9780134139883

For courses in Shakespeare.

Distills the best, most widely read and produced of Shakespeare’s great plays

In one compact paperback, The Necessary Shakespeare showcases Shakespeare’s proficiency through different genres.It comprises 20 plays and some of the sonnets—and categorizes his plays as comedies, histories, or tragedies. The book demonstrates Shakespeare’s development from the early The Taming of the Shrew and Richard the Third to the late The Tempest; it shows him as a remarkable poet as well as dramatist. Selections are based in part on user feedback, and in many cases are widely available on film or video.

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0134139887 / 9780134139883 The Necessary Shakespeare

David Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, is a highly respected editor and Shakespearean scholar. He taught drama at the University of Chicago, focusing on Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Jonson, Marlowe, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, etc.), as well as medieval drama and then the entire sweep of Western drama from Aeschylus and Sophocles down to Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard.
In addition to courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, and medieval drama, Bevington co-taught in Theater and Performance Studies (variously with Heidi Coleman, Director of University Theater, John Muse, English Department, and Drew Dir, resident dramaturg at Court Theatre) a two-quarter sequence called The History and Theory of Drama from the 5th century B.C. down to the present day.
"One of the most learned and devoted of Shakespeareans," as characterized by Harold Bloom, he specializes in British drama of the Renaissance, and has edited and introduced the complete works of William Shakespeare in both the 29-volume, Bantam Classics paperback editions and the single-volume Longman edition. He also edits the Norton Anthology of Renaissance Drama and an important anthology of Medieval English Drama. Bevington's editorial scholarship is so extensive that Richard Strier, an early modern colleague at the University of Chicago, was moved to comment: "Every time I turn around, he has edited a new Renaissance text. Bevington has endless energy for editorial projects."
In addition to Bevington's work as an editor, he has published studies of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the Stuart Court Masque, among others, though it is for his work as an editor that he is primarily known.

I: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1. Reading Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century

2. Life in Shakespeare’s England

3. The Drama Before Shakespeare

4. London Theaters and Dramatic Companies

5. Shakespeare’s Life and Work

6. How to Read Shakespeare

7. Shakespeare’s Language

8. Shakespeare Criticism

II: THE COMEDIES

9. The Taming of the Shrew

10. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

11. The Merchant of Venice

12. Much Ado About Nothing

13. As You Like It

14. Twelfth Night; or, What You Will

15. Measure for Measure

III: THE HISTORIES

16. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

17. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

18. The First Part of King Henry the Fourth

19. The Life of King Henry the Fifth

IV: THE TRAGEDIES

20. Romeo and Juliet

21. Julius Caesar

22. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

23. Othello, the Moor of Venice

24. King Lear

25. Macbeth

26. Antony and Cleopatra

The Romances

27. The Winter’s Tale

28. The Tempest

The Poems

29. Sonnets

Appendix 1: Canon, Dates, and Early Texts

Appendix 2: Sources

Appendix 3: Shakespeare in Performance

Appendix 4: Films and Videos as a Guide to the Study of Shakespeare

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The Necessary Shakespeare

The Necessary Shakespeare

0134139887

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials