Shakespeare at Work

It is now accepted that Shakespeare revised many of his most celebrated plays. But how were the great tragedies altered and with what effects? John Jones looks at the implications of Shakespeare’s revisions for the reader and spectator alike and shows the playwright getting to grips with the problems of characterization and scene formation in such plays as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida. In characteristically lucid and accessible prose, John Jones assesses recent textual scholarship on Shakespeare’s revisions and illuminates the artistic impact of the revised texts and their importance for our understanding of each play’s moral and metaphysical foundations. Shakespeare at Work brings together English literature’s greatest writer and one of its most distinguished critics. the result is a book that will be essential and entertaining reading for scholars, students, and Shakespeare enthusiasts alike.