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Shakespeare intended his plays to be seen, not read. With this thought uppermost in mind, Charney offers here a provocative analysis of Hamlet, the most stylistically inventive of all Shakespeare's plays, strictly in terms of its style-by which he means the distinct modes of expression used by the playwright in accomplishing his dramatic ends. Careful consideration is given to the stagecraft of the play, to lighting and sound effects, gesture and scenery. The play’s imagery is discussed with attention to its style as well as to its content. Each of the three main characters is examined in terms of his unique mode of expression. Among the interesting discoveries this approach allows is a ne...
A collection of minilectures arranged by categories offers insight into different ways of examining Shakespeare's works
First Published in 2002. It is easy to see that we are living in a time of rapid and radical social change. It is much less easy to grasp the fact that such change will inevitably affect the nature of those disciplines that both reflect our society and help to shape it. Yet this is nowhere more apparent than in the central field of what may, in general terms, be called literary studies. ‘New Accents’ is intended as a positive response to the initiative offered by such a situation. Each volume in the series will seek to encourage rather than resist the process of change. To stretch rather than reinforce the boundaries that currently define literature and its academic study.
In this broad-ranging exploration of the nature of comedy Professor Charney considers its popular roots as well as the major issues in comic theory. <I>Comedy High and Low seeks to bridge the gap between comic literature, especially stage comedy, and the popular comedy of jokes, graffiti, and comic happenings of everyday life. With examples taken mainly from major figures of stage comedy from Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Jonson, the Restoration dramatists, and Moliere to Beckett, Pinter, Durrenmatt, Stoppard, and Orton, it brings a historical perspective to the subject, and also includes many allusions to the great film comedies of Keaton, Chaplin, Fields, and the Marx Brothers. An extensive critical bibliography supplements this provocative and highly readable book."
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Shakespeare was acutely aware of our struggles with aging. His dramatic characters either prosper or suffer according to their relationship with maturity, and his sonnets explore time's ravaging effects. "Wrinkled deep in time" is how the queen describes herself in Antony and Cleopatra, and at the end of King Lear, there is a tragic sense that both the king and Gloucester have acquired a wisdom they otherwise lacked at the beginning of the play. Even Juliet matures considerably before she drinks Friar Lawrence's potion, and Macbeth and his wife prematurely grow old from their murderous schemes. This book investigates patterns of aging in Shakespeare, exploring the fulfillment or distress of Shakespeare's characters in combination with their mental and physical decline. Comparing the characterizations of elderly kings and queens, older lovers, patriarchal men, matriarchal women, and the senex -- the stereotypical old man of Roman comedy -- with the history of life expectancy in Shakespeare's England, the book uncovers similarities and differences between our attitudes toward aging then and now.