Böcker av Brian Vickers

A groundbreaking new account of the author of The Spanish Tragedy that establishes him as a major Elizabethan dramatistThomas Kyd (1558-1594) was a highly regarded dramatist and the author of The Spanish Tragedy, the first revenge tragedy and the most influential Elizabethan play. In this first full study of his life and works, Brian Vickers discusses Kyd's accepted canon as well as three additional plays Vickers has newly identified as having been written by Kyd-exciting discoveries that establish him as a major dramatist. Thomas Dekker, a fellow Elizabethan dramatist, referred to "industrious Kyd," which suggests a greater output than the three plays traditionally attributed to him-The Spanish Tragedy, Soliman and Perseda, and Cornelia. Kyd worked between 1585 and 1594, when the plague led to the anonymous publication of many plays because of the breakup of several London theatre companies. Researching this corpus, Vickers has identified Kyd's authorship of three more plays: Arden of Faversham, the first domestic tragedy, King Leir and his three daughters, a tragicomedy that provided Shakespeare with his main source, and Fair Em, a love comedy. These attributions are based on two forms of evidence: unique similarities of plot between Kyd's acknowledged and newly attributed plays and many unique phrases shared by all six plays as identified by modern software. Discussing all the plays in detail and placing them in biographical and historical context, Thomas Kyd offers a major reassessment of an underappreciated Elizabethan playwright.

First complete, integrated corpus of Kyd and first critical edition of his collected works in over one hundred years, with major new discoveries of authorship and attribution.

In the 1980s influential scholars argued that Shakespeare revised King Lear in light of theatrical performance, resulting in two texts by the bard's own hand. The two-text theory hardened into orthodoxy. Here Sir Brian Vickers makes the case that Shakespeare did not cut his original text. At stake is the way his greatest play is read and performed.

Presents a study of the use of prose in the Shakespeare's plays. This book defines the different dramatic and emotional functions which Shakespeare gave to prose and verse, and proceeds to analyze the recurrent stylistic devices used in his prose.

Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609) included a poem called A Lover's Complaint, of questionable authenticity. This text, the first full study of this poem, shows that it has many un-Shakespearian features. Using detailed analysis Vickers attributes the poem to John Davies of Hereford (1565-1618). An important work which will re-define the Shakespeare canon.

Dr Vicker's purpose is to reinstate Bacon as one of the supreme masters of English prose in a period which made rich use of all the expressive resources of the medium. The study is both analytical and historical: it isolates the major features of Bacon's style, and sets them in the context of Renaissance theory and practice.

The essays in this volume present a collective study of one of the major problems in the recent history of science: To what extent did the occult 'sciences' (alchemy, astrology, numerology, and natural magic) contribute to the scientific revolution of the late Renaissance?