In this useful guide, Leah Scragg indicates some of the ways in which meaning is generated in Shakespearian drama and the kinds of approaches that might lead to a fuller understanding of the plays. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of the dramatic composition, such as verse and prose, imagery and spectacle, and the use of soliloquy, and explores how this contributes to the overall meaning. Written in a clear and helpful style, Discovering Shakespearian Meaning enables students to discover the meaning for themselves.
In this useful guide, Leah Scragg indicates some of the ways in which meaning is generated in Shakespearian drama and the kinds of approaches that might lead to a fuller understanding of the plays. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of the dramatic composition, such as verse and prose, imagery and spectacle, and the use of soliloquy, and explores how this contributes to the overall meaning. Written in a clear and helpful style, Discovering Shakespearian Meaning enables students to discover the meaning for themselves.
Shakespeare’s plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare’s greatest plays–A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest. In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare’s philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by the essays of Montaigne that were translated into English while Shakespeare was writing. In addition to chapters on the great plays, there are also essays on Shakespeare and gender and his plays from the aspects of psychology, ethics, and tragedy. As McGinn says about Shakespeare, “There is not a sentimental bone in his body. He has the curiosity of a scientist, the judgment of a philosopher, and the soul of a poet.” McGinn relates the ideas in the plays to the later philosophers such as David Hume and the modern commentaries of critics such as Harold Bloom. The book is an exhilarating reading experience, especially for students who are discovering the greatest writer in English.
A dictionary of terms that were first coined in William Shakespeare's plays. Each entry explains the source of the word, how the word is used throughout history, and where each word appears in Shakespeare's works.
A study of manuscript annotations in a curious copy of John Baret's ALVEARIE, an Elizabethan dictionary published in 1580. This revised and expanded second edition presents new evidence and furthers the argument that the annotations were written by William Shakespeare. This ebook contains text in color, and images. We recommend reading it on a device that displays both.
Among the most enduring poetry of all time, William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets address such eternal themes as love, beauty, honesty, and the passage of time. Written primarily in four-line stanzas and iambic pentameter, Shakespeare’s sonnets are now recognized as marking the beginning of modern love poetry. The sonnets have been translated into all major written languages and are frequently used at romantic celebrations. Known as “The Bard of Avon,” William Shakespeare is arguably the greatest English-language writer known. Enormously popular during his life, Shakespeare’s works continue to resonate more than three centuries after his death, as has his influence on theatre and literature. Shakespeare’s innovative use of character, language, and experimentation with romance as tragedy served as a foundation for later playwrights and dramatists, and some of his most famous lines of dialogue have become part of everyday speech. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
We traditionally assume that the `meaning' of each of Shakespeares plays is bequeathed to it by the Bard. It is as if, to the information which used to be given in theatrical programmes, `Cigarettes by Abdullah, Costumes by Motley, Music by Mendelssohn', we should add `Meaning by Shakespeare'. These essays rest on a different, almost opposite, principle. Developing the arguments of the same author's That Shakespearean Rag (1986), they put the case that Shakespeare's plays have no essential meanings, but function as resources which we use to generate meaning. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus and King Lear, amongst other plays, are examined as concrete instances of the covert process whereby, in the twentieth century, Shakespeare doesn't mean: we mean by Shakespeare. Meaning by Shakespeare concludes with `Bardbiz', a review of recent critical approaches to Shakespeare, which initiated a long-running debate (1990-1991) when it first appeared in The London Review of Books.
Shakespeare and the Comedy of Enchantment argues that enchantment constitutes a key emotional and intellectual dimension of Shakespeare's comedies. It thus makes a new claim about the rejuvenating value of comedy for individuals and society. Shakespeare's comedies orchestrate ongoing encounters between the rational and the mysterious, between doubt and fascination, with feelings moved by elements of enchantment that also seem a little ridiculous. In such a drama, lines of causality become complex, and even satisfying endings leave certain matters incomplete and contingent—openings for scrutiny and thought. In addressing enchantment, the book takes exception to the modernist vision of a deterministic 'disenchanted' world. As Shakespeare's action advances, comic mysteries accrue—uncanny coincidences; magical sympathies; inexplicable repetitions; psychic influences; and puzzlements about the meaning of events—all of whose numinous effects linger ambiguously after reason has apparently answered the play's questions. Separate chapters explore the devices, tropes, and motifs of enchantment: magical clowns who alter the action through stop-time interludes; structural repetitions that suggest mysteriously converging, even opaquely providential destinies; locales that oppose magical and protean forces to regulatory and quotidian values; desires, thoughts, and utterances that 'manifest' comically monstrous events; characters who return from the dead, facilitated by the desires of the living; play-endings crossed by harmony and dissonance, with moments of wonder that make possible the mysterious action of forgiveness. Wonder and wondering in Shakespeare's and other comedies, it emerges, become the conditions for new possibilities. Chapters refer extensively to early modern history, Renaissance and modern theories of comedy, treatises on magical science, and contemporaneous Italian and Tudor comedy.
A knowledge of the history and evolution of the tales on which Shakespeare drew in the composition of his plays is essential for the understanding of his work. In re-telling a particular story, a Renaissance writer was not simply reshaping the structure of the narrative but participating in a species of debate with earlier writers and the meanings their tales had accrued. The stories upon which Shakespeare's plays are constructed did not descend to him as innocent collections of incidents, but brought with them considerable cultural baggage, substantially lost to the modern spectator but an essential component, for a contemporary audience, of the meaning of the work. Shakespeare's Alternative Tales explores this literary dialogue, focusing on those plays in which the expectations generated by an inherited story are in some way overthrown, setting up a tension for a Renaissance spectator between 'received' and 'alternative' readings of the text. Each chapter opens with a familiar story, supplying a context for the subsequent discussion, and exhibits the way in which the dramatist's reworking of a traditional motif interrogates the assumptions implicit in his source. While offering the twentieth-century reader a fresh perspective from which to view the plays, the approach also supplies an introduction to contemporary readings of the Shakespearean canon. The tales Leah Scragg considers may be seen as 'alternative' in more than one sense: they radically rework conventional situations, while lending themselves to analysis in terms of new critical methodologies. The text will be of interest to both students of Shakespeare and the general reader. In conjunction with the author's companion volume, Shakespeare's Mouldy Tales, it provides an ideal introduction to contemporary developments in source studies.
