The dramatic works of William Shakespeare; with a life of the poet, and notes, original and selected.

Edited by Oliver W. B. Peabody; based on Singer's edition, "carefully compared" with the folio of 1623; with the life by Dr. Symmons, revised, and "New facts" by Collier. The first critical American edition. cf. Preface and J. Sherzer, American editions of Shakespeare (Modern lang. assoc. Publ., v. 22, pp. 658-659)

Shakespeare's works.

1. Tempest. Two gentlemen of Verona. Merry wives of Windsor. Measure for measure. Comedy of errors.--2. Much ado about nothing. Love's labour's lost. Midsummer night's dream. Merchant of Venice. As you like it.--3. Taming of the shrew. All's well that ends well. Twelfth Night. Winter's tale.--4. King John. King Richard II. King Henry IV. King Henry V.--5. King Henry VI. King Richard III. King Henry VIII.--6. Troilus and Cressida. Coriolanus. Titus Andronicus. Romeo and Juliet.--7. Timon of Athens. Julius Caesar. Macbeth. Hamlet. King Lear.--8. Othello. Antony and Cleopatra. Cymbeline. Pericles.--9. Songs, sonnets, poems. Index to first lines.

The minor poems,

"Includes all of Chaucer's genuine poetical works with the exception of ... the Canterbury tales, Troilus and Cressida, and the Legend of good women." Introd.

Shakspeare's dramatische Werke /

"Nachwort" signed: Tycho Mommsen.

The works of Shakespeare /

"The text ... from MacBeth [v. 31] onwards has been edited by Mr. Walter Raleigh" note in v. 38.

The dramatic works of William Shakspeare : accurately printed from the text of the corrected copy left by the late George Steevens ..., with glossarial notes and a sketch of the life of Shakspeare ; in two volumes.

Added title-pages, engraved (with vignette) : The plays of William Shakspeare, illustrated with engravings by George B. Ellis, from the designs of R. Smirk, R. A.

The complete works of Shakespeare with life, compendium, and concordance ...

At head of title: The Dr. Johnson edition.

The poetical works of Geoffrey Chaucer /

Three-quarter bound in maroon levant morocco, with gilt borders and tooling on spine; marbled covers and endpapers; gilt top edge; uncut.

The comedies, histories, and tragedies of Mr. William Shakespeare as presented at the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres, circa 1591-1623 : being the text furnished the players, in parallel pages with the first revised folio text, with critical introductions : the Bankside Shakespeare /

"Five hundred copies only"--V. 1, p. [43].

Chaucer and the Disconsolations of Philosophy: Boethius, Agency, and Literary Form in Late Medieval Literature

This study argues that Chaucer's poetry belongs to a far-reaching conversation about the forms of consolation (philosophical, theological, and poetic) that are available to human persons. Chaucer's entry point to this conversation was Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, a sixth-century dialogue that tried to show how the Stoic ideals of autonomy and self-possession are not simply normative for human beings but remain within the grasp of every individual. Drawing on biblical commentary, consolation literature, and political theory, this study contends that Chaucer's interrogation of the moral and intellectual ideals of the Consolation took the form of philosophical disconsolations: scenes of profound poetic rupture in which a character, sometimes even Chaucer himself, turns to philosophy for solace and yet fails to be consoled. Indeed, philosophy itself becomes a source of despair. In staging these disconsolations, I contend that Chaucer asks his readers to consider the moral dimensions of the aspirations internal to ancient philosophy and the assumptions about the self that must be true if its insights are to console and instruct. For Chaucer, the self must be seen as a gift that flowers through reciprocity (both human and divine) and not as an object to be disciplined and regulated.

Chapter one focuses on the Consolation of Philosophy. I argue that recent attempts to characterize Chaucer's relationship to this text as skeptical fail to engage the Consolation on its own terms. The allegory of Lady Philosophy's revelation to a disconsolate Boethius enables philosophy to become both an agent and an object of inquiry. I argue that Boethius's initial skepticism about the pretentions of philosophy is in part what Philosophy's therapies are meant to respond to. The pressures that Chaucer's poetry exerts on the ideals of autonomy and self-possession sharpen one of the major absences of the Consolation: viz., the unanswered question of whether Philosophy's therapies have actually consoled Boethius. Chapter two considers one of the Consolation's fascinating and paradoxical afterlives: Robert Holcot's Postilla super librum sapientiae (1340-43). I argue that Holcot's Stoic conception of wisdom, a conception he explicitly links with Boethius's Consolation, relies on a model of agency that is strikingly similar to the powers of self-knowledge that Philosophy argues Boethius to posses. Chapter three examines Chaucer's fullest exploration of the Boethian model of selfhood and his ultimate rejection of it in Troilus and Criseyde. The poem, which Chaucer called his "tragedy," belonged to a genre of classical writing he knew of only from Philosophy's brief mention of it in the Consolation. Chaucer appropriates the genre to explore and recover mourning as a meaningful act. In Chapter four, I turn to Dante and the House of Fame to consider Chaucer's self-reflections about his ambitions as a poet and the demands of truth-telling.

Shakespeare and the Re/Vision of Indian Heritage in the Postcolonial British Context

As part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged a production of Much Ado About Nothing set in India. Shakespeare’s Messina in sixteenth century Italy was transposed to twenty-first century Delhi and with a company of actors who were all of Indian heritage. The casting of individual British Asian actors in mainstream UK productions of Shakespeare is no longer unusual. What was unprecedented here, however, was that not only was the entire cast ‘Asian’ but the director was not, as is standard practice, a leading member of the white British theatrical establishment. Instead the director, Iqbal Khan, is the son of a Pakistani father who migrated to England in the 1960s. I use the term ‘Indian heritage’ with great caution conscious that what began under the British Raj in nineteenth century India led through subsequent economic imperatives and exigencies, and political schism to a history of migratory patterns which means that today’s British Asian population is a complex demographic construct representing numerous different languages and cultural and religious affiliations. The routes which brought those actors to play imagined Indian Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon in July 2012 were many and various. I explore in this chapter the way in which that complexity of heritage has been brought to bear on the revisioning of Shakespeare by British Asian theatre makers operating outside the theatrical mainstream. In general because of the social, economic and institutional challenges facing British Asian theatre artists, the number of independent professional companies is comparatively small and for the most part, their work has focused on creating drama which interrogates thorny questions of identity formation and contemporary cultural practices within the ‘new’ British Asian communities. Nevertheless for artists born and/or educated in the UK the Western classical canon, including of course Shakespeare, is as much part of their heritage as the classical Indian narratives and performance traditions which so powerfully evoke collective memories of the lost ‘home’ of their elders. By far the most consistent engagement with Shakespeare has been seen in the work of Tara Arts which was the first British Asian theatre company set up in 1977. The artistic director Jatinder Verma brings his own ‘transformed and translated’ heritage as an East African-born, Punjabi-speaking, English-educated, Indian migrant to the UK to plays as diverse as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida , The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. I discuss examples of Tara productions in the light of the way Shakespeare’s plays have been used to forge both creative synergies between parallel cultures and provide a means of addressing the ontological ruptures and dislocations associated with the colonial past.