Shakespeare's Military Language: A Dictionary

(Paperback)

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Shakespeare's Military Language: A Dictionary is a comprehensive reference guide to Shakespeare's use of military language, customs and ideas. More than just a book of definitions, an A-Z of nearly 300 entries provides a comprehensive account of Shakespeare's portrayal of military life, tactics, and technology and explores how the plays comment upon military incidents and personalities of the Elizabethan era, and how warfare was presented on the Elizabethan stage. Warfare is everywhere in Shakespeare and the military action in many of Shakespeare's plays, and the military imagery in all his plays and poems, show that he possessed an extraordinarily detailed knowledge of warfare, both ancient and modern. Shakespeare's Military Language is an ideal guide to Shakespeare's military references for students of Shakespeare at every level.

Reviews

"Under the general editorship of Sandra Clarke, the series provides a comprehensive guide to significant specialist topics appearing in the Shakespeare oeuvre and includes reference works on Shakespeare's use of the law, his bookish knowledge, and his manipulation of theatrical practices and conventions.... What Edelman does competently and thoroughly is to provide detailed coverage of military terms and practices familiar to Shakespeare's audience but strange and even outlandish to a present day reader.... The dictionary entries fully explain unfamiliar terminology while the system of cross-referencing leads the reader toward a clear overview of a wide range of specialist theory and practice which, if followed through systematically, accumulates to produce an informed (though necessarily preliminary) account of Shakespeare's deployment of it."- Nina Taunton, The Shakespearean Apocrypha: A Publication of the Shakespeare Yearbook -- The Shakespearean Apocrypha

Author Bio

Charles Edelman is Honorary Senior Fellow at Edith Cowan University, Australia.