Includes complete text, annotations, appendix, classwork and examinations, and background. Edited by Roma Gill.

Yale University professor Harold Bloom presents a unique and exciting study of Shakespeare's seven greatest tragedies.

Was Shakespeare a snob? Poor Naked Wretches challenges the idea that one of the greatest writers of the English language despised working people, showing that he portrayed them with as much insight, compassion, and purpose as the rich and powerful. Moreover, working people play an important role in his dramatic method. Stephen Unwin reads Shakespeare anew, exploring the astonishing variety of working people in his plays, as well as the vast range...

Based on her five-part theatrical performance of the same name, Tina Packer combines the knowledge of performance, discussion, and debate with the dramatic tension stemming from the influences Shakespeare responded to in his life, and from Packer's desire to show how powerful and distinct the women characters are in his plays.

"From leading Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, a timely and insightful examination of what the world's greatest dramatist can teach us about life in an America riven by conflict. The United States has always been divided, but Americans from all walks of life have also always shared a deep affinity for the plays William Shakespeare, even if their meaning has been fiercely contested. For well over two centuries now, Americans of all stripes--presidents...

World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright's insight into bad (and often mad) rulers. As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the...

Seeking his fortune in sixteenth-century London, young wordsmith William Shakespeare joins a band of players before he is dispatched to Venice on an assignment that renders him the target of Catholic assassins and a shadowy killer.