The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy [Paperback]

This updated Companion has been fully revised and includes an extensively overhauled bibliography and four new chapters by leading scholars.This updated Companion has been fully revised to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship. With an extensively overhauled bibliography, it also includes four new chapters by leading scholars, discussing Shakespearean form, Shakespeare and philosophy, Shakespeare's tragedies in performance, and Shakespeare and religion.This updated Companion has been fully revised to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship. With an extensively overhauled bibliography, it also includes four new chapters by leading scholars, discussing Shakespearean form, Shakespeare and philosophy, Shakespeare's tragedies in performance, and Shakespeare and religion.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.Preface to the second edition; 1. What is a Shakespearean tragedy? Colin Burrow; 2. The language of tragedy Russ McDonald; 3. Tragedy in Shakespeare's career David Bevington; 4. Shakespearean tragedy prlƒ1