The Shakespearean Forest

Anne Barton's final book uncovers the pervasive presence of woodland in early modern drama, revealing its persistent imaginative power.

Anne Barton (Author)

9781009226684, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 August 2022

203 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.281 kg

'… Hester Leer-Jeffries has done a scrupulous job in making The Shakespearean Forest cohere and communicate … it is a remarkable book that luckily ended up being published even posthumously, written in a way that is amicable to lay readers as well as specialists.' Tommi Laine, Helsinki Book Review

The Shakespearean Forest, Anne Barton's final book, uncovers the pervasive presence of woodland in early modern drama, revealing its persistent imaginative power. The collection is representative of the startling breadth of Barton's scholarship: ranging across plays by Shakespeare (including Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, Macbeth, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Timon of Athens) and his contemporaries (including Jonson, Dekker, Lyly, Massinger and Greene), it also considers court pageants, treatises on forestry and chronicle history. Barton's incisive literary analysis characteristically pays careful attention to the practicalities of performance, and is supplemented by numerous illustrations and a bibliographical essay exploring recent scholarship in the field. Prepared for publication by Hester Lees-Jeffries, featuring a Foreword by Adrian Poole and an Afterword by Peter Holland, the book explores the forest as a source of cultural and psychological fascination, embracing and illuminating its mysteriousness.

Foreword Adrian Poole
Editor's note Hester Lees-Jeffries
Acknowledgements
1. Into the woods
2. Staging the forest
3. The wild man in the forest
4. 'Like the old Robin Hood of England'
5. The forest and the city
6. Let the forest judge
Afterword: Anne Barton (1933–2013) Peter Holland
Further reading
Index.

Subject Areas: Educational: English literature [YQE], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary theory [DSA], Shakespeare plays [DDS]