Author Description

Two dozen essays explore connections between the English playwright and the country where many of his plays are set. Their topics include Italian romanticism, Hamlet and the troublesome division of the Italian widow, Elizabethan dramatists and Italian books, the Venetian calendar, performance and the traditions of English Petrarchism in Twelfth Night, Machiavellian strategies in the speeches of Elizabeth I and in Henry V, Iachimo's Drug-Damn'd Italy and the problem of British national character in Cymbeline, Ariostan skepticism, an intertextual approach to Commedia dell'Arte, Italianate cynicism and the collapse of chivalry in Troilus and Cressida, the translation of culture and empire, and time and control in The Tempest. Reviews consider Melchiori's new edition of King Edward III, and works by David Skeele and Peter Holland. The text is double spaced and not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)