Shakespeare's Late StyleCambridge University Press, 10. aug 2006 - 260 pages When Shakespeare gave up tragedy around 1607 and turned to the new form we call romance or tragicomedy, he created a distinctive poetic idiom that often bewildered audiences and readers. The plays of this period, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as Shakespeare's part in the collaborations with John Fletcher (Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen), exhibit a challenging verse style - verbally condensed, metrically and syntactically sophisticated, both conversational and highly wrought. In Shakespeare's Late Style, McDonald anatomizes the components of this late style, illustrating in a series of topically organized chapters the contribution of such features as ellipsis, grammatical suspension, and various forms of repetition. Resisting the sentimentality that frequently attends discussion of an artist's 'late' period, Shakespeare's Late Style shows how the poetry of the last plays reveals their creator's ambivalent attitude towards art, language, men and women, the theatre, and his own professional career. |
From inside the book
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Page 44
... passages illustrate exactly the phenomenon described by Stephen Booth , that the audience often understands what a passage says without understanding precisely how that understanding comes about , as in “ And to be more than what you ...
... passages illustrate exactly the phenomenon described by Stephen Booth , that the audience often understands what a passage says without understanding precisely how that understanding comes about , as in “ And to be more than what you ...
Page 45
... passage , but the main meaning is clear : in circumstances that seem positive , a threat unexpectedly appears . . " The impulse to concentrate meaning into few words accounts for the aphetic “ gins , " perhaps for the absence of a verb ...
... passage , but the main meaning is clear : in circumstances that seem positive , a threat unexpectedly appears . . " The impulse to concentrate meaning into few words accounts for the aphetic “ gins , " perhaps for the absence of a verb ...
Page 46
... passage beginning “ pity , like a naked new - born babe . . . ” ( 1.7.21–25 ) , of which Dr. Johnson said “ the meaning is not very clear " and over which Cleanth Brooks labored so valiantly . Another is Lady Macbeth's " Was the hope ...
... passage beginning “ pity , like a naked new - born babe . . . ” ( 1.7.21–25 ) , of which Dr. Johnson said “ the meaning is not very clear " and over which Cleanth Brooks labored so valiantly . Another is Lady Macbeth's " Was the hope ...
Page 47
... passage after passage in Cymbeline , The Winter's Tale , and Henry VIII is spun out by just such an aggregation of clauses . Macbeth's few lines reveal other poetic tactics that will become more prominent , particularly the ellipses in ...
... passage after passage in Cymbeline , The Winter's Tale , and Henry VIII is spun out by just such an aggregation of clauses . Macbeth's few lines reveal other poetic tactics that will become more prominent , particularly the ellipses in ...
Page 48
... passage quoted is on page 382. Other modern critics who have written helpfully on these repetitive structures include Maynard Mack, Jr., Killing the King (New Haven: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1973) ... passages in 48 Shakespeare's Late Style.
... passage quoted is on page 382. Other modern critics who have written helpfully on these repetitive structures include Maynard Mack, Jr., Killing the King (New Haven: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1973) ... passages in 48 Shakespeare's Late Style.
Contents
Section 1 | 66 |
Section 2 | 76 |
Section 3 | 77 |
Section 4 | 81 |
Section 5 | 96 |
Section 6 | 99 |
Section 7 | 106 |
Section 8 | 156 |
Section 10 | 195 |
Section 11 | 199 |
Section 12 | 206 |
Section 13 | 219 |
Section 14 | 226 |
Section 15 | 229 |
Section 16 | 233 |
Section 17 | 244 |
Section 9 | 181 |
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Common terms and phrases
alliteration Antony and Cleopatra appears Arcadia artifice assonance audience aural Cambridge chapter characters clauses Comedy complex consonants Coriolanus creates Cymbeline delight dramatic echoes effect Elizabethan ellipsis elliptical English episodes especially example female feminine figure gender grammatical Henry VIII illusion Imogen implies irony Jacobean Kenneth Burke kind King Lear language last plays late plays late style late verse Leontes listener literary London Macbeth Marina masculine meaning metaphor metrical mode narrative Noble Kinsmen omission Oxford passage Patricia Parker patterns Paulina Perdita Pericles perspective phrases playwright pleasure plot poet poetic poetry Princeton Prospero's Puttenham Queen reader reiterative relation repeated repetition reunion rhetorical rhythm rhythmic romance fiction scene seems self-conscious semantic sense sentence sexual Shakespeare Shakespearean romance Simon Palfrey sounds speak speech Stephen Booth stories structure stylistic syllables syntactical syntax Tempest theatre theatrical thee thou tion tragedies University Press verb verbal vowels Winter's Tale women words
Popular passages
Page 253 - SYSTEMATIC defence of the theory here maintained, it would have been my duty to develope the various causes upon which the pleasure received from metrical language depends. Among the chief of these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to those who have made any of the Arts the object of accurate reflection ; namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude.
Page 49 - Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave* of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast,— Lady M, What do you mean ? Macb. Still it cried' Sleep no more !' to all the house ' Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.
Page 180 - Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' th' taper Bows toward her and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows white and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's own tinct.
Page 200 - t in a woman's key, like such a woman As any of us three ; weep ere you fail; Lend us a knee ; But touch the ground for us no longer time Than a dove's motion, when the head 's pluck'd off; Tell him, if he i' the blood-siz'd field lay swoln, Showing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon, What you would do ! Hip.