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Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021
Stephen Orgel
A collection of essays that considers the editorial and interpretive strategies for dealing with complex Shakespearean texts
In his own time, Shakespeare was not a monument, but a man of…
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How did the popular drama of Shakespeare's age become literature? Editorial efforts since the first folio of 1623 have attempted to establish a correct, final text of Shakespeare's plays. Yet…
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William Shakespeare
The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an…
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This guide is aimed at students needing to understand literature with a minimum of fuss. It provides detailed commentary supplementing the text of the play, and includes background information on…
Shylock’s angry insistence on the repayment of his debt from Bassanio ends in the Venetian courts where he demands his ‘pound of flesh’. Portia meanwhile, a wealthy young Venetian woman…
Essays discuss the history of theater during the time of Shakespeare.
Beautifully illustrated, The Authentic Shakespeare is about how the modern constructs the past, how the texts that were performed on the Elizabethan stage became the books and editions that are…
This illustrated book explores the ways in which Shakespeare has been imagined from his time to ours. Drawing on performance history, textual history and the visual arts, Imagining Shakespeare displays…
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In Wit’s Treasury, Stephen Orgel, one of our foremost interpreters of Renaissance literature and culture, charts how the conflict between Christian principles and classical manners and morals yielded the rich…
Illusion of Power - Political Theater in the English Renaissance.
In The Invention of Shakespeare, and Other Essays Stephen Orgel brings together twelve essays that consider the complex nature of Shakespearean texts, which often include errors or confusions, and the…
Why did Queen Elizabeth I compare herself with her disastrous ancestor Richard II? Why would Ben Jonson transform Queen Anne and her ladies into Amazons as entertainment for the pacifist…
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Stephen Orgel (Stanford University, California)
An exploration of gender in the Renaissance, from theatrical cross-dressing to cultural subversion.
Performed variously as escapist fantasy, celebratory fiction, and political allegory, ‘The Tempest 'is one of the plays in which Shakespeare’s genius as a poetic dramatist found its fullest expression.
This edition of The Winter’s Tale considers the play in relation to Renaissance conceptions of dramatic genre and the family, traces the changing critical and theatrical attitudes towards it, and…
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A great introduction to the works of William Shakespeare contains nine full-length plays, a glossary of one thousand key words, and helpful commentary from a leading Shakespearean scholar. Reprint.
Anthony Trollope
On its publication in 1874, this novel met with little success, and outraged more conservative readers. However, this study of enforced marriage, radical politics and social inequality was considered by…
An edition of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy.
Ben Jonson
The Renaissance court masque, traditionally an entertainment of music, dancing, pageantry, and spectacular scenic effects, was transformed by Ben Jonson into a serious mode of literary expression. By using its…
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton’s most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s. The charming Newland…
Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century both appalled and fascinated its first reviewers. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, as…
D. J. Gordon
The fourteen essays in this collection explore the dominance of patronage in Renaissance politics, religion, theatre, and artistic life. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest…
Examines readers, reading, and publication practices from the Renaissance to the Restoration. This work includes essays that draw on an array of documentary evidence - such as library catalogs and…
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, must solve a riddle in order to marry the daughter of the King of Antioch, or be put to death. But when the answer reveals a…
[Originally published]: ‘The tragedy of King Lear’ edited by Alfred Harbage, published in Penguin Books (USA) 1958; revised edition published 1970 –Colophon.
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A storm strikes a ship carrying Alonso, Ferdinand, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Stephano, and Trinculo, who are on their way to Italy after coming from the wedding of Alonso’s daughter, Claribel…
An annotated edition of Shakespeare’s comedy in which young lovers enter a world of sprites and fairies, and an amateur play production entertains all; also includes essays on Shakespeare’s theatrical…
The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel
The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans…
[Originally published]: ‘The tragical history of Hamlet Prince of Denmark’ edited by Willard Farnham, published in Penguin Books (USA) 1957; revised edition published 1970; edition edited by A. R. Braunmuller…
[Originally published]: ‘Macbeth’ edited by Alfred Harbage, published in Penguin Books (USA) 1956; revised edition published 1971; edition edited by Stephen Orgel published 2000 –Colophon.
Shakespeare’s tragic drama of young love is supplemented by textual notes and information on the date and sources of the play.
Desdemona’s love for Othello, the Moor, transcends racial prejudice; but the envious Iago conspires to devastate their lives. This novel renders racism, sexism, contested identities, and the savagery lurking within…
An improved, larger-format edition of the Cambridge School Shakespeare plays, extensively rewritten, expanded and produced in an attractive new design.
The repackaging of the acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series continues with more dazzling new covers to excite Shakespearians of all ages
The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now repackaged in award-winning modern covers to inspire Shakespearians of all ages.
John Milton
From almost the moment of its publication in 1667, Paradise Lost was considered a classic. This new edition is derived from the editors modernized Oxford Authors text, with a new…
Previously published in the Oxford Authors series, this unique one-volume selection of Milton’s poetry and prose includes all the English and Italian verse and a generous selection of his major…
For this second edition of The Sonnets, Stephen Orgel has written a new introduction to Shakespeare’s best-loved and most widely read poems. The volume follows the 1609 quarto and retains…
Stephen Orgel (J. E. Reynolds Professor in the Humanities, J. E. Reynolds Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University)
The Reader in the Book examines the history, archaeology, and sociology of the use of margins and other blank spaces in early modern books to shed light on reading practices…
Stephen Orgel (J. E. Reynolds Professor in Humanities, J. E. Reynolds Professor in Humanities, Stanford University)
In this new addition to the Oxford Textual Perspectives series, Stephen Orgel considers the idea of the book not simply as a container for written work, but as an essential…
The New Penguin Shakespeare offers a complete edition of the plays and poems. Each volume has been newly prepared from the original texts and includes an introduction, a list of…
