Books by David Bevington
The Necessary Shakespeare (3rd Edition)
A highly respected editor and Shakespearean scholar, David Bevington presents a brief version of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6/e wiih the new edition of The Necessary Shakespeare, 3/e. The third edition addresses the two key issues confronted by students approaching Shakespeare today: a lack of knowledge about the historical period and difficulty with the language of Shakespeare's plays. A richly illustrated general introduction offers insight into Shakespeare's England and background on the literary, social, and cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote and produced plays. Each play is introduced by a descriptive essay designed to help students appreciate the historical contexts and interpretive issues raised by the play, without dictating students’ interpretations. Completely revised and updated notes and glosses support student readers line by line, paraphrasing Elizabethan expressions in clear and accessible contemporary language.
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The Necessary Shakespeare (4th Edition)
A highly respected editor and Shakespearean scholar, David Bevington presents a brief version of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 7/e with the new edition of The Necessary Shakespeare, 4/e. Available in the traditional print text format and now available as an eText within MyLiteratureLab, Pearson's online resource for literature. The eText increases flexibility for students who prefer the convenience of studying online. The eText offers complete note-taking capabilities so students can mark the text as they would the printed page. The fourth edition continues to address the two key issues confronted by students approaching Shakespeare today: a lack of knowledge about the historical period and difficulty with the language of Shakespeare's plays. A richly illustrated general introduction offers insight into Shakespeare's England and background on the literary, social, and cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote and produced plays. Each play is introduced by a descriptive essay designed to help students appreciate the historical contexts and interpretive issues raised by the play, without dictating students’ interpretations. Thoroughly revised and updated notes and glosses provide contemporary readers the support they need to understand Elizabethan language and idioms in accessible and clear modern language, line by line.
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This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance, Then and Now
Many readers first encounter Shakespeare’s plays in a book rather than a theater. Yet Shakespeare was through and through a man of the stage. So what do we lose when we leave Shakespeare the practitioner behind, and what do we learn when we think about his plays as dramas to be performed?
David Bevington answers these questions with This Wide and Universal Theater, which explores how Shakespeare’s plays were produced both in his own time and in succeeding centuries. Making use of historical documents and the play scripts themselves, Bevington brings Shakespeare’s original stagings to life. He explains how the Elizabethan playhouse conveyed a sense of place using minimal scenery, from the Forest of Arden in As You Like It to the tavern in Henry IV, Part I. Moving beyond Shakespeare’s lifetime, Bevington shows the prodigious lengths to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century companies went to produce spectacular effects, from flying witches in Macbeth to terrifying storms punctuating King Lear. To bring the book into the present, Bevington considers recent productions on both stage and screen, when character and language have taken precedence over spectacle. This volume brings a lifetime of study to bear on a remarkably underappreciated aspect of Shakespeare’s art.
“An eminent Shakespeare scholar and author, Bevington offers a concise, lucid, and unique overview of the history of Shakespeare in various modes of performance, from stage to film to television.”—Choice
“Even veteran Shakespeareans will profit from the varied reminders of how important performance and staging have always been to the interpretation of the plays.”—Renaissance Quarterly
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Shakespeare's Ideas (Blackwell Great Minds)
An in-depth exploration, through his plays and poems, of the philosophy of Shakespeare as a great poet, a great dramatist and a "great mind". Written by a leading Shakespearean scholar Discusses an array of topics, including sex and gender, politics and political theory, writing and acting, religious controversy and issues of faith, skepticism and misanthropy, and closure Explores Shakespeare as a great poet, a great dramatist and a "great mind"
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Complete Works of Shakespeare, The
A balanced editorial approach, a highly respected editor, and comprehensive glosses, footnotes, and historical and cultural essays make this the most reader-friendly introduction to Shakespeare available today. The seventh edition of this comprehensive anthology addresses the two key issues confronted by readers approaching Shakespeare today: a lack of knowledge about the historical period and difficulty with the language of Shakespeare's plays. A richly illustrated general introduction offers insight into Shakespeare's England and background on the literary and cultural contexts in which Shakespeare wrote and produced plays. Each play is introduced by a descriptive essay designed to help the reader appreciate the cultural contexts and interpretive issues raised by the play -- without dictating their interpretations. Thoroughly revised and updated notes and glosses provide additional support to understanding the language of Shakespeare's time.
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Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages
What is it about Hamlet that has made it such a compelling and vital work? Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages is an account of Shakespeare's great play from its sources in Scandinavian epic lore to the way it was performed and understood in his own day, and then how the play has fared down to the present: performances on stage, television, and in film, critical evaluations, publishing history, spinoffs, spoofs, musical adaptations, the play's growing reputation, its influence on writers and thinkers, and the ways in which it has shaped the very language we speak. The staging, criticism, and editing of Hamlet , David Bevington argues, go hand in hand over the centuries, to such a remarkable extent that the history of Hamlet can be seen as a kind of paradigm for the cultural history of the English-speaking world.
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How to Read a Shakespeare Play
This clear and succinct book is designed for general readers who want to know how to go about reading Shakespeare’s works for pleasure.
Encourages readers to approach Shakespeare's works aggressively, interactively, and questioningly
Focuses on six popular Shakespeare plays - A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV Part I, Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest
Recommends the best editions, recordings and DVDs / videos of these plays
Discusses the production of the plays on stage and screen
Introduces readers to different genres in Shakespeare – romantic comedy, English history, tragedy and romance
Avoids jargon and abstract literary theory
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Doctor Faustus: A- And B- Texts
by David Bevington, Eric Rasmussen
This volume in the "Revel Plays" series, offers reading editions, with modern spelling, of the 1604 and 1616 editions of Marlowe's play, arguing that the two cannot be conflated into one. Included are sources and commentary, literary criticism, style and staging/performance assessments.
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Shakespeare and Biography (Oxford Shakespeare Topics)
Shakespeare and Biography is not a new biography of Shakespeare. Instead, it is a study of what biographers have said about Shakespeare, from the first formal biography in the early 18th century by Nicholas Rowe to Stephen Greenblatt, James Shapiro, Jonathan Bate, Germaine Greer, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Park Honan, Rene Weis, and others who have written recent biographical accounts of England's greatest writer. The emphasis is on what sorts of issues these biographers have found especially interesting in relation to sex and gender, politics, religion, pessimism, misanthropy, jealousy, aging, family relationships, the end of a career, the end of life. How has Shakespeare's contemplation of these issues changed and grown, and in what ways do those changes reflect new cultural developments in our world as it continues to reinterpret Shakespeare?
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The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576–1649
by David Bevington, Richard Strier, David L. Smith
This collection of essays adopts a novel, interdisciplinary approach to a diverse group of texts composed in London during the Renaissance. Eight literary scholars and eight historians from two continents have been paired to write companion essays on each text. This original method opens up rich insights into London's social, political, and cultural life which would have eluded members of either discipline working in isolation. 'Theatrical' is taken to be a very flexible term, and is applied to the civic rituals and public spectacles of the capital (for example, the execution of King Charles I) as well as to the elite and popular theatre. The eight texts therefore include historical accounts, political documents and polemical works as well as plays.
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Shakespeare: The Seven Ages of Human Experience
The extended second edition of this inspiring introduction to Shakespeare offers readers more insights into what makes Shakespeare great, and why we still read and perform his works.
A highly innovative introduction to the extraordinary phenomenon of Shakespeare
Explores Shakespeares works through the "Seven Ages of Man", from childhood to "second childishness and mere oblivion"
Now includes more material on fathers and sons, the perils of courtship, the circumstances of Shakespeares own life, the performance history of his plays on stage and on screen, and more
A new final chapter on "Shakespeare Today" looks at the remarkable diversity of interpretations in modern criticism and performance of Shakespeare
Discusses a wide range of plays and poems
Suitable for both non-specialist readers, and scholars seeking a fresh approach to the study of Shakespeare
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