Shakespeare Today

The Arden early modern drama guides serve as introductions to Shakespeare’s plays. Each volume focuses on a single play, and contains a timeline of the play and its most important productions, a brief stage and screen history, several original interpretative essays, resources for students, and extensive bibliography.

Some of the essays trade on academic trendiness. In the volume on Richard III , Rebecca Lemon writes about the “state of exception” in the play and David Wood examines Richard’s “disability.” The prose is jargon-ridden. Of Twelfth Night , one author writes that “Viola’s errands between Orsino’s and Olivia’s households allow her to translate her transfixing encounter with the abyss into ex-stasis performance” (130).

Still, the guides are informative, a good place to start research, especially with regard to stage history and history of interpretation. The bibliographies are up-to-date but don’t neglect older studies. The Guide to Richard III includes an annotated bibliography.