Helen Vendler, widely regarded as our most accomplished interpreter of poetry, here serves as an incomparable guide to some of the best-loved poems in the English language. </p>
In detailed commentaries on Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, Vendler reveals previously unperceived imaginative and stylistic features of the poems, pointing out not only new levels of import in particular lines, but also the ways in which the four parts of each sonnet work together to enact emotion and create dynamic effect. The commentaries--presented alongside the original and modernized texts--offer fresh perspectives on the individual poems, and, taken together, provide a full picture of Shakespeare's techniques as a working poet. With the help of Vendler's acute eye, we gain an appreciation of "Shakespeare's elated variety of invention, his ironic capacity, his astonishing refinement of technique, and, above all, the reach of his skeptical imaginative intent." </p>
Vendler's understanding of the sonnets informs her readings on an accompanying compact disk, which is bound with the book. This recorded presentation of a selection of the poems, in giving aural form to Shakespeare's words, heightens our awareness of voice in lyric, and adds the dimension of sound to poems too often registered merely as written words. </p>

"Makes a compelling case. . . . Anderson's demonstration of how de Vere's real life matches the characters and circumstances found in the plays attributed to Shakespeare is especially impressive." —THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
The debate over the true author of Shakespeare’s body of work (some of which was published under the name “Shake-speare”) began not long after the death of William Shakespeare, the obscure actor and entrepreneur from Stratford-upon-Avon who was conventionally assumed to be the author. There were natural doubts that an uneducated son of a glover who never left England and apparently owned no books could have produced some of the greatest works of Western literature. Early investigators into the mystery argued for such eminent figures as Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon as possible authors, but recent scholarship has turned to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare” by Another Name is the first complete literary biography of Edward de Vere that tells the story of his action-packed life—as student, soldier, courtier, lawyer, political intriguer, sophisticate, traveler, and, above all, writer—finding in it the background material for all of Shakespeare’s plays. Anderson brings to bear a wealth of new evidence, most notably de Vere’s personal copy of the Bible (recently analyzed to show the correlation between his underlinings and the biblical allusions in Shakespeare’s work) and has employed it all to at last give a complete portrait and background to the man who was “Shakespeare.”

Although numerous books on Shakespeare are published every year, his language is a neglected topic. Yet an understanding of how his language works is fundamental to appreciating every aspect of his work. In this study of the grammar of Shakespeare's language, a detailed analysis is given. Steering clear of linguistic jargon it includes not only traditional features such as the make up of clauses and differing parts of speech, but also language in use in various forms of discourse.

From one of our most eminent and accessible literary critics, a groundbreaking account of how the Greek and Roman classics forged Shakespeare (TM)s imagination
Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having oesmall Latin and less Greek. But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca. In a book of extraordinary range, acclaimed literary critic and biographer Jonathan Bate, one of the world (TM)s leading authorities on Shakespeare, offers groundbreaking insights into how, perhaps more than any other influence, the classics made Shakespeare the writer he became.
Revealing in new depth the influence of Cicero and Horace on Shakespeare and finding new links between him and classical traditions, ranging from myths and magic to monuments and politics, Bate offers striking new readings of a wide array of the plays and poems. At the heart of the book is an argument that Shakespeare (TM)s supreme valuation of the force of imagination was honed by the classical tradition and designed as a defense of poetry and theater in a hostile world of emergent Puritanism.
Rounded off with a fascinating account of how Shakespeare became our modern classic and has ended up playing much the same role for us as the Greek and Roman classics did for him, How the Classics Made Shakespeare combines stylistic brilliance, accessibility, and scholarship, demonstrating why Jonathan Bate is one of our most eminent and readable literary critics.

Hamlet's combination of violence and introspection is unusual among Shakespeare's tragedies. It is also full of curious riddles and fascinating paradoxes, making it one of his most widely discussed plays. Professor Hibbard's illuminating and original introduction explains the process by which variant texts were fused in the eighteenth century to create the most commonly used text of today. Drawing on both critical and theatrical history, he shows how this gusion makes Hamlet seem a much more 'problematic' play than it was when it originally appeared in the First Folio of 1623. The Oxford Shakespeare edition presents a radically new text, based on that First Folio, which printed Shakespeare's own revision of an earlier version. The result is a 'theatrical' and highly practical edition for students and actors alike. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Simon Schama argues that it is impossible to understand how Shakespeare came to belong 'to all time' without understanding just how much he was of his time

何为法律以及法律何以合法的问题，构成了《威尼斯商人》等莎士比亚戏剧中或明或暗的情节主线。《夏洛克的困惑：莎士比亚与早期现代英国法律思想研究》将从早期现代英国法律思想的角度出发，探讨莎士比亚剧场与英国法律机制之间的“商榷”和对话关系。通过对《裘力斯·凯撒》、《威尼斯商人》、《一报还一报》、《李尔王》，以及《特罗斯罗斯与克瑞西达》等戏剧作品的法律解读，本书试图勾勒出莎士比亚戏剧所展现的作为 “宇宙自然法”、“契约法”、“宗教律法”，“王权话语”，乃至“社会伦理”等早期现代英国社会的若干“法律”建构模式。研究表明：莎士比亚在参与建构英国法治神话的同时，也对法制社会中的种种弊端不无忧虑；完善合理的法律体系至关重要，而爱邻如己的悲天悯人情怀亦是社会正义的必要条件。
从早期现代英国法律思想的角度解读《裘力斯·凯撒》、《威尼斯商人》、《一报还一报》和《李尔王》等莎士比亚戏剧，深入探究早期现代英国的法律思想与莎士比亚创作之间的关系，并借以反思西方人文和法律语境下的'正义''德政''法治'等基本问题在莎士比亚戏剧中的反映，以及莎士比亚对于以上重大问题的深邃思想，以期为我国莎士比亚研究引介新的理论视角，使学界深入理解早期现代英国法律文化的独特特征，反思西方人文和法律语境下的基本问题。

Volume 1 of massive work by a leading Shakespeare scholar and lexicographer, a standard in the field, provides full definitions, locations, and shades of meaning in every word in Shakespeare's plays and poems. The 2 volumes contain more than 50,000 exact quotations, each precisely located. There is no other word dictionary comparable to this work.