. She pays particular attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Taking into account the influence of classical thought, each of the book’s seven chapters emphasises specific issues (e.g. cataclysmic disorders, the dog days’ influence, freezing temperatures, threatening storms) and considers the way climatic events were presented on stage and how they came to shape the production and reception of Shakespeare’s drama.


2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-161
Author(s):  
Michael Flachmann

In their “Editors' Preface” to the Cambridge University Press Shakespeare in Production series, J. S. Bratton and Julie Hankey proudly describe the “comprehensive dossier of materials,” including “eye-witness accounts, contemporary criticism, promptbook marginalia, stage business, cuts, additions and rewritings,” that make up the heart of this brilliant and exceptionally useful collection of Shakespeare editions. Conceived by Jeremy Treglown and first published by Junction Books, the series was later printed by Bristol Classical Press as Plays in Performance, though none of the original four titles remains in print. Already published in the descendant Cambridge Shakespeare in Production series are nine plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice—with Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and As You Like It forthcoming.


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