The Merchant of Venice (The RSC Shakespeare) - Softcover

Rasmussen, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 023024386X ISBN 13: 9780230243866

Publisher: HP Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's bittersweet comedy of courtship and ethnic tension. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of The Merchant of Venice in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with two leading directors and two actors – Darko Tresjnak, David Thacker, Anthony Sher and Henry Goodman – providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare’s career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended – as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed.

Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare’s works for the twenty-first century.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's bittersweet comedy of courtship and ethnic tension

THIS EDITION INCLUDES:

* An introduction to The Merchant of Venice by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate
* The play – with clear and authoritative explanatory notes on each page
* A helpful scene-by-scene analysis and key facts about the play
* An introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre
* A rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions

The most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or participate in it. This unique edition presents a historical overview of The Merchant of Venice in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with two leading directors and two actors – Darko Tresjnak, David Thacker<, Anthony Sher and Henry Goodman - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death.

About the Author:

JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as 'the best modern book on Shakespeare.' In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'.

ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.

About this edition

• Publisher: HP Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 023024386X
• ISBN 13: 9780230243866
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208