Paul Edmondson

This ground-breaking book provides an abundance of fresh insights into Shakespeare's life in relation to his lost family home, New Place. The findings of a major archaeological excavation encourage us to think again about what New Place meant to Shakespeare and, in so doing, challenge some of the long-held assumptions of Shakespearian biography. New Place was the largest house in the borough and the only one with a courtyard. Shakespeare was only ever an intermittent lodger in London. His impressive home gave Shakespeare significant social status and was crucial to his relationship with Stratford-upon-Avon.Archaeology helps to inform biography in this innovative and refreshing study which presents an overview of the site from prehistoric times through to a richly nuanced reconstruction of New Place when Shakespeare and his family lived there, and beyond. This attractively illustrated book is for anyone with a passion for archaeology or Shakespeare.

Now in his old age, Chief Tenaya's life and the lives in his tribe are changed forever... In the Mariposa Indian War of 1850/51, the venerable Chief Tenaya is catapulted into leading his people into conflict against white man's plunder of their land and culture during the California Gold Rush. His story is a tale of family love, death, tribal lore and spirituality, all of it torn apart by a lust for gold. In Chief Tenaya's world, the pillages of war are set against the backdrop of daily rhythms of Indian life in the familiar landscape of Yosemite. Through the interweaving of historical events with imagined and gripping storytelling, Great Spirit of Yosemite chronicles the extraordinary true struggle of the original inhabitants of Yosemite Valley, their determination to cling on to their heritage, and their ultimate sacrifices.

This is the first complete edition and English translation of John Hall’s Little Book of Cures, a fascinating medical casebook composed in Latin around 1634–5. John Hall (1575–1635) was Shakespeare’s son-in-law (Hall married Susanna Shakespeare in 1607), and based his medical practice in Stratford-upon-Avon. Readers have never before had access to a complete English translation of John Hall’s casebook, which contains fascinating details about his treatment of patients in and around Stratford.Until Wells’s edition, our knowledge of Hall and his practice has had to rely only on a partial, seventeenth-century edition (produced by James Cooke in 1657 and 1679, and re-printed with annotation by Joan Lane as recently as 1996). Cooke’s edition significantly misrepresents Hall by abridging his manuscript (Cooke removed Hall’s conversations with his patients), by errors of translation, and by combining Hall’s work with examples from Cooke’s own medical practice.

This book opens up Twelfth Night as a play to see and hear, provides useful contextual and source material, and considers the critical and theatrical reception over four centuries. A detailed performance commentary brings to life the many moods of Shakespeare's subtle but robust humour. Students are encouraged to imagine the theatrical challenges of Shakespeare's Illyria afresh for themselves, as well as the thought, creative responses and wonder it has provoked.

This book opens up Twelfth Night as a play to see and hear, provides useful contextual and source material, and considers the critical and theatrical reception over four centuries. A detailed performance commentary brings to life the many moods of Shakespeare's subtle but robust humour. Students are encouraged to imagine the theatrical challenges of Shakespeare's Illyria afresh for themselves, as well as the thought, creative responses and wonder it has provoked.

The sonnets are among the most accomplished and fascinating poems in the English language. They are central to an understanding of Shakespeare's work as a poet and poetic dramatist, and while their autobiographical relevance is uncertain, no account of Shakespeare's life can afford to ignore them. So many myths and superstitions have arisen around these poems, relating for example to their possible addressees, to their coherence as a sequence, to their dates of composition, to their relation to other poetry of the period and to Shakespeare's plays, that even the most naïve reader will find it difficult to read them with an innocent mind. Shakespeare's Sonnets dispels the myths and focuses on the poems. Considering different possible ways of reading the Sonnets, Wells and Edmondson place them in a variety of literary and dramatic contexts - in relation to other poetry of the period, to Shakespeare's plays, as poems for performance, and in relation to their reception and reputation. Selected sonnets are discussed in depth, but the book avoids the jargon of theoretical criticism. Shakespeare's Sonnets is an exciting contribution to the Oxford Shakespeare Topics, ideal for students and the general reader interested in these intriguing poems.