David Scott Kastan, ed., A Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999)

Summary from the Publisher:

This Companion to Shakespeare is an indispensable book for students and teachers of Shakespeare, indeed for anyone with an interest in his plays. It offers a remarkably innovative and comprehensive picture of the theatrical, literary, intellectual, and social worlds in which Shakespeare wrote and in which his plays were produced.

The newly commissioned essays, written by the most distinguished historians and literary scholars working today (including Ian Archer, David Bevington, Michael Bristol, David Daniell, Richard Dutton, Andrew Gurr, Jean Howard, Roslyn Knutson, and Peter Lake), represent the very best of modern scholarship. Each individual essay stands as an authoritative account of the state of knowledge in its field, and in their totality the essays provide a new and compelling portrait of the historical conditions, both imaginative and institutional, that enabled (and in some cases inhibited) Shakespeare’s great art. Including essays on the organization and regulation of Elizabethan playing, on the printing, publication, and circulation of the play-texts, on Shakespeare’s reading, on religion and political thought in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and on the linguistic and literary environment in which he wrote, the Companion to Shakespeare remarkably allows us to see Shakespeare anew by restoring his artistry to the rich interactions of the historical world in which he worked and flourished.

The lucid, engaging, and authoritative essays in this imaginatively conceived collection will definitively change the ways in which we read, see, and perform Shakespeare’s plays.

Table of Contents:

Part I: Introduction

1. Shakespeare and the ‘Elements’ he lived in / David Scott Kastan

Part II: Shakespeare I

2. Shakespeare the Man / David Bevington

Part III: Living

3. Shakespeare’s England / Norman L. Jones
4. Shakespeare’s London / Ian Archer
5. Religious Identities in Shakespeare’s England / Peter Lake
6. The Family and the Household / Susan Dwyer Amussen
7. Shakespeare and Political Thought / Martin Dzelzainis
8. Political Culture / David Harris Sacks

Part IV: Reading

9. ‘The Great Variety of Readers’ and Early Modern Reading Practices / Heidi Brayman Hackel
10. Reading the Bible / David Daniell
11. Reading the Classics / Robert L. Miola
12. Reading History / D. R. Woolf
13. Reading Vernacular literature / Diana E. Henderson and James Siemon

Part V: Writing

14. Professional Playwrighting / Scott McMillin
15. Shakespeare’s ‘Native English’ / Jonathan Hope
16. Hearing Shakespeare’s Dramatic Verse / George T. Wright
17. Shakespeare and Rhetorical Culture / Peter G. Platt
18. Shakespeare and Genre / Jean E. Howard

Part VI: Playing

19. The Economics of Playing / William Ingram
20. The Chamberlain’s-King’s Men / S. P. Cerasano
21 Shakespeare’s Repertory / Roslyn L. Knutson
22. Shakespeare’s Playhouses / Andrew Gurr
23. Licensing and Censorship / Richard Dutton

Part VII: Printing

24. Shakespeare in Print, 1593-1640 / Thomas L. Berger and Jesse M. Lander
25.’Precious Few’: EnglishManuscript Playbooks / William B. Long
26. The Craft of Printing (1600) / Laurie E. Maguire
27. The London Book-trade in 1600 / Mark Bland
28. Liberty, License and Authority: Press Censorship and Shakespeare / Cyndia Susan Clegg

Part VIII: Shakespeare II

29. Shakespeare: The Myth / Michael D. Bristol

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