Offering a comprehensive snapshot of Shakespeare criticism, these volumes examine each of his plays and major poems using the resources of contemporary criticism from performance studies to feminist, historicist, and textual analyses.

Notes on Contributors. Introduction. 1. Shakespeare s Sonnets and the History of Sexuality: A Reception Hisotry: Bruce R. Smith. 2. The Book of Changes in a Time of Change: Ovid s Metamorphoses in Post-Reformation England and Venus and Adonis: Dympna Callaghan. 3. Shakespeare s Problem Plays and the Drama of His Time: Troilus and Cressida, Alls Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure: Paul Yachnin. 4. The Privy and Its Double: Scatology and Satire in Shakespeares Theatre: Bruce Boehrer. 5. Hymeneal Blood, Interchangeable Women, and the Early Modern Marriage Economy in Measure for Measure and Alls Well That Ends Well: Theodora A. Jankowski. 6. Varieties of Collaboration in Shakespeares Problem Plays and Late Plays: John Jowett. 7. What s in a Name? Tragicomedy, Romance, or Late Comedy: Barbara A. Mowat. 8. Fashion: Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher: Russ McDonald. 9. Place and Space in Three Late Plays: John Gillies. 10. The Politics and Technology of Spectacle in the Late Plays: David M. Bergeron. 11. The Tempest in Performance: Diana E. Henderson. 12. What It Feels Like For a Boy: Shakespeare s Venus and Adonis: Richard Rambuss. 13. Publishing Shame: The Rape of Lucrece: Copplia Kahn. 14. The Sonnets: Sequence, Sexuality, and Shakespeares Two Loves: Valerie Traub. 15. The Two-Party System in Troilus and Cressida: Linda Charnes. 16. Opening Doubts Upon the Law: Measure for Measure: Karen Cunningham. 17. Doctor She. Healing and Sex in All s Well That Ends Well: Barbara Howard Traister. 18. You not your child well loving . Text and Family Structure in Pericles: Suzanne Gossett. 19. Imagine Me, Gentle Spectators . Iconomachy and The Winters Tale: Marion O Connor. 20. Cymbeline: Patriotism and Performance: Valerie Wayne. 21. Meaner Ministers : Mastery, Bondage, and Theatrical Labor in The Tempest: Daniel Vitkus. 22. Queens and the Structure of History in Henry VIII: Susan Frye. 23. Mixed Messages: The Aesthetics of The Two Noble Kinsmen: Julie Sanders. Index.

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 poems, problem comedies and late playscontains original essays on Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and The Sonnets, as well as Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. In addition, it includes eleven essays on such topics as the reception history of the sonnets, collaboration in Shakespeare's middle and late plays, the generic classification of Shakespeare's late plays, The Tempest in performance, and the relation of Shakespeare's "problem plays" to the work of contemporary dramatists.