LibGuides: VCE Literature: Strazz's Shakespeare

Mr Strazzera

The books listed on this page are all recommended by Mr Strazzera. His comments are in mauve text at the top of each box.

Acting & Staging Conventions

Andrew Gurr's books below (the first three) provide authoritive, well illustrated and readable accounts of acting and staging conventions. These can be supplemented by Peter Thomson's Shakespeare's Professional Career & JR Mulryne's illustrated Shakespeare's Globe Rebuit. (below)

Playgoing in Shakespeare's London by Andrew Gurr
Call Number: 792.09421 GUR
ISBN: 0521543223
Publication Date: 2004-06-10
This is a newly revised edition of Andrew Gurr's classic account of the people for whom Shakespeare wrote his plays. Gurr assembles evidence from the writings of the time to describe the physical structure of the playhouses, the services provided in the auditorium, the cost of a ticket and a cushion, the size of the crowds, the smells, the pickpockets, and the collective feelings generated by the plays. As well as revising and adding new material which has emerged since the second edition, Gurr develops new sections. He considers the difference between Shakespearean and modern thinking about early staging, the complex historical process which established the permanent playhouses, and the development of a distinctly different acting style in the open-air playhouses from that of the indoor halls.
The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642 by Andrew Gurr
Call Number: 822.33 GUR
ISBN: 052142240x
Publication Date: 1992-01-23
The Shakespearean Stage is the only authoritative book that describes all the main features of the original staging of Shakespearean drama in one volume: the acting companies and their acting styles, the playhouses, the staging and the audiences. The appendix, lists all the plays performed at a particular playhouse
Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres by Andrew Gurr; Mariko Ichikawa
Call Number: 822.33 GUR
ISBN: 0198711581
Publication Date: 2000-03-16
By bringing together evidence from different sources-documentary, archaeological, and the play-texts themselves-Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres reconstructs the ways in which the plays were originally staged in the theatres of Shakespeare's own time, and shows how the physical possibilities and limitations of these theatres affected both the writing and the performances. The book explains the conditions under which the early playwrights and players worked, their preparation of the plays for the stage, and their rehearsal practices. It looks at the quality of evidence supplied by the surviving play-texts, and the extent to which audiences of the time differed from modern audiences; and it gives vivid examples of how Elizabethan actors made use of gestures, costumes, props, and the theatre's specific design features. Stage movement is analysed through a careful study of how exits and entrances worked on such stages. The final chapter offers a thorough examination of Hamlet as a text for performance, excitingly returning the play to its original staging at the Globe.
Shakespeare's Professional Career by Peter Thomson
Call Number: 822.33 THO
ISBN: 0521666414
Publication Date: 1999-06-28
Shakespeare's career as actor and playwright reveals the extraordinary accommodation of his genius to the circumstances of his time. This unique account describes Shakespeare at work against a background of theatrical rivalry, opportunism, service to noble patrons, and political intrigue. Peter Thomson recreates Shakespeare's writing career year by year, showing how the plays mirror their times. The story reveals the precarious nature of theatrical survival, the constant threat posed by the withdrawal of noble or royal patronage, the spread of disease, the anxieties of war and the climate of political uncertainty. This account of Elizabethan and Jacobean social and professional life offers a fascinating insight into the world in which Shakespeare produced his plays. There are numerous illustrations gleaned from museums, libraries and great houses to illustrate the theatrical and social context of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.
Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt by Ronnie Mulryne (Editor); Margaret Shewring (Editor); J. R. Mulryne (Editor)
Call Number: 725.82209421 SHA
ISBN: 0521599881
Publication Date: 1997-06-12
The rebuilding of the Globe Theatre (1599-1613) on London's Bankside, a few yards from the site of the playhouse in which many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed, must rank as one of the most imaginative enterprises of recent decades. The realization of the vision of Sam Wanamaker and his architect Theo Crosby, it has aroused intense interest among scholars and the general public worldwide. In anticipation of the official opening and the first performance season, visitors have been drawn in large numbers to the auditorium and exhibition. Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt offers a fully-illustrated account of the research that has gone into the Globe reconstruction, drawing on the work of leading scholars, theater people and craftsmen to provide an authoritative view of the twenty years of research and the hundreds of practical decisions entailed. Documents of the period, both visual and written, have been explored anew; the techniques of timber-framed building have been relearned; the archaeology of the Globe and the neighboring Rose playhouse has been further evaluated; the decorative practices of Elizabethan craftsmen have been researched; and all this reconciled with the requirements of the actors and the practical and legal restrictions of modern architectural design. The result is a book that will fascinate scholarly readers and laymen alike.

Modern Literary Criticisms

Some of the best modern literary criticism comes from Kiernan Ryan's Shakespeare and these can be supplemented by the Cambridge Companions to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare by Kiernan Ryan
Call Number: 822.33D RYA
ISBN: 0333781988
Publication Date: 2002-03-08
This book mounts a renewed challenge to orthodox and oppositional critics who continue to regard Shakespearian drama as conservative in intent or effect. It seeks to show how Shakespeare's drama retains its relevance for audiences today.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists by Ton Hoenselaars (Editor)
Call Number: 822.309 CAM
ISBN: 0521128749
Publication Date: 2012-10-11
While Shakespeare's popularity has continued to grow, so has the attention paid to the work of his contemporaries. The contributors to this Companion introduce the distinctive drama of these playwrights, from the court comedies of John Lyly to the works of Richard Brome in the Caroline era. With chapters on a wide range of familiar and lesser-known dramatists, including Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton and John Ford, this book devotes particular attention to their personal and professional relationships, occupational rivalries and collaborations. Overturning the popular misconception that Shakespeare wrote in isolation, it offers a new perspective on the most impressive body of drama in the history of the English stage.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture by Robert Shaughnessy (Editor)
Call Number: 822.33 CAM
ISBN: 9780521605809
Publication Date: 2007-06-28
This Companion, first published in 2007, explores the remarkable variety of forms that Shakespeare's life and works have taken over the course of four centuries, ranging from the early modern theatrical marketplace to the age of mass media, and including stage and screen performance, music and the visual arts, the television serial and popular prose fiction. The book asks what happens when Shakespeare is popularized, and when the popular is Shakespeareanized; it queries the factors that determine the definitions of and boundaries between the legitimate and illegitimate, the canonical and the authorized and the subversive, the oppositional, the scandalous and the inane. Leading scholars discuss the ways in which the plays and poems of Shakespeare, as well as Shakespeare himself, have been interpreted and reinvented, adapted and parodied, transposed into other media, and act as a source of inspiration for writers, performers, artists and film-makers worldwide.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare by Margreta de Grazia (Editor); Stanley Wells (Editor)
Call Number: 822.33D CAM
ISBN: 0521658810
Publication Date: 2001-04-05
This book offers a comprehensive, readable and authoritative introduction to the study of Shakespeare, by means of nineteen newly commissioned essays. An international team of prominent scholars provide a broadly cultural approach to the chief literary, performative and historical aspects of Shakespeare's work. They bring the latest scholarship to bear on traditional subjects of Shakespeare study, such as biography, the transmission of the texts, the main dramatic and poetic genres, the stage in Shakespeare's time and the history of criticism and performance. In addition, authors engage with more recently defined topics: gender and sexuality, Shakespeare on film, the presence of foreigners in Shakespeare's England and his impact on other cultures. Helpful reference features include chronologies of the life and works, illustrations, detailed reading lists and a bibliographical essay.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy by Alexander Leggatt (Editor)
Call Number: 822.33D CAM
ISBN: 0521779421
Publication Date: 2001-12-20
This introduction examines the continuity and variety of Shakepeare's work and the creative use he made of his inherited conventions. The first section places Shakespeare in the context of classical and Renaissance comedy, his Elizabethan predecessors and the traditions of popular festivity. The second section traces themes through Shakespeare's early and middle comedies, dark comedies and late romances, illuminating particular plays by close analysis,
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy by Claire McEachern (Editor)
Call Number: 822.33D CAM
ISBN: 9781107019775
Publication Date: 2013-08-08
This revised and updated Companion acquaints the student reader with the forms, contexts, critical and theatrical lives of the ten plays considered to be Shakespeare's tragedies. Thirteen essays, written by leading scholars in Britain and North America, address the ways in which Shakespearean tragedy originated, developed and diversified, as well as how it has fared on stage, as text and in criticism. Topics covered include the literary precursors of Shakespeare's tragedies, cultural backgrounds, sub-genres and receptions of the plays. The book examines the four major tragedies and, in addition, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. Essays in this new edition have been fully revised to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship, the bibliography has been extensively updated, and four new chapters have been included, discussing Shakespearean form, Shakespeare and philosophy, Shakespeare's tragedies in performance, and Shakespeare and religion.
The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's History Plays by Warren Chernaik
Call Number: 822.33 CHE
ISBN: 9780521855075
Publication Date: 2007-10-25
Shakespeare's history plays, as fresh today as when they were written, are based upon the assumption that time is not simply a destroyer but a preserver, and that 'examples past' might enable us to understand the present and anticipate the future. This lively 2007 study examines the continuing tradition of Shakespeare's history plays in stage and film productions as well as giving an account of the critical debate on these plays. Following two introductory chapters giving essential background on the genre, the English history plays are discussed in turn, bringing out the distinctive characteristics of each play: the three early Henry VI plays; the perennial stage favourite Richard III; King John; Richard II; Henry IV 1 and 2, famous for the character of Falstaff; Henry V, which is treated very differently in the film versions by Olivier and Branagh; and Henry VIII. An invaluable introduction to these fascinating and complex plays.

Source Material

Robert Miola's brief but scholarly specific Shakespeare's Reading gives insight into Shakespeare's source material. Robert Weimann's Author's Pen and Actor's Voice investigates methods of composition and their dramatic enactment. These are linked conceptually to Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self Fashioning which brilliantly explores the idea of role play in Elizabethan society and the theatre itself. The books are especially helpful in studying those plays which self reflexively confront and exploit their genre - actors playing characters who in turn, conciously or otherwise, act out roles.

Shakespeare's Reading by Robert S. Miola
Call Number: 822.33F MIO
ISBN: 0198711697
Publication Date: 2000-10-26
Oxford Shakespeare Topics (General Editors Peter Holland and Stanley Wells) provide students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship, including some general anthologies relating to Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Reading explores Shakespeare's marvellous reshaping of sources into new creations. Beginning with a discussion of how and what Elizabethans read - manuscripts, popular pamphlets, and books - Miola goes on to examine Shakespeare's use of specific texts such as Holinshed's Chronicles, Plutarch's Lives, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. As well as reshaping other writers' work, Shakespeare transformed traditions - the inherited expectations, tropes, and strategies about character, action, and genre. For example, the tradition of Italian love poetry, especially Petrach, shapes Romeo and Juliet as well as the sonnets; the Vice figure finds new life in Richard III and Falstaff. Employing a traditional understanding of sources as well as more recent developments in intertextuality, this book traces Shakespeare's reading as well as inspiring the sonnets; the Vice figure is translated into Richard III and Falstaff. Employing a traditional understanding of sources as well as more recent developments in intertextuality, this book tracks Shakespeare's reading throughout his career, as it inspires his poetry, histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances.
Author's Pen and Actor's Voice by Stephen Orgel (Contribution by); Nancy Vickers (Contribution by); William West (Editor); Robert Weimann; Helen Higbee (Editor); Anne Barton (Contribution by); Jonathan Dollimore (Contribution by); Marjorie Garber (Contribution by); Jonathan Goldberg (Cont
Call Number: 822.33 WEI
ISBN: 0521787351
Publication Date: 2000-07-27
Robert Weimann redefines the relationship between writing and performance, or "playing," in Shakespeare's theater. Through close reading and careful analysis Weimann offers a reconsideration and redefinition of Elizabethan performance and production practices. The study reviews the most recent methodologies of textual scholarship, the new history of the Elizabethan theater, performance theory, and film and video interpretation, and offers a new approach to understanding Shakespeare. Weimann examines a range of plays as well as other contemporary works. A major part of the study explores the duality between playing and writing.
Renaissance Self-Fashioning by Stephen Greenblatt
Call Number: 840.9353 GRE
ISBN: 0226306534
Publication Date: 1980-11-01
Renaissance Self-Fashioning is a study of sixteenth-century life and literature that spawned a new era of scholarly inquiry. Stephen Greenblatt examines the structure of selfhood as evidenced in major literary figures of the English Renaissance—More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare—and finds that in the early modern period new questions surrounding the nature of identity heavily influenced the literature of the era

Life and Times

Good general introductions to the life and times, with much anecdotal and contemporary evidence, include RE Pritchard's Shakespeare's England and Liza Picard's Elizabeth's London. Sir Roy Stron's provocatively illustrated The Cult of Elizabeth brilliantly and entertainingly investigates the use of symbol in the visual representation of royalty in portraiture and public appearance. Particularly helpful for the history plays are Susan Brigen's New Worlds, Lost Worlds and Julius Norwich's Shakespeare's Kings together with A Leggatt's Shakespeare's Political Drama. Of special interest is Benjamin Wooleey's The Queen's Conjuror, a study of Dr John Dee, Elizabeth's magician and astrologer thought to be the inspiration behind Prospero.

Shakespeare's England by R. E. Pritchard (Editor)
Call Number: 820.8003 SHA
ISBN: 0750932112
Publication Date: 2003-04-01
A collection of some of the best, wittiest and most unusual excerpts from 16th- and 17th-century writing. "Shakespeare's England" brings to life the variety, the energy and the harsh reality of England at this time. Providing a portrait of the age, it includes extracts from a wide variety of writers, taken from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries and pamphlets by and about Shakespeare's contemporaries. These include William Harrison and Fynes Moryson (providing descriptions of England), Nicholas Breton (on country life), Isabella Whitney and Thomas Dekker (on London life), Nashe (on struggling writers), Stubbes (with a Puritan view of Elizabethan enjoyments), Harsnet and Burton (on witches and spirits), John Donne (meditations on prayer and death), King James I (on tobacco) and Shakespeare himself.
Elizabeth's London by Liza Picard
Call Number: 942.1055 PIC
ISBN: 0297607294
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
This book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of everyday life and the conditions in which most people lived - so often ignored in conventional history books. The book begins with the River Thames, which - from its surly water-men to its great occasions - played such a central part in the city's life. It moves on to the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework and shopping; clothes, jewellery and make-up; health and medicine; sex and food; education, etiquette and hobbies; religion, law and crime.
The Cult of Elizabeth by Roy Strong
Call Number: 942.055 STR
ISBN: 0712664815
Publication Date: 1999-11-01
No other woman in world history has been of such compulsive interest as Elizabeth Tudor. While the rest of the 16th-century Europe was subject to the bloodshed of religious war, Tudor peace brought England its great flowering of the arts. Central to that flowering was the enigmatic legend of the Queen herself, a myth deliberately created and sustained over four decades by public spectacle and courtly chivalry, by private sonnet and official oration.
New worlds, lost worlds : the rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 by Susan Brigden
Call Number: 942.05 BRI
ISBN: 0140148264
No period in British history has more resonance and mystery today than the sixteenth century. New Worlds, Lost Worlds brings the atmosphere and events of this great epoch to life. Exploring the underlying religious motivations for the savage violence and turbulence of the period-from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the overwhelming threat of the Spanish Armada-Susan Brigden investigates the actions and influences of such near-mythical figures as Elizabeth I, Thomas More, Bloody Mary, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Authoritative and accessible, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, the latest in the Penguin History of Britain series, provides a superb introduction to one of the most important, compelling, and intriguing periods in the history of the Western world.
Shakespeare's Kings by John Julius Norwich
Call Number: 822.33 NOR
ISBN: 0743200314
Publication Date: 2001-03-13
In a sparkling, fast-paced narrative, esteemed historian John Julius Norwich chronicles the turbulent events of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England that inspired Shakespeare's history plays. It was a time of uncertainty and incessant warfare, a time during which the crown was constantly contested, alliances were made and broken, and peasants and townsmen alike arose in revolt. This was the raw material of Shakespeare's dramas, and Norwich holds up his work to the light of history to ask: Who was the real Falstaff? How accurate a historian was the playwright? Shakespeare's Kings is a marvelous study of the Bard's method of spinning history into art, and a captivating portrait of the Middle Ages.
Shakespeare's Political Drama by Alexander Leggatt
Call Number: 822.33 LEG
ISBN: 041503888x
Publication Date: 1989-12-28
In "Shakespeare's Politcal Drama, "Alexander Leggatt concentrates on the ordering and enforcing, the gaining and losing, of public power in the state, in the English and Roman histories. He sees Shakespeare not as the propogandist for a myth of order, but as concerned both with things as they are and with things as they ought to be. Leggatt sees each play as a fresh experiment, so that what emerges is not a single homogeneous view of Shakespearean politics but a series of explorations of differing material.
The Queen's conjuror : the life and magic of Dr Dee by Woolley, Benjamin
Call Number: 509.2 DEE
ISBN: 0006552021
John Dee was one of the most influential philosophers of the Elizabethan Age. A close confidant of Queen Elizabeth, he helped to introduce mathematics to England, promoted the idea of maths as the basis of science, anticipated the invention of the telescope, charted the New World, and created one of the most magnificent libraries in Europe. At the height of his fame, Dee was poised to become one of the greats of the Renaissance. Yet he died in poverty and obscurity – his crime was to dabble in magic.

VCE Literature: Strazz's Shakespeare

Mr Strazzera

Acting & Staging Conventions

Modern Literary Criticisms

Source Material

Life and Times

Strazz and Hamlet - Soiree Nov 2015