Medieval Shakespeare

Ruth Morse is professeur des universités at the Université Paris-Sorbonne-Cité. Her books include two edited volumes, Shakespeare, les français, les France (2008) and a volume of Great Shakespeareans; the monograph Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Reality, and Representation (1991), and she is currently completing Imagined Histories: Fictions of the Past from Beowulf to Shakespeare. Helen Cooper is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. Beginning with her Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance (1978), she has published extensively across the periods, most recently with The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (2004) and Shakespeare and the Medieval World (2010). Peter Holland is Associate Dean for the Arts, College of Arts and Letters and McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame. From 1997 to 2002 he was Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is Editor of Shakespeare Survey, co-General Editor with Stanley Wells of Oxford Shakespeare Topics and with Adrian Poole of the eighteen-volume series Great Shakespeareans.

• Introduction Helen Cooper; Part I. The Middle Ages and Shakespeare: 1. Shakespeare's Middle Ages Bruce R. Smith; 2. Late Shakespeare and the Middle Ages Bart van Es; Part II. Books and Language: 3. The mediated 'medieval' and Shakespeare A. E. B. Coldiron; 4. 'Not know my voice?': Shakespeare corrected; English perfected - theories of language from the Middle Ages to Modernity Jonathan Hope; 5. The afterlife of personification Helen Cooper; Part III. The British Past: 6. 'King Lear in BC Albion' Margreta de Grazia; 7. Shakespeare and the remains of Britain Ruth Morse; Part IV. The Theatrical Dimension: 8. The art of playing Tom Bishop; 9. Blood begetting blood: Shakespeare and the Mysteries Michael O'Connell; 10. From scaffold to discovery-space: change and continuity Janette Dillon; 11. Performing the Middle Ages Peter Holland; 12. Afterword: the evil of 'medieval' David Bevington.

'A fascinating dialogue between two literary periods.' The Times Literary Supplement