Shakespeare and the Reason: A Study of the Tragedies and the Problem Plays'Mr Hawkes is a good critic, oriented towards history of ideas. He operates on the formula that Shakespeare was interested in the available distinctions between discursive and intuitive reason, and disliked a growing tendency for the first to be thought of as manly and the second effeminate. One sees how this action-contemplation polarity works, in Hamlet for instance, and Mr Hawkes thinks the kind of choices forced on tragic heroes can be better understood in terms of it.' Frank Kermode, New Statesman. In the seven plays on which the book concentrates, Terence Hawkes finds Shakespeare investigating the operation of two opposed forms of reason, and constructing dramatic metaphors such as the opposition between appearance and reality, or that between true 'manliness' and its false counterpart, which express to the full the tragic nature of the situation. |
From inside the book
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Page ix
... nature requires that this be done, for it tries to suggest a new way of looking at some of the plays, and the validity of its argument will depend to a great extent on a close reading of them. An attempt has been made first of all to ...
... nature requires that this be done, for it tries to suggest a new way of looking at some of the plays, and the validity of its argument will depend to a great extent on a close reading of them. An attempt has been made first of all to ...
Page x
... nature of Shakespearean idolatry is such that his opinions on most matters have been invested with the kind of authority which implies their uncritical acceptance by everyone. Yet an abundance of evidence exists to show that Shakespeare ...
... nature of Shakespearean idolatry is such that his opinions on most matters have been invested with the kind of authority which implies their uncritical acceptance by everyone. Yet an abundance of evidence exists to show that Shakespeare ...
Page 2
... nature of its own motivations. The same applies equally to one culture's view of another. Little 'objective' truth exists in this respect, and much that we discern in Elizabethan andjacobean civilization would have been unrecognized and ...
... nature of its own motivations. The same applies equally to one culture's view of another. Little 'objective' truth exists in this respect, and much that we discern in Elizabethan andjacobean civilization would have been unrecognized and ...
Page 4
... nature will find himself faced with the problem of talking about the ideas of one culture in the language of another. For whatever the extent to which our own civilization may be a development of the earlier one and may use a language ...
... nature will find himself faced with the problem of talking about the ideas of one culture in the language of another. For whatever the extent to which our own civilization may be a development of the earlier one and may use a language ...
Page 5
... nature of its reason or of its perception of reality are of an order of complexity in the twentieth century which would have surprised a man of Shakespeare's sensibility in the seventeenth. So many different issues are involved in each ...
... nature of its reason or of its perception of reality are of an order of complexity in the twentieth century which would have surprised a man of Shakespeare's sensibility in the seventeenth. So many different issues are involved in each ...
Contents
1 | |
2 Hamlet | 39 |
3
The Problem Plays | 72 |
4
Othello | 100 |
5
Macbeth | 124 |
6 King Lear | 160 |
Conclusion | 194 |
Index | 203 |
Other editions - View all
Shakespeare and the Reason: A Study of the Tragedies and the Problem Plays Terence Hawkes Limited preview - 2004 |
Shakespeare and the Reason: A Study of the Tragedies and the Problem Plays Terence Hawkes Limited preview - 2013 |
Shakespeare and the Reason: A Study of the Tragedies and the Problem Plays Terence Hawkes No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
acceptance action Alfred Harbage Angels appearance and reality Aquinas argument becomes Bertram Brabantio Claudius Claudius’s confined conflict Cordelia Court Cressida death deceived Desdemona devilish discursive divine dramatic Duncan’s Edgar Edmund Elizabethan equivocation evil express fact faculty final finally finds first Fool fulfil Ghost Gloucester God’s Goneril Goneril and Regan Hamlet heaven higher honour human Iago Iago’s idea involves Isabella kind King Lear L. C. Knights Lady Macbeth later Lear’s lies London madness man’s manliness means Measure for Measure mercy metaphor mind mind’s mode murder nature Neo-platonic Nevertheless non-rational notion opposed opposition Othello perhaps play’s plot Polonius problem plays prophecies rational reason and intuition reflect result reveals role says scientific seems sense Shakespeare significance Significantly situation sort soul speaks speech spiritual stage structure suggests things thinking thou tragedy tragic Troilus Troilus and Cressida truth values Wilson Knight Witches words