Shakespeare and Multiplicity

Brian Gibbons presents the idea of multiplicity as a way of understanding the form and style of Shakespeare's plays: composed of many different codes, woven together in a unique pattern for each play, rather than variations on the fixed notion of comedy or tragedy. The method of this book is comparison, using an imaginative range of texts and a variety of new approaches, and there is lively discussion of modern stage performance. The study selects plays from different phases of Shakespeare's career. Comparison with major works by Spenser, Sidney and Marlowe is an important feature, while Shakespeare's re-use of his own previous work further demonstrates his artistic decision-making in action and suggests how he himself saw his own earlier plays and poems. Far from reducing the plays to a formula, Brian Gibbons shows how criticism can make articulate what popular audiences have always instinctively known, that the plays' sheer abundance and variety is their strength. This is an original book: it is scholarly, yet straightforward and lively, and it engages an issue of central interest.