Shakespeare Survey: Volume 56, Shakespeare and Comedy

Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948 Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of the previous year’s textual and critical studies and of major British performances. The books are illustrated with a variety of Shakespearean images and production photographs. The current editor of Survey is Peter Holland. The first eighteen volumes were edited by Allardyce Nicoll, numbers 19-33 by Kenneth Muir and numbers 34-52 by Stanley Wells. The virtues of accessible scholarship and a keen interest in performance, from Shakespeare’s time to our own, have characterized the journal from the start. For the first time, numbers 1-50 are being reissued in paperback, available separately and as a set.

List of illustrations; 1. Looking like a child - or - Titus: the comedy Carol Chillington Rutter; 2. Comedy and Epyllion in post-Reformation England Dympna Callaghan; 3. (Peter) Quince: love potions, carpenter’s coigns and Athenian weddings Patricia Parker; 4. ‘When everything seems double’: Peter Quince, the other playwright in A Midsummer Night’s Dream A. B. Taylor; 5. Cultural materialism and intertextuality: the limits of queer reading in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Two Noble Kinsmen Alan Sinfield; 6. As you liken it: simile in the wilderness Robert N. Watson; 7. Infinite jest: the comedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Ann Thompson; 8. Othello and the end of comedy Stephen Orgel; 9. Shakespeare as a joke: the English comic tradition, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and amateur performance Michael Dobson; 10. Falstaff’s belly, Bertie’s kilt, Rosalind’s legs: Shakespeare and the Victorian prince Adrian Poole; 11. The sixth act: Shakespeare after Joyce Maud Ellmann; 12. The return of Prospero’s wife: mother figures in The Tempest’s afterlife Sarah Annes Brown; 13. Directing Shakespeare’s comedies: in conversation with Peter Holland Declan Donnellan; 14. ‘To show our simple skill’: scripts and performances in Shakespearian comedy Michael Cordner; 15. John Shakespeare’s \'spiritual testament’: a reappraisal Robert Bearman; 16. Shakespeare as a force for good Peter Holbrook; 17. Timon of Athens and Jacobean politics Andrew Hadfield; 18. Man, woman and beast in Timon’s Athens Andreas Höfele; 19. Rough magic: northern broadsides at work at play Carol Chillington Rutter; 20. Shakespeare performances in England, 2002 Michael Dobson; 21. Professional Shakespeare productions in the British Isles, January–December 2001 James Shaw; The Year’s Contributions to Shakespeare Studies: 22. Critical studies reviewed by Ruth Morse; 23. Shakespeare’s life, times and stage reviewed by Leslie Thomson; 24. Editions and textual studies reviewed by Eric Rasmussen; Books received; Index.