Shakespeare: The Last Plays (Longman Critical Readers)

This text is concerned with Shakespeare's four romances written during his final period of writing - "The Winter's Tale", "Pericles", "Cymbeline" and "The Tempest". It focuses on how the advent of theory has transformed our perception of Shakespearean romance. An introduction traces the modern critical reception of the plays up to the present time and examines traditional appraisals of these plays and how they have been affected by new approaches - critical theory on language, gender, history, representation and power. The book also provides a theoretical and interpretative debate, comparing the same text using different readings.