Shakespeare and Spenser: Attractive Opposites is a much-needed volume that brings together ten original papers by the experts, on the relations between Spenser and Shakespeare. There has been much noteworthy work on the linguistic borrowings of Shakespeare from Spenser, but the subject has never before been treated systematically, and the linguistic borrowings lead to broader-scale borrowings and influences which are treated here. An additional feature of the book is that for the first time a large bibliography of previous work is offered which will be of the greatest help to those who follow up the opportunities offered by this collection.Shakespeare and Spenser: Attractive Opposites presents new approaches, heralding a resurgence of interest in the relations between two of the greatest Renaissance English poets to a wider scholarly group and in a more systematic manner than before. This will be of interest to Students and academics interested in Renaissance literature.

Introduction. Spenser, Marlow, Shakespeare: Methodological Investigations1. Beyond Binarism: Eros/Death and Venus/Mars in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra and Spenser's Faerie Queene2. Spenser and Shakespeare: Polarized Approaches to Psychology, Poetics, and Patronage3. Perdita, Pastorella, and the Romance of Literary Form: Shakespeare's Counter-Spenserian Authorship4. Pastoral Forms and Religious Reform in Spenser and Shakespeare5. The Equinoctial Boar: Venus and Adonis in Spenser's Garden, Shakespeare's Epyllion and Richard III's England6. Hamlet's debt to Spenser's Mother Hubberds Tale: A Satire on Robert cecil?7. Fusion: Spenserian Metaphor and Sidnean Example in Shakespeares King Lear8. What means a Knight? Red Cross Knight and Edgar9. The Seven Deadly Sins and Shakespeare's Jacobean TragediesWorks CitedBibliographyIndex