Confronted with the formidable and at times daunting mass of materials on Shakespeare, where does the beginning student—or even a seasoned one—turn for guidance? Answering that question remains the central aim of this new edition of a guide that has been a much admired mainstay of Shakespeare studies for two decades.
Thoroughly revised and updated, this widely used teaching and study tool adds concise analyses of more than 100 new books on Shakespeare published since the 1987 edition. It also greatly expands the section on the history plays and provides separate new categories for film and television and for culture studies focusing upon seasonal festivities, hospitality, courtship rituals, sexuality, and other Renaissance social practices.
Like its predecessors, the third edition continues to provide a thoughtful overview of the development and present state of Shakespeare scholarship and its extraordinarily diverse critical approaches—including sections on feminism and gender studies, Shakespeare’s Romances, poststructuralism, and the new historicism—as well as summaries and evaluations of scores of bibliographies, periodicals, monographs, and reference books.
For beginning and advanced students alike, the guide offers practical advice for doing research and writing critical papers on Shakespeare—including how to select and develop topics, prepare a working bibliography and outline, take notes, avoid plagiarism, and use appropriate documentation following the MLA system. Students will find especially instructive the new model research paper, which provides an easy-to-understand example.
