Early modern dramatists wrote collaboratively: a majority of plays were written by more than one person. Until recently, the solitary genius of Shakespeare was judged an exception.
Shakespeare was not a university wit but an actor, steeped in the practical world of theatre.
Early critics praised Shakespeare as the poet of nature–as if the natural world, rather than scholarship, was his inspiration.
From hoboyes to metaphors, Shakespeare’s music is a lot more than "hey nonny no."
Watching Shakespeare transform the texts of writers classical and contemporary into lively plots, puns, and persons is the nearest insight we get into his working practices.
Since the birth of cinema, Shakespeare has been repeatedly and revealingly reframed: as western or film noir, as high school or art house movie, as popular entertainment or film poetry.
Proto-feminist or Elizabethan misogynist? Ahead of his time or stuck in it? Readers, critics and actors have all had their views.
He was living at a time of significant friction between religions old and new, yet Shakespeare wrote no explicitly religious poetry or drama. Was he sceptic, secular, or perhaps closet Catholic?
As Marx and Keynes knew, gold and ducats, credit and debit, interest and economics are at the heart of Shakespeare's plots.
Shakespearean explorations of sexuality involve the collisions of identity, eroticism, and power that structure human relations on and off stage.
Shakespeare’s worldwide transmission in theatre, translation, and criticism across four centuries combines imperialism, globalisation, and cultural hybridity.
How far is Shakespeare’s immediate success due to his clever manipulation of other writers’ innovations, and what is it about his work that appeals to his contemporaries and beyond?
Shakespeare’s vitality in our own time is indeed a global phenomenon: invigorated by translations, adaptations, and creative transformations.
Death is everywhere in Shakespeare, prompting existential questioning as characters imagine their own.
On the thrilling cusp between superstition and rationality, Shakespeare’s plays exploit the theatre as a place of make-believe and fantasy.
Illuminating Shakespeare is your way in to exploring different aspects of Shakespeare, whatever your level of interest and expertise. There are resources for everyone from school student to scholar, including specially-commissioned videos, articles, quizzes, infographics, and journal articles made free for this website.
Announcing publication of the landmark New Oxford Shakespeare
Explore our infographic on the OUPblog
Gabriel Egan notes that we always knew Shakespeare was a collaborative writer
Gary Taylor writes that Shakespeare's plays have always welcomed new collaborators, new venues, and new audiences
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