Library of Essays

For the last three centuries, Shakespeare’s plays have been continuously glossed, commented on and annotated. However, there still remain quite a few obscure passages and complex words which continue to puzzle and cause debate as to their precise meanings. One such word is pawn, glossed as a pun in some editions of King Lear, and passed over in silence in other plays where it appears in similar contexts.  This essay proposes an alternative reading of the word in King Lear, King John and The Winter’s Tale. The hypothesis put forward is that Shakespeare was indeed hinting at the various senses of this word and exploiting its punning potential in these three plays. This suggestion is supported by a series of examples of similar rhetorical exploitation of this polysemic word as found in several contemporary authors. These examples will demonstrate that the various senses of the word were indeed very much alive in Elizabethan England –and quite probably in Shakespeare’s mind. 

Synopsis: In this paper I bring together an array of evidence, much of it new, to show that the satirical author, Thomas Nashe, had a much closer and more vitriolic relationship with Henry Wriothesley and, by extension, William Shakespeare than has previously been realized. The discovery sheds more light on the relationship of the third earl of Southampton with Shakespeare and strengthens the probability of a significant element of biography within Shakespeare's Sonnets.

A Socio-Religious Context for _King Lear_

Teaching the Late Plays as Family Romance

Teaching Shakespeare Today

Shakespeare Electronic Text Archive

Electronic Facsimile of Shakespeare

Ambiguous Evidence of Revision in Q1 Love's Labour's Lost

Petrarch and Pyramus in the Woods of Athens

QUEEN OF THE FIRST QUARTO

Granville's Jew of Venice

EVIDENCE OF REVISION IN OTHELLO

LIFELONG LEARNING VIA DIFFERENT RECEPTIVE CHANNELS 3

LIFELONG LEARNING VIA DIFFERENT RECEPTIVE CHANNELS 2

lona Goldmane (University of Latvia) LIFELONG LEARNING VIA DIFFERENT RECEPTIVE CHANNELS

Zakov, Amnon.  "Death Becomes Hamlet  - OR - Is That The Question? A Tragic Comedy in Two Acts and One Free Programme Written and translated from Hebrew
 

William L. Davis. "Shakespeare, [Re]Visionist"

David Richman The Historie of King Lear

Carry This Island Home in His Pocket: BUYING AND SELLING SHAKESPEARE

Literary Computing and Shakespeare's Sonnets