* Contains original essays on every Shakespearean tragedy from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus. * Includes thirteen additional essays on such topics as Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, Shakespeare's tragedies on film, Shakespeare's tragedies of love, Hamlet in performance, and tragic emotion in Shakespeare.

Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 1 “A rarity most beloved”: Shakespeare and the Idea of Tragedy 4David Scott Kastan 2 The Tragedies of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries 23Martin Coyle 3 Minds in Company: Shakespearean Tragic Emotions 47Katherine Rowe 4 The Divided Tragic Hero 73Catherine Belsey 5 Disjointed Times and Half-Remembered Truths in Shakespearean Traged  95Philippa Berry 6 Reading Shakespeare’s Tragedies of Love: Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra in Early Modern England 108Sasha Roberts 7 Hamlet Productions Starring Beale, Hawke, and Darling From the Perspective of Performance History 134Bernice W. Kliman 8 Text and Tragedy l58Graham Holderness 9 Shakespearean Tragedy and Religious Identity 178Richard C. McCoy 10 Shakespeare’s Roman Tragedies 199Gordon Braden 11 Tragedy and Geography 219Jerry Brotton 12 Classic Film Versions of Shakespeare’s Tragedies: A Mirror for the Times 241Kenneth S. Rothwell 13 Contemporary Film Versions of the Tragedies 262Mark Thornton Burnett 14 Titus Andronicus: A Time for Race and Revenge 284Ian Smith 15 “There is no world without Verona walls”: The City in Romeo and Juliet 303Naomi Conn Liebler 16 “He that thou knowest thine”: Friendship and Service in Hamlet 319Michael Neill 17 Julius Caesar 339Rebecca W. Bushnell 18 Othello and the Problem of Blackness 357Kim F. Hall 19 King Lear 375Kiernan Ryan 20 Macbeth, the Present, and the Past 393Kathleen McLuskie 21 The Politics of Empathy in Antony and Cleopatra: A View from Below 411Jyotsna G. Singh 22 Timon of Athens: The Dialectic of Usury, Nihilism, and Art 430Hugh Grady 23 Coriolanus and the Politics of Theatrical Pleasure 452Cynthia Marshall Index  473

This four-volume Companion to Shakespeare's Works, compiled as a single entity, offers a uniquely comprehensive snapshot of current Shakespeare criticism. Complementing David Scott Kastan's A Companion to Shakespeare (1999), which focused on Shakespeare as an author in his historical context, these volumes examine each of his plays and major poems using all the resources of contemporary criticism from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analyses.Scholars from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States - have joined in the writing of new essays addressing virtually the whole of Shakespeare's canon from a rich variety of critical perspectives. A mixture of younger and more established scholars, their work reflects some of the most interesting research currently being conducted in Shakespeare studies.Arguing for the persistence and utility of genre as a rubric for teaching and writing about Shakespeare's works, the editors have organized the four volumes in relation to generic categories: namely, the tragedies, the histories, the comedies, and the poems, problem comedies and late plays. Each volume thus contains individual essays on all texts in the relevant category as well as more general essays looking at critical issues and approaches more widely relevant to the genre. This ambitious project offers a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twentieth-first century. This companion to Shakespeare's tragedies contains original essays on every tragedy from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus as well as thirteen additional essays on such topics as Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, Shakespeare's tragedies on film, Shakespeare's tragedies of love, Hamlet in performance, and tragic emotion in Shakespeare.

"Whether for the student wishing for an overview of critical approaches or anxious to fill in the gaps in his Shakespearean culture, for those wishing to catch up on the diversity of literary theories, or for the inquisitive browser, this set of volumes assuredly charts the map of current criticism." Cahiers Elisabethains "Those who are intimidated by the publishers' grandiose claim that the set would constitute 'a provocative roadmap to Shakespeare studies at the dawning of the twenty-first century' will breathe a sigh of relief to discover that the essays are not only readable, they are informative and stimulating. Essential." Choice