On April 23, 1916, Oxford University Press published a magnificent volume entitled A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, edited by Professor Israel Gollancz. Created to mark the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death in the very midst of the First World War, it was a substantial folio-sized volume of 557 pages bound in white leather with Shakespeare's coat of arms embossed in gold, with nine leaves of plates, each protected by tissue: with textured pages laid out with a generous and elegant text design, it is a strikingly beautiful material object in its own right, quite apart from its contents, which include contributions by writers from Rudyard Kipling to Rabindranath Tagore, from John Galsworthy to Maurice Maeterlinck. 1,250 copies were printed, a fifth designed as presentation copies, with the rest put on general sale. Within its pages, sandwiched between an opening poem by Thomas Hardy about Stratford-upon-Avon and the London-based editor's closing paean to the global community-- "Shakespeare's own kindred, whatsoe'er their speech"--are 105 essays, dialogues, and fragments and 61 poems, including 26 translations, from locations as far apart as India, Ireland, America, Armenia, Burma, South Africa, Russia, and Japan. A Book of Homage to Shakespeare is thus a celebration both local and global, and it marks a pivotal moment in literary history--a moment at which Shakespeare was the poet both of empire and of a world emerging into a new, very different global order. Oxford University Press's reissue, 100 years later, of this remarkable volume for the 2016 centenary reflects the style of the original edition and is presented with a new foreword by King's College London's Gordon McMullan, telling the story of the book's inception and creation, focusing on its editor and guiding spirit, Israel Gollancz, and on certain key contributions. His lively account reveals A Book of Homage as a far more complex phenomenon than might be expected, balancing the celebration of empire with elements both of resistance to Shakespeare as the uncontested figurehead for empire and of self-fashioning, implicit and explicit, on the part of its contributors.

A Book of Homage to Shakespeare

Literature & Fiction

McMullan, Gordon

Dramas & Plays

Oxford University Press

This unique collection of essays and images explores a series of objects in the Royal Collection as a means of assessing the interrelated histories of the British royal family and the Shakespearean afterlife across four centuries. Between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the late twentieth, Shakespeare became entrenched as the English national poet. Over the same period, the monarchy sought repeatedly to demonstrate its centrality to British nationhood. By way of close analysis of a selection of objects from the Royal Collection, this volume argues that the royal family and the Shakespearean afterlife were far more closely interwoven than has previously been realized. The chapters map the mutual development over time of the relationship between members of the British royal family and Shakespeare, demonstrating the extent to which each has gained sustained value from association with the other and showing how members of the royal family have individually and collectively constructed their identities and performed their roles by way of Shakespearean models. Each chapter is inspired by an object in (or formerly in) the Royal Collection and explores two interconnected questions: what has Shakespeare done for the royal family, and what has the royal family done for Shakespeare? The chapters range across the fields of art, theatre history, literary criticism, literary history, court studies and cultural history, showing how the shared history of Shakespeare and the royal family has been cultivated across media and across disciplines.

Shakespeare's Afterlife in the Royal Collection: Dynasty, Ideology, and National Culture

Arts & Photography

Retford, Kate

Barnden, Sally

Tambling, Kirsten

History & Criticism

The attractive print and digital bundle offers students a great reading experience at an affordable price in two ways-a hardcover volume for their dorm shelf and lifetime library, and a digital edition ideal for in-class use. Students can access the ebook from their computer, tablet, or smartphone via the registration code included in the print volume at no additional charge. As one instructor summed it up, "It's a long overdue step forward in the way Shakespeare is taught."

The Norton Shakespeare

GREENBLATT, STEPHEN

Howard, Jean E.

Cohen, Walter

Maus, Katharine Eisam

W.W.Norton&Company

What do we mean when we speak of the 'late style' of a given writer, artist or composer? And what exactly do we mean by 'late Shakespeare'? Gordon McMullan argues that, far from being a natural phenomenon common to a handful of geniuses in old age or in proximity to death, late style is in fact a critical construct. Taking Shakespeare as his exemplar, he maps the development of the 'discourse of lateness' from the eighteenth century to the present, noting not only the mismatch between that discourse and the actual conditions for authorship in early modern theatre but also its generativity for subsequent projections of creative selfhood. He thus offers the first critique of the idea of late style, which will be of interest not only to literature specialists but also to art historians, musicologists and anyone curious about the relationship of creativity to old age and to death.

Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death

Cambridge University Press

Antipodal Shakespeare: Remembering and Forgetting in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, 1916 - 2016

Ferguson, Ailsa Grant

Mead, Philip

Houlahan, Mark

Flaherty, Kate

The Arden Shakespeare

Despite a recent surge of critical interest in the Shakespeare Tercentenary, a great deal has been forgotten about this key moment in the history of the place of Shakespeare in national and global culture – much more than has been remembered. This book offers new archival discoveries about, and new interpretations of, the Tercentenary celebrations in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and reflects on the long legacy of those celebrations.
This collection gathers together five scholars from Britain, Australia and New Zealand to reflect on the modes of commemoration of Shakespeare across the hemispheres in and after the Tercentenary year, 1916. It was at this moment of remembering in 1916 that 'global Shakespeare' first emerged in recognizable form. Each contributor performs their own 'antipodal' reading, assessing in parallel events across two hemispheres, geographically opposite but politically and culturally connected in the wake of empire.

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