Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier, to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea-captain faces a succession of crises on his first command, for which he feels himself responsible. The novel is a work full of 'sudden passions', as well as a penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood.

What is the significance of Shylock's ring in The Merchant of Venice? How does Shakespeare create Gertrude's closet in Hamlet? Why does Ariel prepare a banquet in The Tempest? In order to answer these questions, Shakespeare and Material Culture explores performance from the perspective of the material conditions of staging.

Examines Shakespeare's plays, showing how he dramatized moral and intellectual issues in such a way that his audience became dazzlingly aware of an imaginative dimension to daily life. This book argues that as long as Shakespeare's work remains central to English cultural life, it will retain the values, which make it unique in the world.

Edited by Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Orlin, this comprehensive guide to Shakespeare comprises over 40 specially commissioned essays by a team of contemporary Shakespeare scholars. The volume is divided into four key parts - 'Shakespeare's life and times,' 'Shakespearean Genres', 'Shakespeare Criticism', and 'Shakespeare's Afterlife'.

In this Very Short Introduction Bart Van Es analyses Shakespeare's comedic plays, picking out the family resemblances across these works. He considers their shared themes such as confusion and cross dressing, misguided love, twins and substitutions, and explores the bard's verbal artistry and wit.

This account of the 1623 edition of Shakespeare's collected plays provides an account of the its post-publication history, tracing the individual copies of the First Folio across time and space to understand what it has meant to its various owners and users.

Shakespeare's tragedies contain an astonishing variety of suffering, from suicides and murders to dismemberments and grief. Stanley Wells considers how the bard's tragic plays drew on the literary and theatrical conventions of his time. Discussing the individual plays, he also explores why tragedy is regarded as a fit subject for entertainment.

Draws on the research to illuminate late medieval society at its peak, from the triumphalism of Edward III in 1360 to the collapse of Lancastrian rule. This book centres on the deposition of Richard II in 1399 and the establishment of the House of Lancaster, which was in turn overthrown in the "Wars of the Roses".