The Second Part of King Henry IV

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition retains Giorgio Melchiori's text of Shakespeare's The Second Part of King Henry IV. Melchiori argues that the play forms an unplanned sequel to the First Part, itself a 'remake' of an old, non-Shakespearean play. In the Second Part, Shakespeare deliberately exploits Falstaff's popular appeal and the resulting rich humour adds a comic dimension to the play, rendering it a unique blend of history, morality play and comedy. Among modern editions, Melchiori's is the one most firmly based on the quarto. This second edition includes a new section by Adam Hansen on recent stage, film and critical interpretations.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations and conventions
• Introduction: Publication and date
• Unconformities
• The sources and The Famous Victories
• The Henriad as remake
• Rewriting the remake
• The Morality structure
• The comedy of humours
• City and country comedy
• Language
• History
• Psychodrama
• Time and disease
• Part Two on the stage
• Recent stage, film and critical interpretations by Adam Hansen
• Note on the text
• List of characters
• The Play
• Textual analysis
• Appendixes
• 1 Shakespeare's use of Holinshed
• 2 Some historical and literary sources
• 3 The Famous Victories
• 4 Tarlton and the Lord Chief Justice
• Reading list