Category Archives: Introduction
Introduction: Henry VIII
The First Folio provides Henry VIII’s only authoritative text (1623), probably a clerical copy and not a performance script. It provides a sequel to the triumph of Henry VII which ends Richard III, using episodes from the careers of his … Continue reading
Introduction: The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice contains some of Shakespeare’s most memorable and complex characters. While Antonio is central to this play — after all, he is normally considered the person for whom it is named — audiences are inevitably fascinated by … Continue reading
Introduction: Henry VI, Part 3
The quarto edition of this play was printed in 1595 as The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the Whole Contention betweene the two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke, … Continue reading
Introduction: Henry VI, Part 2
On March 12, 1594, a quarto play was entered in the Stationers’ Register by bookseller Thomas Millington, and printed by Thomas Creede later that year, under the title The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of … Continue reading
Introduction: Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 1 invites controversy. The First Folio prints it chronologically among Shakespeare’s histories, first of three Henry VI plays, diverging from order of composition. Thereby Heminge and Condell imply an intended sequence, but Henry VI, Part 1 may … Continue reading
Introduction: Coriolanus
Written about 1608, Coriolanus maintains the mature Shakespeare’s shift in historical settings from the Middle Ages to earlier periods. It is one of Shakespeare’s most relentlessly political plays, with a hero’s personality that seems almost as schematic as Timon of … Continue reading
Introduction: Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing dates from around 1598, grouped with Shakespeare’s sophisticated middle comedies As You Like It and Twelfth Night, but sharing Merry Wives’ more realistic use of prose. Its traditional plot (resembling the twenty-second of Bandello’s novelle, and … Continue reading
Introduction: Venus and Adonis
In Venus and Adonis (1593), Shakespeare is at his most verbally dexterous, revelling in word play and elaborate linguistic devices. The poem is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, and takes its story from Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses … Continue reading
Introduction: The Rape of Lucrece
The story of Lucrece, found in both Ovid and Livy, has inspired scores of famous depictions. Britten, Rembrandt, Chaucer, Titian, Gower, Dante, Raphael and Richardson all used the story in their work, but none as famously as Shakespeare in his … Continue reading
Introduction: Cymbeline
A play of politics and prophecy, masques and magic, gods and ghosts, nightmares and nationalism, Cymbeline (c. 1609-11) resists categorization. Like The Winter’s Tale it traces a fine line between comedy and tragedy; like Antony and Cleopatra it vacillates between … Continue reading