SELECTED CRITICISM: SHAKESPEARE
General to Specific Criticism on Plays in Order of Our Syllabus (refer to source for full bibliographic information, most of these books are available through UI Library Reserve, under English 345:
http://db.lib.uidaho.edu/ereserve/show_course.php?pointer=166
--see that list for additional critical works)

McEvoy, Sean. Shakespeare: The Basics. Second edition. Routledge, 2006.

A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Volume I: The Tragedies Ed. RICHARD DUTTON and JEAN E. HOWARD (Blackwell, 2005)

A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Volume II: The Histories Ed. RICHARD DUTTON and JEAN E. HOWARD (Blackwell, 2005)

A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Volume III: The Comedies Ed. RICHARD DUTTON and JEAN E. HOWARD (Blackwell, 2005) includes Phyllis Rackin’s essay on “Shakespeare’s Crossdressing Comedies” as well as essays on individual plays (22 essays)

A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Volume IV: The Poems, Problem Comedies, Late Plays Ed. RICHARD DUTTON and JEAN E. HOWARD (Blackwell, 2005)

Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Olin, eds. Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. (2003)--on library reserve.

Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare After All. Pantheon, 2004. [Garber writes a separate essay on each of Sh's plays]

Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, 2nd ed. Eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. Cornell UP, 1994. [esp. Dollimore's first introductory chapter "Shakespeare, cultural materialism and the new historicism"]

Traub, Valerie. Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakepearean Drama. Routledge, 1992. [esp. ch. 2 on Henry IV/V, ch. 5 on AYLI and TN]

Jardine, Lisa. Reading Shakespeare Historically. Routledge, 1996. [includes chapters on Othello, Twelfth Night, on heroines, and more]

Marxist Shakespeares. Eds. Jean E. Howard and Scott Cutler Shershow. Routledge, 2001. [includes essays on Othello, Measure for Measure, and more]

Callaghan, Dympna. Shakespeare Without Women: Representing gender and race on the Renaissance stage. Routledge, 2000. [includes essays on Twelfth Night, Othello, The Tempest, and more]

Hillman, Richard. William Shakespeare: The Problem Plays. Twayne, 1993. [including Measure for Measure]
Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest. Routledge, 1992. [provocative]

Spectacular Shakespeare: Critical Theory and Popular Cinema. Eds. Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks. Dickinson/Associated UP, 2002. Includes Laurie Osborne, "Cutting Up Characters: The Erotics Politics of Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night." 89-109, as well as essays on Branagh’s film Much Ado About Nothing and on his film of Hamlet.

Howard, Jean E. The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. see esp. pp. 112-20 that includes discussion of Twelfth Night London: Routledge, 1994.

As You Like It
Bono, Barbara. "Mixed Gender, Mixed Genre in Shakespeare's As You Like It." William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Ed. Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Interpretations. Chelsea House, 1988. 131-48.
Howard, Jean. "Power and Eros: Crossdressing in Dramatic Representation and Theatrical Practice." The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. Routledge, 1994. 93-128.
Smith, Bruce. "The Passionate Shepherd." Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics. Univ. of Chicago P, 1991. 79-115.
Dusinberre, Juliet. "As Who Liked It?" Shakespeare Survey 46. Ed. Stanley Wells. Cambridge UP, 1994. 9-21.
Erickson, Peter. Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare's Drama [includes chs. on AYLI]. U of Calif. P, 1985
Montrose, Louis Adrian. "'The Place of a Brother' In As You Like It: Social Process and Comic Form." Shakespeare Quarterly 32 (1981): 28-54.
Traub, V. see above, first section

Twelfth Night
Rixon, Penny. chapter on the play, access via course Blackboard site
Astington, John. "Malvolio and the Eunuchs: Texts and Revels in Twelfth Night." Shakespeare Survey 46. Ed. Stanley Wells. Cambridge UP, 1994. 23-34.
Gay, Penny. "Twelfth Night: Desire and Its Discontents." As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women. Routledge, 1994. 17-47.
Hamilton, Donna. Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England. see ch.4, "Twelfth Night: The Errors of Exorcism"
Freedman, Barbara. Staging the Gaze: Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, and Shakeperean Comedy. see ch. 6, "Naming Loss: Mourning and Representation in Twelfth Night" [challenging]
Coddon, Karin S. "'Slander in an allow'd fool': Twelfth Night's crisis of the aristocracy." Studies in English Literature 33 (1993): 309
Suzuki, Mihoko. "Gender, class, and the social order in late Elizabethan drama." Theatre Journal 44 (1992): 31 [includes discusson of TN]
Traub, V. see above, first section
Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Bruce R. Smith. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. [introduction (access intro via course Blackboard site), plus useful range of documentary texts that address a range of cultural and historical contexts]
Jardine, Lisa. Reading Shakespeare Historically. Routledge, 1996.
Callaghan, Dympna. Shakespeare Without Women: Representing gender and race on the Renaissance stage. Routledge, 2000.
Dickinson UP, 2002. Includes Laurie Osborne, "Cutting Up Characters: The Erotics Politics of Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night." 89-109.

Measure for Measure
Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Ed. Richard P. Wheeler. G.K.Hall, 1999.[very useful collection, highly recommended, including opening chapter by Wheeler, also reprints essays by Dollimore, Maus, Baines, Haynes, Adelman, and more]
Dollimore, Jonathan. "Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure." Political Shakespeare, 72-87 [recommended]
Baines, Barbara. "Assaying the Power of Chastity in Measure for Measure." Studies in English Literature 30 (1990): 284-98; also reprinted in Wheeler's anthology.
Engle, Lars. “Measure for Measure and Modernity: The Problem of the Skeptic’s Authority.” Shakespeare and Modernity: Early Modern to Millenium. Ed. Hugh Grady. New York: Routledge, 2000. 85-104.
Maus, Katherine Eisaman. "Sexual Secrecy in Measure for Measure." Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance. U of Chicago P, 1995. 157-81; also reprinted in Wheeler's anthology.
Hamilton, Donna B. Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England, see ch. 5 on MM: The Transition to Stuart Rule, 111-27.
Hillman, Richard. William Shakespeare: The Problem Plays. Twayne, 1993. [including Measure for Measure]
Shuger, Deborah Kuller. Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State in “Measure for Measure.” New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Williamson, Marilyn L. The Patriarchy of Shakespeare's Comedies (Wayne State, 1986), see ch. 2 on the social regulation of desire
Thomas, Vivian. The Moral Universe of Shakespeare's Problem Plays (Barnes and Noble, 1987), esp. 67-80, 173-209 on MM.
Hayne, Victoria. "Performing Social Practice [in MM]" Shakespeare Q 44 (1993): 1-29; also available in Wheeler's anthology.
Marxist Shakespeares. Eds. Jean E. Howard and Scott Cutler Shershow. Routledge, 2001.
A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Volume IV: The Poems, Problem Comedies, Late Plays. Ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (2005), includes Theodora Jankowski’s “Hymeneal Blood, Interchangeable Women, and the Early Modern Marriage Economy in Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well,” Karen Cunningham’s “Opening Doubts Upon the Law: Measure for Measure,”

Henry the Fifth
Erickson, Peter. Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare's Drama [includes ch HV]. U of Calif. P, 1985 [recommended]
Leggatt, Alexander. Shakespeare's Political Drama (HIV &HV)
Simmons, J. L. "Masculine Negotiations in Shakespeare's History Plays: Hal, Hotspur, and 'the foolish Mortimer'." Shakespeare Quarterly 44.4. (1993): 440-63.
Newman, Karen. Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama. U Chicago P, 1991. [esp . ch. 6 on Henry V, 95-108]
Dollimore, Jonathan and Alan Sinfield. "History and ideology: the instance of Henry V." In Alternative Shakespeares. [highly recommended]--or see a more recent version of this essay in Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading. U of California P, 1992. 109-42. [also on course Blackboard site “History and Ideology, Masculinity and Miscegnation”]
Rabkin, Norman. "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V." Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977): 279-96.
McEachern, Claire. "Henry V and the Paradox of the Body Politic." Shakespeare Q 45 (1994): 33-56. [recommended]
Brennan, Anthony. Twayne's New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: Henry V.
Donaldson, Peter. S. "Taking on Shakespeare: Kenneth Branagh's Henry V." Shakespeare Quarterly (Spring 1991)
Pearlman, E. William Shakespeare: The History Plays. Twayne, 1992.
Traub, Valerie. see above, first section
King Henry V, ed. Emma Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. [Shakespeare in production series]

The Merchant of Venice
See resources on course Blackboard site, including Norton resource file on the play, Marjorie Garber’s chapter, an excerpt from Kiernan Ryan, and from Catherine Belsey.
Maus: Merchant of Venice (file)

Merchant of Venice (New Casebooks) [Coyle] Introduction--Martin Coyle * Comedy and The Merchant of Venice --Graham Holderness * Re-Reading The Merchant of Venice --Kiernan Ryan * The Merchant of Venice and the Possibilities of Historical Criticism--Walter Cohen * Shakespeare and the Jews--James Shapiro * Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Colonization and Miscegenation in The Merchant of Venice --Kim F. Hall * Portia's Ring: Unruly Women and Structures of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice --Karen Newman * Love in Venice--Catherine Belsey * How to Read The Merchant of Venice without being Heterosexist--Alan Sinfield * Historical Difference and Venetian Patriarchy--John Drakakis * Transformations of Authenticity: The Merchant of Venice in Israel--Avraham Oz
Merchant of Venice: Critical Essays [Wheeler]
Merchant of Venice: New Critical Essays [Mahon & Mahon] includes essay by John Drakakis on “Jessica.”

Much Ado About Nothing
Howard, Jean. “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. Ed. Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor. New York: Methuen, 1987. 163-87.
Hunt, Maurice. “The Reclamation of Language in Much Ado About Nothing” via course Blackboard site.
Moisan, Thomas. “Deforming Sources: Literary Antecedents and Their Traces in Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Studies 31 (2003)
Spectacular Shakespeare: Critical Theory and Popular Cinema. Eds. Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks. Dickinson/Associated UP, 2002. Includes essay by Samuel Crowl on Branagh’s film Much Ado About Nothing