In Julius Caesar the authors find the underpinning of the later storms of King Lear, Macbeth and The Winter's Tale, in which the portent and significance of the weather are debated. This chapter argues that the chief characteristic of a singular oragious identity is the play's engagement with the spectacular, in which the storm itself plays a major part. It talks about the staging of the storm, exploring the opening of the Globe, the legacy of theatrical storm effects and the evidence for their use in the original production of 1599. The chapter investigates the ways in which William Shakespeare depicts weather interpretation in the text of Julius Caesar. In modern editions of Julius Caesar, little is made of the theatrical effect of the storm. Shakespeare's interest in dictating the sound levels of the plays, then, starts to be expressed only once he has begun to write for the Globe.

For Tanya Pollard, the question of how dramatic genres came to take shape on the early modern stage becomes intimately linked to the print history of Greek plays, both on the Continent and in England. Arranged side-by-side with their Latin translations, and published with paratextual glosses and theoretical treatises, the format of these printed books shaped not only how Greek plays were read and interpreted, but also how generic forms were theorised and reprocessed into new English compositions.

This chapter presents the anthologies on Spanish contemporary poetry including El ciruelo blanco y el ciruelo rojo by Luis Antonio de Villena and Pasion, muerte y resurreccion de Propercio de Asis by Luis Alberto de Cuenc. 'El ciruelo blanco y el ciruelo rojo' perfectly embodies the aims of the novísimos: to modernise and renew poetry culturally and linguistically. Propercio de Asis, some of whose poetry Luis Alberto de Cuenca has translated into Spanish, was a classical poet acclaimed for his four books of Elegies, many of which focused on a female character called Cynthia. The chapter also presents Condesa Morfina by Leopoldo Maria Panero and Sobre el placer reciproco by Anibal Nunez. 'Condesa Morfina' is a long poem with a complex and challenging structure, a very apt example of the poetry written during the cultural transition to democracy and the disenchantment that emerged during those years.

Una’s fallibility in canto I has been underestimated thanks to the received interpretation of Una’s injunction to Red Cross at I.i.19.2 as a laudable invocation of “saving faith.” But Una is merely (and, in terms of Protestant doctrine, dubiously) urging Red Cross to have faith in himself. Una is implicated in all the mistakes made by Red Cross.

This chapter argues that painting, poetry and theatre being three generic means that make one see painting shows, poetry lays bare and theatre does both through re-presentation on the stage Howard Barker's triple creation operates a centripetal triangulation. It shows how the paintings and the poems may allow one to read the plays more effectively, not in terms of what they say, but of what they, too, actually and repeatedly do 'in the deed itself'. The chapter discusses Barker's exhibition of thirty-five pictures shown in Caen in 2008, supplemented by the catalogue of Landscape with Cries, for his 2005 Paris exhibition. The Punishment of the Judges seemed to be the central piece of the Caen exhibition, its apparent clarity amounting to a denial of understanding, the scene possibly echoing the line in Barker's poem 'Impending 2': 'The hanged man sack-still in blue woods'.

This chapter examines the ways in which Shakespeare's storm is weighted towards human experience rather than heavenly judgement. In Shakespeare's storm there is no interventionist god; the prince, the seamen and the audience experience the storm together. G. Wilson Knight maintains that 'to analyse the tempests in Pericles would be to analyse the whole play'. The sea has been described as 'the play's second protagonist, facilitator of and actor in Pericles's imperial story'. The continual use of the storm enables Pericles to represent these shifting perspectives at once delicately and forcefully. The chapter argues by reading the storms of writer in the context of their Biblical allusions one can more precisely discern each writer's approach. It introduces John Gower's Confessio Amantis notwithstanding, the Bible is one text which can be said with a relative degree of certainty to have been encountered by both playwrights.

The play exhibits the familiar and obvious relationship of storm and the supernatural. Macbeth exploits this relationship in its staging, with stage directions for Thunder and Lightning for each entrance of the Witches. It is also present in the play's meteorology, which suggests supernatural origins for the remarkable weather. The relationship of storm and battle is intriguing and may offer an insight into why William Shakespeare opens with the storm. The noise of thunder and that of the battle drums must have sounded fairly similar. In beginning with a storm and with the incantatory chants of the Witches, Shakespeare is drawing on a vein of reference which immediately contextualises the thunder and lightning. The weather is constructed as supernatural from the outset. The connection between storm and the supernatural, then, a staple of early modern theatre, is made explicit from the beginning of Macbeth.

Henceforth Una represents Augustine’s City of God. As such, she stands for a Church that is distinct from the “visible” earthly institutions that co-exist with it. She is not (as most commentators have thought) the Church of England. Correctly interpreted, the Kirkrapine episode underlines Spenser’s preoccupation with the invisibility of the Church. The physical elusiveness of the House of Holiness also tends to distinguish the Church proper from church buildings and forms generally.

The Dying of Today is an exemplary play regarding the deployment of specific dramatic strategies pertinent to the genre, for the mediation of narrative through pure narration, dialogue, commentary, role-playing, visible and invisible narrators. The play is also about intertextual narrative discourses and cross-genre renarrativisation since behind Howard Barker's story lie two ancient complementary stories. Barker's transformation consists of a masterful conflation of the two stories into a new fabula. On one level, Plutarch's anecdotal narration provides the dramatis personae and the psychological and ethical frame of the new play. On another level, Thucydides' minute description of the catastrophic events is remediated via an interminably shifting narrative voice and model. Barker is very fond of the word 'ecstasy', which in its philosophical use means moving off the normal position: a dislocation that also brings in a new vision of the world.