In their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that very few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeare's strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as 'kingmaker'. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of both performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.

 

 

This book is part of a book series called Arden Shakespeare .

There are 480 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2001 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC .

Rene Weis is Professor of English at University College London and a distinguished editor and biographer of Shakespeare. Eric Rasmussen is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is joint editor with David Bevington of Doctor Faustus in the Revels Plays series and the World's Classics edition of Christopher Marlowe's plays, author of A Textual Companion to 'Doctor Faustus' , and co-editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama . He writes the annual review of "Editions and Textual Studies" for Shakespeare Survey . John D. Cox is the DuMez Professor of English at Hope College, Michigan. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power and The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350-1642 , and co-editor with David Scott Kastan of A New History of Early English Drama .