Studying Shakespeare: A Guide to the Plays

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, Apr 15, 2008 - Literary Criticism - 256 pages
This engaging book draws on all of Shakespeare's plays to show they can still be used as a guide to life.

  • Introduces beginning students and general readers to Shakespeare's plays by highlighting the connections between the issues addressed by the plays and those of our own time.

  • Focuses on the characters, situations and stories in Shakespeare which are still familiar today.

  • Shows how Shakespeare's plays illustrate some of life's most familiar stories - love and obsession, parents and children, sex and politics, suffering and revenge

  • Makes Shakespeare’s plays accessible to the widest possible audience.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
1 Private Life Shakespeare and Selfhood
12
2 Marital Life Shakespeare and Romance
50
3 Political Life Shakespeare and Government
88
4 Public Life Shakespeare and Social Structures
140
5 Real Life Shakespeare and Suffering
180
Works Cited
223
Index
235
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About the author (2008)

Laurie Maguire is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and a Lecturer in English at Oxford University. She is the author of Shakespearean Suspect Texts (1996) and co-editor of Textual Formations and Reformations (1998), among other publications.

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