... In this chapter, Boucher argues that Slavoj Žižek’s theory of the traumatic kernel of the Real at the center of social antagonism provides the key to understanding what is for contemporary critics Shakespeare’s most problematic play, The Merchant of Venice . Homing in on the disturbing affect...

.... Adams, John Quincy. The Character of Desdemona [1836]. In Notes and Com- ments upon Certain Plays and Actors of Shakespeare, with Criticism and Correspondence, edited by James Henry Hackett, 3rd ed., 234 49. New York: Carleton, 1864. Adams, John Quincy. Misconceptions of Shakespeare upon the Stage...

... Robeson s ground- breaking, controversial per for mance in 1943. 7 William Winter, Shakespeare on the Stage: Fourth Paper: Othello, Century Magazine 82 (1911): 512. 8 Othello s Costume, Once a Week, September 8, 1866, 274, original emphasis. 9 Ellen Terry, Ellen Terry s Memoirs, edited by by Edith...

... There are many links between Shakespeare's monster Caliban, in The Tempest , and Abelard’s story in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao : ideas concerning human monsters, education, language, political power, and the magical agency of books. This chapter considers the relationship between...