University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Pages: 308
Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅜
978-1-61147-675-0 • Hardback • March 2014 • $133.00 • (£102.00)
978-1-61147-869-3 • Paperback • October 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)
978-1-61147-676-7 • eBook • March 2014 • $59.50 • (£46.00)
R.W. Desai is emeritus professor of English at Delhi University.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
R. W. Desai
Shakespeare’s Playwrights
Grace Tiffany
The History of the Shakespeares and the Shakespeares in the Histories
Joseph Candido
1592-1594: Shakespeare’s “Other” Lost Years
R. S. White
Greene, Harvey, Nashe, and the “Making” of Falstaff
Mythili Kaul
“Look in the calendar”: Julius Caesar and Shakespeare’s Cultural-Political Moment
Subhajit Sen Gupta
“But I have that within which passeth show”: Shakespeare’s Ambivalence toward His Profession
R. W. Desai
“Those lips that love’s own hand did make”: Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis
Shormishtha Panja
Shakespeare’s Churches
Lisa Hopkins
Shakespeare and the Rhythms of Devotion
Stuart Sillars
Outbraving Luther: Shakespeare’s Final Evolution through the Tragedies into the Last Plays
John O’Meara
Shakespeare among the Jesuits
John Mahon
Was Shakespeare a “Church Papist” or a Prayer Book Anglican?
Charles R. Forker
Index
Contributor Biographies
This collection offers scholarly work that is for the most part conjectural . . . ranging in length from 10 to 65 pages; the essays present a diversity of approaches and objectives. The longest essay is Charles Forker's, which takes up a fourth of the book’s total pages. Searching for evidence of the playwright’s denominational commitment, Forker conducts a thoughtful survey of Shakespeare’s work. . . .In his contribution, Desai proposes that Shakespeare became disenchanted with the theater before composing Hamlet and that this attitude shows in the subsequent plays. . . .Less conjectural is Lisa Hopkins’s . . . engaging contribution, ‘Shakespeare’s Churches.’ John Mahon’s ‘Shakespeare among the Jesuits’ suggests some biographical connections of possible relevance. [Overall] the conjectures and religious evidence are well worth reading. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
— Choice Reviews