In the following essay, Cook discusses many of the particulars of Elizabethan marriage laws and customs and then explores the way in which Shakespeare's plays address or correspond to real-life contemporary matrimonial issues. Cook concludes that Shakespeare represents courtship and marriage in a variety of positive and negative ways and that there is no easy way to determine what his own views on the subject were.

In the following essay, Wikander examines the nature of Shakespeare's historiography in the English history plays, demonstrating the way in which Shakespeare incorporated elements of the medieval, providential view of history and humanist historiography in his approach to English history.

In the essay below, Foreman diagrams the variety of ways in which Shakespeare's tragic protagonists meet their ends. Looking closely at the deaths of the central characters in both the minor and major tragedies, he considers the depth of the characters' understanding of themselves and the world, their sense of identity, their will to be in control of their fates, and the creativity of their confrontations with death.

Here, Boose explores the phases of the marriage ceremony—separation, transition, and reincorporation—as a pattern for the father-daughter relationship.

In the following essay, Adelman traces developments in Shakespeare's treatment of male friendship from the early to middle comedies through the tragedies and late romances.

In the following essay, Adelman traces developments in Shakespeare's treatment of male friendship from the early to middle comedies through the tragedies and late romances.

In the following essay, Rackin identifies a conflict between two Renaissance theories of history, providentialism and Machiavellianism, as alternate explanations of historical causation. This conflict, maintains Rackin, can be found in Shakespeare's history plays, and it is the source of their theatrical energy and the inspiration for the audience's contemplation of the problems related to historical interpretation. Rackin goes on to investigate how this ideological conflict is portrayed in d...

In the following essay, Weiss offers an overview of the major characters and themes of the two parts of Henry IV, maintaining that through the character of Prince Hal, Shakespeare constructs a play that is as accomplished as a comedy as it is a history.

In the following essay, an expanded version of a lecture given at the Shakespeare Association America in 1973, Hawkins examines the competing claims of virtue and lineage over the right to rule in Henry IV, maintaining that Shakespeare appears to stress virtue over lineage in these two plays.

In the following essay, Evans suggests that friendship is a fundamental theme in Hamlet and analyzes Hamlet's relationships in the drama, particularly his strong bond with Horatio.

In the following essay, McGuire describes the way five late-twentieth-century productions of Measure for Measure depicted the muteness of Angelo, Barnardine, Claudio, Juliet, Mariana, and Isabella in the play's final scene. By means of nonverbal gestures, blocking, and shifting the sequence of lines, McGuire observes, the directors of these productions explored the many possible interpretations and implications of these characters' silences.

In the following excerpt, Liebler examines the way ritual actions in Richard II are honored, abruptly curtailed, subverted, or ignored. The critic focuses on the joust between Bolingbroke and Mowbray at the opening of the play, the formal deposition of Richard at Westminster, and the continuing degradation of the sacred bonds of kinship.

In the following excerpt, Eure surveys themes of justice and law in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and King Lear.

In the following essay, Felver describes the fool roles in the plays of Shakespeare's middle period (1599-1607) that were likely performed by the versatile comedic actor Robert Armin.

In the following essay, Baldo contrasts the styles of rule of Queen Elizabeth and King James and studies the way in which James's aloofness is reflected in Macbeth. Baldo explains that whereas Shakespeare's Elizabethan plays reflect Elizabeth's theatricality and interrupted succession, Macbeth is a reflection of James's aloof style of rule and of his emphasis on lineal succession.

In the following essay, Allen comments on the diverse openings of eight plays—Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet—with particular emphasis on the degree to which the ending of each tragedy is inherent in its beginning. Allen apportions the fullest coverage to the opening scenes of Macbeth, which he judges to be the most dense and profound of all Shakespeare's beginnings.

In the following essay, Kiefer surveys the interaction of fortune and occasion in Shakespearean tragedy, focusing on three tragic Shakespearean figures: Richard II, Brutus (of Julius Caesar), and Hamlet.

In the following essay, Hecht examines the types of love which are expressed in Shakespeare's sonnets. He also compares the poetical imagery in the sonnets with that found in Shakespeare's plays. Throughout his essay, Hecht traces scholarly assessment of the sonnets and how this assessment has changed over the centuries.

In the following excerpt, Liebler focuses on the violations of ceremony in King Lear and Macbeth.

In the following essay, Hendricks examines Shakespeare's “figurative evocation” of India in A Midsummer Night's Dream, probing “the play's complicity in the racialist ideologies being created by early modern England's participation in imperialism.”

In the following essay, Ellis discusses Shakespeare's fools as figures who represent worldviews fundamentally different from those of the majority of society.

In the following essay, White studies the endings of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, maintaining that the playwright experiments with combining the finality of a comic ending with the "endless" nature of a romantic ending.

In the following essay, Hopkins regards marriage as the source of tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello.

In the following essay, the Martindales examine Shakespeare 's picture of the Greek world by focusing on the playwright's treatment of the story of Troy in Troilus and Cressida.

In the following essay, Quinones identifies three principal concepts of time in Shakespeare's works: augmentative time, whose potentially destructive power may be averted; contracted time, whose corrosive effects are inevitably tragic; and extended time, which works in league with nature to bring about auspicious resolutions.

In the following essay, Marder reviews the arguments against Shakespeare and—after disputing the cases of Bacon, Marlowe, and Oxford as authors—argues that "there is nothing in the plays that was beyond the powers of an alert Elizabethan intimately connected with the stage, a reader of books, a friend to gentleman and travelers. . . . "

In the excerpt below, Foreman identifies and discusses a set of features that he finds in the final scenes of Shakespeare's tragedies: the tragic figure's readiness for death, his or her spiritual or emotional isolation, the establishment of a new order in the world of the play, and the relative dullness of the characters who will administer this new order. Foreman also comments on three tragic endings that deviate from this pattern: Troilus and Cressida, Richard III, and Macbeth. Finally, he...

In the essay below, Levin examines the problems with the thematic approach to Shakespeare's tragedies in general, and the feminist thematic approach to the tragedies in particular. Levin observes that the central theme of Shakespeare's tragedies, as seen by feminist thematics, is the role of gender within society and the individual, and that according to feminist thematics critics, the tragic outcome of the plays is a result of masculinity or patriarchy.

In the following essay, Bate examines the profound influence of Ovid on Renaissance culture and Shakespeare's works. The critic additionally provides an overview of the Elizabethan educational system, describing the emphasis placed on memorizing and imitating Latin literary models.

In the following essay, Abrams argues that signs of Shakespeare's authorship of the poem "The Funeral Elegy " are evident in the poem's allusions to the theatrical profession and to Shakespeare's works. Abrams also maintains that the poem's narrator reveals "biographical coincidences" which point to Shakespeare, as the elegist.

In the following excerpt, Holbrook discusses Shakespeare's dramatic inversion of social hierarchy in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.

Martin Scofield, University of Kent I. Universality and Difference Most critics in the eighteenth century, unlike academic critics today, were confident of at least one assumption about great literature: that the truths it embodied were universal and that, in the words of Dr Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare, 'Nothing can please many and please long but just representations of general nature.' It is a view which depends of course on even more basic assumptions—that there is...

In the following essay, Foster maintains that both internal and external evidence indicate that the ascription of "Shall I Die?" to Shakespeare is wrong. Foster notes that the verbal parallels cited by Taylor (above) are inconclusive; he also attacks Taylor's dating of the poem.

In the essay below, Ricks examines the relationship between politics and history in Tudor—and in particular, Shakespearean—historiography, maintaining that Shakespeare's historiography was characteristic of his age in its didacticism.

In the following essay, Bamber studies the role of the feminine "other" in Shakespeare's comedies as a figure that avoids change, development, and decisionmaking.

In the following essay, Takaki probes The Tempest's relation to the English colonization of America, interpreting Caliban as representative of a “savage” American Indian figure.

In the following essay, White contends that Aaron in Titus Andronicus subverts the Elizabethan notion that equates blackness with evil.

Cynthia Marshall, Rhodes College So thoroughly does Shakespeare's work encompass our sense of textual possibility that even his apparent missteps take on interest and meaning. The Fool's unexplained disappearance from King Lear, for instance, has famously come to serve as an emblem of Shakespeare's writerly economy—-a character, disappears when no further use exists for him—and has been formally linked with the king's own descent into a Foolish view of things.1...

In this essay, Dreher discusses the tragic fates of Ophelia, Hero, and Desdemona maintaining that all three women are victims of patriarchal oppression,

In the following essay, Chaudhuri contends that in the character of Henry V Shakespeare reveals "an integrated and purposive development of a new Renaissance ideal of kingship" in which he "appropriates and extends the Machiavellian view of man."

In the following excerpt, Hedley contends that self-love or narcissism is pervasive in Shakespeare's sonnets. After observing that the sonnet genre in general can be perceived as one where the poet is "talking to himself, " Hedley also remarks that Shakespeare's sonnets in particular convey narcissism through their use of puns and through the poet's clear desire to become one with his beloved.

In the following excerpt, Berkeley examines the theory of class bias associated with heredity—or "blood"—as it exists in Shakespeare's dramas.

In the following essay, Greer considers representations of social class in the audiences, players, and characters of Shakespearean drama.

In the following essay, Mallette claims that The Two Noble Kinsmen contains two sets of homosocial friendship bonds—those of Arcite/Palamon and Emilia/Flavina. The critic contends that these bonds are destroyed over the course of the drama without being satisfactorily redeemed by the “superficially happy marriage” that closes the play.

In the following excerpt, Dessen discusses Shakespeare's adaptation of allegorical figures to his “late moral plays,” particularly regarding Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida.

In the following essay, Walker contends that the moral allegory of Fortune featured in the first scene of Timon of Athens highlights the central theme of the play: the undesirability of owing one's success to fickle Fortune.

In the following essay, Nixon focuses on the anticolonial interpretations of The Tempest set forth by African and Caribbean intellectuals of the period from the late 1950s to early 1970s.

In the following essay, Luckyj relates Renaissance notions of female reticence as decorum or defiance to the silence of women in King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida.. She contends that sixteenth-century conduct book writers' ambivalent views of feminine silence are reflected in Shakespeare's plays.

In the following essay, Luckyj relates Renaissance notions of female reticence as decorum or defiance to the silence of women in King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida.. She contends that sixteenth-century conduct book writers' ambivalent views of feminine silence are reflected in Shakespeare's plays.

In the following essay, Jensen contends that late twentieth-century commentators have placed too much emphasis on closure in Shakespeare's comedies. He believes they have evaluated Shakespeare's comic endings more rigorously than those of his predecessors and contemporaries, tied the plays' meanings too closely to their endings, and disregarded complexities in the final scenes that run counter to a unified interpretation. In the course of his argument, Jensen provides a detailed review...

Michael Keevak, National Taiwan University In 1795 a young man named William Henry Ireland, then about eighteen years of age, fabricated a series of Shakespearean forgeries that, for the space of few months at least, were enthusiastically believed by both the educated English public and some of the leading scholars and critics of the day. By the end of his meteoric career, Ireland's portfolio of impostures included legal deeds, promissory notes, receipts, letters both to and from Shakespeare, a portr...

In the following essay, Neely examines the way in which marriage—achieved and postponed or destroyed—influences the structure and themes of Shakespeare's plays. Neely maintains that marriage becomes the focal point for relationships, both social and emotional, for men and women in the plays.

In the following essay, Lane reflects on the ways in which King John addresses the succession crisis of the 1590s, at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Lane explains that the play explores the doubts regarding legitimacy and succession that plagued the reigns of both King John and Queen Elizabeth.

In the following essay, de Grazia asserts that in terms of Elizabethan cultural imperatives, the primary scandal of Shakespeare's sequence is the depiction, in the final twenty-eight lyrics, of a love that threatens to annihilate the patriarchal and hierarchical order of society.

In the essay that follows, Howard challenges theories of comic structure which assert that Shakespeare's comedies inevitably conclude with the restoration of social order and the harmonizing of disruptive or contradictory elements. Focusing on the final scenes of The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and The Merchant of Venice, Howard proposes that in these scenes Shakespeare interrogates comic conventions to demonstrate the hazards audiences will encounter if they ignore or suppress featu...

In the following essay, Fuchs extends typical colonialist interpretations of The Tempest to include the play's references to European imperialism in Ireland and the Islamic Mediterranean.

In the following essay, Colman cautions against reading too many indecent elements in Shakespeare, and finds that many critics distort the significance of bawdy in Shakespeare's works.

In the following essay, Klause closely examines the apparent inconsistencies in the poetic voice of the sonnets. While acknowledging that the aging "Poet" of the sonnets sounds "humble" and "submissive." Klause asserts that this tone is intentionally used by the poet as a persuasive device and that it is not in conflict with the sonnets' powerful imagery.

In the following excerpt, Desens remarks on the efforts of women in such works as The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline, and Othello to create an equal union between husband and wife by selecting men outside their own social rank.

In the following essay, McCoy explores the theatrics of royal ceremony and antends that Shakespeare's later history plays undercut the majesty of ceremony and expose its " 'made-up quality' and the void behind its illusions."

In the essay below, Holderness maintains that many of Shakespeare's plays, especially the English history plays, were intentional acts of historiography. In particular, Holderness analyzes the second tetralogy (Richard II through Henry V) and argues that the historiography offered in these plays was a new, emergent form with a bourgeois viewpoint.

In the essay below, Kurland argues that Hamlet portrays the controversy surrounding James's succession to Queen Elizabeth's throne. The political world of Hamlet, explains Kurland, is informed by England's uncertainty generated by James's threats to secure the English throne through military action.

In the following excerpt, Ferry calls attention to the poet-lover's assertions that through his manipulation of language he can transform nature and substitute the laws of poetic order for those of the temporal world. She focuses her analysis on the eternizing sonnets—particularly Sonnets 15, 18, and 65—to demonstrate how Shakespeare creates verbal constructs that are based on human experience yet nevertheless alter that experience and the laws of nature.

In the following essay, Wheeler explores the psychological polarities associated with seeking self-fulfillment in Shakespeare's late tragedies and romances.

In the essay below, Beauregard asserts that Roman Catholic teachings regarding sin, repentance, and salvation are central to the plot and characterization of All's Well that Ends Well. The first half of the play is concerned with the concepts of miracle and merit and the second with pilgrimage and prayer, the critic contends, and together the two parts delineate the Catholic doctrines of grace, merit, and free will.

In the following excerpt, Simonds focuses on analogies between Prospero and Orpheus, the mythical demigod who employed music and eloquence to civilize brutish men and induce harmony in his kingdom.

In the following essay, Beckerman surveys the final scenes of Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and histories. In his analysis of these, he distinguishes between the resolution (how the narrative is unraveled) and the closing (the particular way the playwright conveys the sense of an ending.) Beckerman emphasizes that with regard to each of the dramatic genres, Shakespeare transformed the principles of accepted dramatic conventions even as he ostensibly observed them.

In the following essay, Berry surveys class issues raised in Shakespeare's Roman plays and Timon of Athens.

In the following essay, Auden surveys the dramatic relevance of vocal and instrumental music in Shakespeare's plays.

In the following essay, Matchett maintains that the plot of King John focuses on the issue of the “right” to the throne, and studies the claims to the throne of Arthur, John, and the Bastard. The critic asserts that in King John the mark of a true king is decided not by power or prestige, but on the basis of what is best for England.

In the following essay, Neill discusses the theme of revenge in Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Tempest. He asserts that Hamlet and Macbeth are antitypes—the first seeking to preserve the past and the second to obliterate it—and contends that both are destroyed by their obsession. By contrast, Neill suggests, Prospero redeems the past not by revenging it but by restoring it.

In the following essay, Simonds studies Shakespeare's dramatization of the Protestant marriage ideal in Cymbeline through his references to classical emblematic imagery of the elm and vine.

In this essay, Hammond explores the sources of readers ' uncertainties about the predominant tone of the sequence and the mood of individual sonnets. Focusing on Sonnets 1-19, he illustrates the discrepancies between text and subtext, the sometimes bewildering array of possible meanings in a single line or quatrain, and the sonnets' immunity to comprehensive generalizations.

In the following lecture, originally delivered at the University of Michigan in 1970, Arthos argues that Shakespearean drama represents the synthesis of classical source material and the medieval Christian imagination.

In the following essay, Moisan investigates three comic exchanges between members of differing classes in Shakespeare's plays, which he suggests hint at social inversion but ultimately leave the standards of social privilege unquestioned.

In the following essay, Simonds describes the figures of Coriolanus and Volumnia in Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus as personifications of the Roman gods Mars and Juno, respectively.

In the essay below, Hunter provides a detailed account of the Tudor conception of Roman history. The critic additionally shows how Shakespeare's portrayal of political events during the Republic and Empire is informed by values that differ from those of Ben Jonson in such plays as Sejanus and Catiline.

Maurice Hunt, Baylor University Granted Queen Elizabeth's touchiness concerning the subject of royal bastardy, Shakespeare ran a risk in King Richard III by focusing questions of bastardy in such a way that they invite comparison with problematical details of bastardy in the Tudor succession. The queen's life-long association with bastardy makes Shakespeare's emphasis surprising.1 Analysis of Tudor bastardy reveals the emergence of a paradigm of illegitimate legitimacy (or le...

In the following essay, Kastan explores the nature of social crossdressing on the Shakespearean stage.

In the following essay, MacDonald explores the implications of a black Cleopatra who uses her sexuality to thwart Roman imperial power.

In the following essay, Toliver follows Shakespeare's increasingly ambiguous and complex treatment of the theme of time from the sonnets and early comedies to the late romances. He calls particular attention to the dramatist's exploration of the effectiveness and limitations of different strategies of resisting time.

In the following essay, Levin contends that in his romantic comedies, Shakespeare explores the conflict between romantic and antiromantic values, such as the opposition between love and the desire for fortune. Levin stresses that this conflict was apparent in Elizabethan society and in other literature of the time, and that in part the tension deals with the perceived failure of Elizabethan society to live up to the values extolled in medieval romance.

[In the essay that follows, Black analyzes the "comic discourse " in the Henry IV plays and argues that while discourse in Shakespeare's history plays is typically limited, the comedic elements in the conversations and 2 Henry IV. Act I, scene ii. Falstaff and the Chief Justice. By F. Barnard (n.d.). discussions (most notably those of Falstaff) in these two plays function as a means of revealing the themes of time and deferment.]

In the following essay, Bly examines Juliet's use of bawdy puns in Romeo and Juliet, and considers the influence of her character on the comic heroines of Henry Porter's The Two Angry Women of Abington and Thomas Dekker's Blurt, Master Constable.

In the excerpt below, Hall evaluates the racial and sexual threat to imperial culture posed by Caliban and Cleopatra in The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra, respectively.

In this essay, Ogburn reviews the public documents connected with "Shakspere of Stratford, " suggesting that among the baptismal records, marriage licenses, legal proceedings and wills, there is a lack of evidence demonstrating that the man from Stratford was the literary genius behind the works attributed to Shakespeare.

E. Pearlman, University of Colorado, Denver The enactment of the deaths of Talbot and his young son John in The First Part of Henry the Sixth is by all odds Shakespeare's first great theatrical success and therefore an event of great importance in the dramatist's progress. The evidence for this proposition is to be found in Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell, written in late 1592, where Thomas Nashe allows himself this expressive fancy:

In the following essay, Prosser surveys a number of examples of Shakespearean characters who either choose or decline to pursue personal vengeance. She finds no evidence that Shakespeare's plays portray private revenge as divinely sanctioned, required by a code of honor, or justified by social convention; instead, she argues, they repeatedly link revenge with such pernicious traits as irrationality, impulsiveness, and madness.

In the following essay, Rubinstein explores the dream language and imagery of Shakespeare's dramas and the relation of these to Freudian psychoanalysis.

In the following essay, Dubrow challenges assumptions that Shakespeare's sonnet sequence has a two-part structure and a linear plot, and contends that the traditional association of the Friend with the laudatory or positive sonnets and the association of the Dark Lady with the largely negative ones has fostered the notion that in these lyrics, evil has a feminine gender.

In the following essay, Sedgwick distinguishes between homosocial bonding and homosexuall desire in the sonnets. Asserting that the poems depict male-male love in the context of social institutions that confirm men's power and hegemony, she maintains that the Dark Lady represents a disruptive force that threatens to emasculate the speaker and destroy the homosocial bonds between the poet and the youth.

In the following essay, Jagendorf examines the depiction of male friendship and heterosexual love in The Merchant of Venice, arguing that Shakespeare's play features a strong contrast between the two: marriage promises profit and increase while friendship portends only debt and continued sacrifice.

In the following essay, Davidson interprets the title figure in Timon of Athens as a Renaissance emblem of failed friendship.

In the following essay, Cole compares Hamlet to Xerxes, the protagonist of Aeschylus's The Persians, arguing that because Hamlet has been denied the catharsis of traditional funeral rites, he becomes obsessed with replacing his father rather than forging his own, separate identity.

In the following essay, Fujita contrasts Hal's arrival in regal costume and procession in Act V, scene v of Henry IV, Part 2 with Falstaff's appearance in dirty and disheveled clothes, and contends that the fat knight's disregard of ceremony and his mockery of royalty, though amusing in Part 1, can no longer be tolerated by the new king.