NEW Shakespeare Life & Death King John Medieval England 1199AD Richard Lionheart

Description

William Shakespeare: The Life and Death of King John, Edited by Claire McEachern.
DESCRIPTION:
Softcover: 114 pages. Publisher: Penguin Books; (2000).
King John of England is pitted against the united powers of France, Brittany, Austria and the Papacy. Will England be destroyed by his fatal indecision? As alliances are made, broken and remade, the paranoid and erratic John reveals his weakness and reliance on those around him, including his powerful mother Queen Elinor and Faulconbridge, the cynical and witty bastard son of the dead King Richard I. The offers at least three fine acting roles and was once popular in the theatre, has been neglected in recent years. Its treatment of the death of Arthur, claimant to the throne, and the wit of the Bastard, son of Richard Coeur de Lion, make it particularly worthy of reconsideration.
The wide-ranging introduction makes original claims for the play's relevance to Elizabethan political issues and for its aesthetic importance in Shakespeare's early career as a dramatist. This edition also offers a comprehensive stage history, a thorough bibliographical study of the Folio (1623) text, and a reconsideration of its disputed relationship with the anonymous Troublesome Reign of King John (1591). A.R. Braunmuller provides new information concerning King John's early stage history, consideration of legal concepts and practices in the play, and a critical study of its presentation of women and of families.
CONDITION: New, never read.
PLEASE SEE IMAGES BELOW FOR SAMPLE PAGES FROM INSIDE OF BOOK.
PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW.
PUBLISHER REVIEW
:
REVIEW: The new Pelican Shakespeare series incorporates the more than thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the acclaimed original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. The general editors of the new series of forty volumes, the renowned Shakespeareans Stephen Orgel of Stanford University and A. R. Braunmuller of UCLA, have assembled a team of eminent scholars who have, along with the general editors themselves, prepared new introductions and notes to all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.
Redesigned in any easy-to-read format that preserves the favorite features of the original, including an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare, an introduction to the individual play, and a note on the text used. The new Pelican Shakespeare will be an excellent recourse for students, teachers, theatre professionals, and history enthusiasts well into the twenty-first century. The play's political importance, rich and varied language and skillful design are analyzed through the examination of several disputed emendations to the text in this exhaustive stage history.
PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS
:
REVIEW: History play in five acts by William Shakespeare, produced in 1596-97 and published in the First Folio of 1623 from an authorial fair copy. The title character provides the central focus of the play, which ends with his death. The playwright surrounds him with such characters as the son of Sir Robert Faulconbridge, known as the Bastard, who supports the king and yet mocks all political and moral pretensions. Shakespeare depicts King John on a rapidly changing course, surrounded by many contrasting characters, so that the king's unsteady mind seems no more than one small element in an almost comic jumble of events.
REVIEW: One of Shakespeare's most underappreciated history plays, “King John” deals with the life and death of King John, who reigned from 1199 to 1216. This is as early as Shakespeare goes in his treatment of English history, concentrating more successfully on the later 14th and 15th centuries in the plays which stretch from Richard II to Henry VI. “King John” suffers in popularity from being so historically distant in time, as well as offering a rather weak and vacillating king, who lacks the charisma and authority of Richard III or Henry V. The play begins with King John struggling to retain his throne, under attack from rebellious courtiers and Philip, the king of France.
As the quarrel escalates into war with France, the play begins to take on a contemporary Elizabethan flavor: the feared invasion from a foreign (Catholic) nation, and the extent to which such an invasion is based on the questionable paternity of King John (like Queen Elizabeth, John is accused of being a bastard and is excommunicated). The most colorful character the play develops is Philip the Bastard, John's favorite, a dramatic forerunner of dubious but charismatic malcontents like Edmund in “King Lear”. It is also Philip who is given the most powerful and patriotic lines, when he claims that "This England never did, nor never shall, lie at the proud foot of a conqueror".
READER REVIEWS
:
REVIEW: Middle Ages Intrigue. King John is certainly not one of Shakespeare's more popular history plays and the character development is not nearly as strong as some of his others. That said it still an indispensable read. The drama revolves around a questionable succession and lineage and includes planned murder, revenge and middle age international intrigue. While the character of King John never truly comes to life and leaves far less of a lasting impression than Shakespeare's versions of Henry IV and Richard III, it nonetheless is well worth reading to have a view into the era, and Shakespeare's development in this genre.
REVIEW: One of Shakespeare's statelier plays. “King John” addresses the thorny problem of royal succession, the contemporary legal ambiguities surrounding inheritance, the patterning of characters, the use of language (by characters as political maneuvring, by Shakespeare to subvert them). King John was wildly popular in the 18th and 19th century as a spectacular pageant, the play distorted for patriotic purposes, and its subsequent decline, presumably for the same reasons. There play contains some startling moments, such as the description of a potential blood wedding, or the account of England's populace 'strangely fantasized, possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams, not knowing what they fear, but full of fear'. The decline of the king himself, from self-confident warrior to hallucinating madman, anticipates “King Lear”, while the scene where John's henchman sets out to brand the eyes of the pubescent Pretender, is full of awful tension.
I always ship books Media Mail in a padded mailer. This book is shipped
FOR FREE
via USPS
INSURED
media mail (“book rate”). The shipment will
include
free USPS Delivery Confirmation (you might be able to update the status of your shipment on-line at the
USPS Web Site
and free insurance coverage). If you are concerned about a little wear and tear to the book in transit, I would suggest a boxed shipment - it is an extra .00. Whether via padded mailer or box, we will give discounts for multiple purchases. International orders are welcome, but shipping costs are substantially higher.
Most international orders cost an additional .99 to .99 for an
insured
shipment in a heavily padded mailer, and typically
includes
some form of rudimentary tracking and/or delivery confirmation (though for some countries, this is only available at additional cost). There is also a discount program which can cut postage costs by 50% to 75% if you’re buying about half-a-dozen books or more (5 kilos+).  Rates and available services vary a bit from country to country.  You can email or message me for a shipping cost quote, but I assure you they are as reasonable as USPS rates allow, and if it turns out the rate is too high for your pocketbook, we will cancel the sale at your request.
ADDITIONAL PURCHASES
do receive a
VERY LARGE
discount, typically about per book (for each additional book after the first) so as to reward you for the economies of combined shipping/insurance costs.  Your purchase will ordinarily be shipped within 48 hours of payment.  We package as well as anyone in the business, with lots of protective padding and containers.
All of our shipments are sent via insured mail so as to comply with PayPal requirements. We do NOT recommend uninsured shipments, and expressly disclaim any responsibility for the loss of an uninsured shipment. Unfortunately the contents of parcels are easily “lost” or misdelivered by postal employees – even in the USA. That’s why all of our shipments
include
a USPS delivery confirmation tag; or are trackable or traceable, and are insured. We do offer U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail, Registered Mail, and Express Mail for both international and domestic shipments, as well United Parcel Service (UPS) and Federal Express (Fed-Ex). Please ask for a rate quotation. We will accept whatever payment method you are most comfortable with. If upon receipt of the item you are disappointed for any reason whatever, I offer a no questions asked return policy. Send it back, I will give you a complete refund of the purchase price (less our original shipping costs).
Most of the items I offer come from the collection of a family friend who was active in the field of Archaeology for over forty years. However many of the items also come from purchases I make in Eastern Europe, India, and from the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean/Near East) from various institutions and dealers. Though I have always had an interest in archaeology, my own academic background was in sociology and cultural anthropology. After my retirement however, I found myself drawn to archaeology as well. Aside from my own personal collection, I have made extensive and frequent additions of my own via purchases on Ebay (of course), as well as many purchases from both dealers and institutions throughout the world – but especially in the Near East and in Eastern Europe. I spend over half of my year out of the United States, and have spent much of my life either in India or Eastern Europe. In fact much of what we generate on Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay goes to support The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, as well as some other worthy institutions in Europe connected with Anthropology and Archaeology.
I acquire some small but interesting collections overseas from time-to-time, and have as well some duplicate items within my own collection which I occasionally decide to part with. Though I have a collection of ancient coins numbering in the tens of thousands, my primary interest is in ancient jewelry. My wife also is an active participant in the "business" of antique and ancient jewelry, and is from Russia. I would be happy to provide you with a certificate/guarantee of authenticity for any item you purchase from me. There is a fee for mailing under separate cover. Whenever I am overseas I have made arrangements for purchases to be shipped out via domestic mail. If I am in the field, you may have to wait for a week or two for a COA to arrive via international air mail. But you can be sure your purchase will arrive properly packaged and promptly - even if I am absent. And when I am in a remote field location with merely a notebook computer, at times I am not able to access my email for a day or two, so be patient, I will always respond to every email. Please see our
"ADDITIONAL TERMS OF SALE."