Arden Student Skills: Language and Writing volumes offer a new type of study aid that combines lively critical insight with practical guidance on the writing skills you need to develop in order to engage fully with Shakespeare's texts. The books' core focus is on language: both understanding and enjoying Shakespeare's complex dramatic language and expanding your own critical vocabulary as you respond to his plays. Each guide in the series will empower you to read and write about Shakespeare with increased confidence and enthusiasm.
King Lear: Language and Writing reveals how the play's elemental power springs from its language, which is at once simple, relentless and resonant, as well as from its full-blown double plot that multiplies unbearably both the follies and the pain of its protagonists. Chapters explore the play's status as a tragedy, its stagecraft, primary source material and both its textual and theatre history. The 'Writing Matters' section at the end of each chapter provides suggestions for activities that can further enhance your understanding of the play. This is an indispensable guide to Shakespeare's rich and complex dramatic language and will improve and develop your critical writing skills.

Jean Howard is George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, USA. Her many books include Marxist Shakespeares (edited with Scott Shershow, 2000) and four Companions to Shakespeare (edited with Richard Dutton, 2001). She is co-editor of The Norton Shakespeare and General Editor of the Bedford Contextual Editions of Shakespeare. From 1999-2000 she was President of the Shakespeare Association of America.

Series Preface
Introduction
I. Language in Print
II. Language: Forms and Uses
III. Language Through Time
IV. Writing and Language Skills
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index