Shakespeare in London

An evocative journey that places Shakespeare's plays in a revealing urban context The Guardian [An] excellent book ... with clear prose, a valuable context-specific chronology, focussed further reading, and astute plot summaries ... The authors' extensive research is worn elegantly, as they gloss, surprise, and unlock. English Journal [An] excellent and imaginatively construed new book ... From its introduction imagining Shakespeare first walking into London to its epilogue showing how Henry VIII represented the Tower of London, Shakespeare in London manages to be both a useful guide and full of insight, a rare combination. Around the Globe [An] allusive, thought-provoking and approachable work that should be required reading for any undergraduate student of early-modern English literature ... Shakespeare in London offers useful insights into Shakespeare's work and his working practices. But it is also a wonderful, wide-ranging introduction to the richness and complexity of late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean society. It would be instructive reading for anyone. History Today Crawforth, Dustagheer, and Young argue that the city in which Shakespeare lived and worked influenced the writing and performance of his plays. Each chapter of the book focuses on one play and one social or historical context for that play ... The authors provide useful supplementary materials: a chronology of Shakespeare's life, traced against important contemporary events in London, and a list of suggested reading, arranged by subject ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. -- K. K. Smith, University of South Carolina, Aiken CHOICE The authors are to be congratulated on exploring [their topic] in fresh and exciting ways ... Augmented by the usual apparatus of the Arden Shakespeare series, including a chronology, eight illustrations and suggested further reading, this study evokes a palpable, powerful sense of Shakespeare's London and the numerous ways in which it permeated his playwriting. Early Modern Literary Studies Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies seem to take place everywhere but Elizabethan London: Athens, Elsinore, Ephesus, Rome, Troy, Venice, Verona. This engaging book shows, contrary to received tradition, how deeply Shakespeare's experience of life in London inspired the themes and scenes of plays purportedly set elsewhere Lena Cowen Orlin, Professor of English, Georgetown University, USA