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RR 2014/179 The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy (2nd edition) Edited by Claire McEachern Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2013 xii + 302 pp. ISBN 978 1 107 01977 5 (hbck); ISBN 978 1 107 64332 1 (pbck) £55 $85 (hbck); £19.99 $29.99 (pbck) Cambridge Companions to Literature
Keywords Drama, Shakespeare, Tragedy
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-02-2014-0036
Only a decade after the original Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy appeared, comes this second edition, again edited by McEachern, an English professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Seeking, like its predecessor, "to acquaint the undergraduate reader with the forms, contexts, kinds and critical and theatrical lives" of Shakespeare's ten tragedies, from Titus Andronicus to Coriolanus, the rationale behind its appearance is the sheer "volume and pace" of criticism appearing since 2003 (p. ix). Once more, a distinguished array of academics from the USA and Britain has contributed. The result is a collection of impressive, if uneven, essays, topped and tailed with slightly perfunctory supporting features.
The introductory material includes a prefatory chronology of Shakespeare's life and the dates of first performance and publication of the major...