This is the first collection of criticism on Shakespeare's romances to register the impact of modern literary theory on interpretations of these plays. Kiernan Ryan brings together the most important recent essays on Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, the greatest of the 'last plays', staging a dynamic debate between feminist, poststructuralist, psycho-analytic and new historicist views of the masterpieces Shakespeare wrote at the close of his career. The book aims not only to anthologise accounts of the last plays by leading Shakespearean critics, including Stephen Greenblatt, Janet Adelman, Leah Marcus, Howard Felperin and Steven Mullaney, but also to dramatise what is at stake in the choice of a particular critical approach. It allows the student to compare the strengths and limitations of a deconstructive and a feminist reading of the same romance, or to test the plausibility of one psychoanalytic angle on the last plays against another. A comprehensive, fully annotated bibliography provides an unrivalled guide to further reading on all four plays.

General Editors' Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Anne Barton Leontes and the Spider: Language and Speaker in Shakespeare's Last Plays 2. Leonard Tennenhouse Family Rites: Patriarchal Strategies in Shakespearean Romance 3. Ruth Nevo The Perils of Pericles 4. Steven Mullaney `All That Monarchs Do': The Obscured Stages of Authority in `Pericles' 5. Janet Adelman Masculine Authority and the Maternal Body: The Return to Origins in `Cymbeline' 6. Leah S. Marcus `Cymbeline' and the Unease of Topicality 7. Carol Thomas Neely `The Winter's Tale': Women and Issue 8. Howard Felperlin `Tongue-tied, Our Queen?': The Deconstruction of Presence in `The Winter's Tale' 9. Stephen Greenblatt `The Tempest': Marital Law in the Land of Cockaigne 10. David Norbrook `What Cares These Roarers for the Name of the King?': Language and Utopia in `The Tempest' Notes on Contributors Further Reading Index