Essaying Shakespeare

<div> <p><b>A pioneering scholar of Shakespeare and early modern letters provides an overview of work in the field</b></p> <p>For more than twenty-five years Karen Newman has brought her critical acumen to bear on early modern studies. In this collection of her essays on Shakespeare-some acknowledged classics and others never before published-Newman shows how changing theoretical trends have shaped Shakespeare studies from new historicism and gender studies to critical race studies and globalization.</p> Central to Newman's work is social exchange or the circulation of people and objects. At least two of these essays have had a powerful and lasting impact on Shakespeare studies: Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare's <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> and 'And wash the Ethiop White': Femininity and the Monstrous in <i>Othello</i>. Three essays appear in print for the first time: an examination of clothing of the poor and the portrayal of the king as a beggar in <i>Richard II</i>; a stinging review of Harold Bloom's book <i>Shakespeare</i>: <i>The Invention of the Human</i>; and a rethinking of claims about the globalization of culture and cultural translation.<i>Essaying Shakespeare</i> chronicles Newman's own critical development to provide a significant map of critical work on Shakespeare.</div>