Off the shelf

Excerpt: "Shakespeare's tutor: The influence of Thomas Kyd"
Learn more about authorship and influence among the playwrights of Shakespeare’s day in this excerpt from a recent book by Darren Freebury-Jones.

Excerpt: "King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations"
“King Lear is about insiders who with terrible suddenness are shoved outside, and what they learn or don’t learn from finding themselves positioned there,” writes Arthur Frank.

Excerpt: "Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England" by Daniel Blank
Daniel Blank writes about Shakespeare’s presence within the early modern university sphere.

Excerpt: "Shakespeare without a Life" by Margreta de Grazia
Did Shakespeare give much thought to how his works would survive after his death? Margreta de Grazia argues that his sonnets show he did.

Excerpt: "Richard III's Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity"
The disabled body of Richard III, a historical English king and one of Shakespeare’s most iconic villains, is the focus of a recent book by Jeffrey R. Wilson.

Excerpt: "Shakespeare's Book" by Chris Laoutaris
Chris Laoutaris explores the Shakespearean printing mystery behind the Pavier-Jaggard Quartos, published a few years before the First Folio.

Excerpt: "White People in Shakespeare"
White People in Shakespeare examines what part Shakespeare played in the construction of a “white people” and how his work has been enlisted to define and bolster a white cultural and racial identity.
Excerpt - "Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne" by Katherine Rundell
“Spiritually speaking, many of us confronted with the thought of death perform the psychological equivalence of hiding in a box with our knees under our chin: Donne hunted death, battled it, killed it, saluted it, threw it parties.” Read more…

Excerpt: "The Final Curtain: The Art of Dying on Stage" by Laurence Senelick
Shakespeare’s plays provide ample opportunity for dramatic deaths onstage, and 18th-century English actors like David Garrick transformed simple stage directions in the text into “stirring set-pieces,” as Laurence Senelick writes in the below excerpt from his new book, “The Final…

Arthur Murphy's 18th-century collection of humor - Excerpt: "Laughing Histories" by Joy Wiltenburg
“Murphy may be the first person in history to subject laughter to such intensive and extensive study, at least from the perspective of a laughter professional,” writes Joy Wiltenburg about the 18th-century writer’s 500-page compilation of humor, in this excerpt…

Excerpt - "Susanna Hall, Her Book" by Jennifer Falkner
The queen of England has just arrived at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. But Susanna, the eldest daughter of William Shakespeare, has reasons for not wanting to host Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I.

Gaming and grieving with Shakespeare: Gabrielle Zevin’s new novel puts the ghostliness in gameplay
Sophia Richardson explores how Gabrielle Zevin’s new novel about video games, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” is also a book about Shakespeare.