Eric Rasmussen

Douglas Bruster

Everyman and Mankind are morality plays which mark the turn of the medieval period to the early modern, with their focus on the individual. Everyman follows a man's journey towards death and his efforts to secure himself a life thereafter, whilst Mankind shows a man battling with temptation and sin, often with great humour. Both texts are modernised here and edited to the highest standardsof scholarship, with full on-page commentaries giving the depth ofinformation and insight associated with all Arden editions. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction argues that the playssignal the birth of the early modern consciousness and puts them intheirhistoric and religious contexts. An account is also given of thestaging and performance history of the plays and their critical historyand significance. With a wealth of helpful and incisive commentary thisis the finest edition of the plays available.

Everyman and Mankind

Jonathan Bate

William Shakespeare

This fresh new edition of Shakespeare's most celebrated play includes a new introduction from scholar Jonathan Bate, interviews with acclaimed directors Ron Daniels, John Caird and Michael Boyd, outstanding scene-by-scene analysis and on-page notes, and also looks at specific productions in the play's history.

Hamlet

Katharine Eisaman Maus

David M. Bevington

Lars Engle

Popular in their own time, the 27 plays included here—by Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, among many others—reveal why these playwrights' achievements, like Shakespeare's, deserve reading, teaching, and performing afresh in our time. Edited by a team of exceptional scholars and teachers, this anthology opens an extraordinary tradition in drama to new readers and audiences.

A Norton Anthology

English Renaissance Drama

Shakespeare, William

The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works

Developed in partnership with The Royal Shakespeare Company, this edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare combines exemplary textual scholarship with elegant writing and design. Sir Jonathan Bate and Professor Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, lead the expert editorial team. Bate’s excellent general introduction and essays on each play draw on a unique wealth of experience and resources and will help the reader to understand Shakespeare's plays as they were originally intended – as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. The text is based on the iconic 1623 First Folio: the first and original Complete Works lovingly assembled by Shakespeare’s fellow actors and the version of Shakespeare’s text preferred by many actors and directors today. The result is a fresh and definitive Complete Works for the twenty-first century that will inspire students, teachers and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.

The Complete Works

Romeo and Juliet

From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's journey into the Forest of Arden. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of As You Like It in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with important Shakespearean directors (Dominic Cooke and Michael Boyd) and a Shakespearean actor (Naomi Frederick) – providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare’s career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended – as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare’s works for the twenty-first century.

As You Like It

Part literary detective story, part Shakespearean lore, The Shakespeare Thefts will charm the Bard's many fans. The first edition of Shakespeare's collected works, the First Folio, published in 1623, is one of the most valuable books in the world and has historically proven to be an attractive target for thieves. Of the 160 First Folios listed in a census of 1902, 14 were subsequently stolen-and only two of these were ever recovered. In his efforts to catalog all these precious First Folios, renowned Shakespeare scholar Eric Rasmussen embarked on a riveting journey around the globe, involving run-ins with heavily tattooed criminal street gangs in Tokyo, bizarre visits with eccentric, reclusive billionaires, and intense battles of wills with secretive librarians. He explores the intrigue surrounding the Earl of Pembroke, arguably Shakespeare's boyfriend, to whom the First Folio is dedicated and whose personal copy is still missing. He investigates the uncanny sequence of events in which a wealthy East Coast couple drowned in a boating accident and the next week their First Folio appeared for sale in Kansas. We hear about Folios that were censored, the pages ripped out of them, about a volume that was marked in red paint-or is it blood?-on every page; and of yet another that has a bullet lodged in its pages.

In Search of the First Folios

The Shakespeare Thefts

David M Bevington

From the Royal Shakespeare Company - a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's much-loved sonnets and poems. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Other Poems, providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. Ideal for students and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere, the RSC editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

Sonnets and Other Poems

From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a modern, definitive edition of Shakespeare's touching fable of loss and reunion. With an expert introduction by Sir Jonathan Bate, this unique edition presents a historical overview of Pericles in performance, takes a detailed look at specific productions, and recommends film versions. Included in this edition are interviews with three leading directors and an actor – Adrian Noble, Dominic Cooke, Adrian Jackson and Laura Rees – providing an illuminating insight into the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible. This edition also includes an essay on Shakespeare’s career and Elizabethan theatre, and enables the reader to understand the play as it was originally intended – as living theatre to be enjoyed and performed. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare editions offer a fresh, accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare’s works for the twenty-first century.

Pericles

Assistant Professor of English Eric Rasmussen, PH.D.

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus survives in two considerably different versions: the A-text (1604) and the B-text (1616). For generations of editors, the existence of these two versions has posed one of the most complex textual problems in English literature.

A Textual Companion to Doctor Faustus

From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's magnificent tragedy of love, jealousy and explosive racial politics THIS EDITION INCLUDES: • An illuminating introduction to Othello by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate • The play - with clear and authoritative explanatory notes on each page • A helpful scene-by-scene analysis and key facts about the play • An introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre • A rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions The most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or participate in it. This unique edition presents a historical overview of Othello in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with two leading directors and an actor– Trevor Nunn, Michael Attenborough and Antony Sher – so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death. Ideal for students, theatre-goers, actors and general readers, the RSC Shakespeare plays offer an accessible and contemporary approach to reading and rediscovering Shakespeare's works for the twenty-first century.

Othello

David Bevington

Dr. Faustus is one of the jewels of early modern English drama, and is still widely performed today. Interestingly, the play has come down to the contemporary audience in two distinct versions that have become known as the 'A' and the 'B' texts. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, who edited the original Revels edition over twenty years ago (and are two of the most eminent editors currently working), have hit upon the fascinating idea of presenting both texts on facing pages. This allows readers to compare the two ‘versions’, the ‘A’ text which is the one closest to Marlowe, and the longer ‘B’ text with additions by Samuel Rowley; in this unique edition, the reader is made aware of the changing tastes of audiences, the stage history of the play, and of just how intricate ‘editing’ a play can be. With a concise and illuminating introduction, and relevant notes and images, this Revels Student Edition of the 'A' and 'B' texts of Dr. Faustus will prove to be an enthralling document, and an excellent edition for student and theatre-goer alike.

A parallel-text edition

Dr Faustus: The A- and B- texts (1604, 1616)

Illustrated with photographs of performances chosen by RSC Directors, this title features on-page notes which explain words and phrases unfamiliar to a modern audience.

Complete Works

The first edition of The Winter's Tale developed by and for the RSC, with unique material including a new introduction from Jonathan Bate and interviews with important RSC directors

The Winter's Tale

Real Life Devotions is just that. They are inspired from Eric’s actual life, either from physical experience of things he took part in or saw or that he was very aware of. The idea came from the Holy Spirit and was sparked as he read devotions, realizing, “I have a story for that!” “I have a story for that too!” It is a very easy read, short for each day. Why forty? Jesus went into the desert for forty days and nights. God made it rain for forty days and nights. Forty is very significant in the scripture. Forty is the number of testing and of probation that results in a breakthrough. The author’s prayer is that you may have testing and breakthrough during and after reading and practicing this devotion and reading it and practicing it in future times.

For Morning and Evening 40 Day Devotional

Real Life Devotions

Dr. Faustus is one of the jewels of early modern English drama, and is still widely performed today. Interestingly, the play has come down to the contemporary audience in two distinct versions that have become known as the 'A' and the 'B' texts. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, who edited the original Revels edition over twenty years ago (and are two of the most eminent editors currently working), have hit upon the fascinating idea of presenting both texts on facing pages. This allows readers to compare the two 'versions', the 'A' text which is the one closest to Marlowe, and the longer 'B' text with additions by Samuel Rowley; in this unique edition, the reader is made aware of the changing tastes of audiences, the stage history of the play, and of just how intricate 'editing' a play can be. With a concise and illuminating introduction, and relevant notes and images, this Revels Student Edition of the 'A' and 'B' texts of Dr. Faustus will prove to be an enthralling document, and an excellent edition for student and theatre-goer alike.

By Christopher Marlowe

Dr. Faustus: The A- and B- Texts (1604, 1616)

Among the plays staged at the Globe and published in Shakespeare's lifetime were The London Prodigal by William Shakespeare, A Yorkshire Tragedy written by W. Shakespeare and Thomas Lord Cromwell written by W. S. Could Shakespeare really have written these plays? Why were they excluded from the First Folio of his collected works? Edited by renowned Shakespeare scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen and published in coordination with the Royal Shakespeare Company, this is the first edition in over 100 years of the fascinatingly varied body of plays that has become known as "The Shakespeare Apocrypha". Among the highlights are the whole text of Sir Thomas More, which includes the only scene from any play to survive in Shakespeare's own handwriting; the history play Edward III, including a superb seduction scene by Shakespeare; and the domestic murder tragedy Arden of Faversham, in which Shakespeare's hand has been detected by recent computer-assisted analysis. This is also the first ever Shakespeare edition to include the 1602 edition of Thomas Kyd's pioneering The Spanish Tragedy, with "additions" that the latest research attributes to Shakespeare. Included is a comprehensive account of the authorship and attribution of each play. Featuring introductions and background on each play, key fact boxes with information on sources and the distribution of parts, on-page notes explaining difficult or obsolete vocabulary, and interviews with directors and actors who have staged the plays, this work will be an essential addition to the library of any Shakespeare buff.

Eric Rasmussen

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