Shakespeare's Dramatic GenresOxford Shakespeare Topics provides students, teachers, and interested readers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject. Notes and a critical guide to further reading equip the interested reader with the means to broaden research. The history of the genres, or kinds, of drama is one of contradictory traditions and complex cultural assumptions. The divisions established by the original edition of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (the First Folio, 1623) give shape to whole curricula; but, as Lawrence Danson reminds us in this lively book, there is nothing inevitable, and much unsatisfying, about that tripartite scheme. Yet students of Shakespeare cannot avoid thinking about questions of genre; often they are the unspoken reason why classrooms full of smart people fail to agree on basic interpretative issues. Danson's guide to the kinds of Shakespearian drama provides an accessible account of genre-theory in Shakespeare's day, an overview of the genres on the Elizabethan stage, and a provocative look at the full range of Shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies. |
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Page 38
... rhetoric of tragic death , the zingy one - liners with which villains and heroes alike expire , is one of several features the sixteenth- and seventeenth - century stage owed , if indirectly , to the example of ' English Seneca ' . 98 ...
... rhetoric of tragic death , the zingy one - liners with which villains and heroes alike expire , is one of several features the sixteenth- and seventeenth - century stage owed , if indirectly , to the example of ' English Seneca ' . 98 ...
Page 41
... rhetoric makes us believe he will be king ; he cannot be a lover , but his rhetoric assures us he can have any woman his ambition requires . To the audience , this inventively wicked Richard gives a thrill both of foreboding and of ...
... rhetoric makes us believe he will be king ; he cannot be a lover , but his rhetoric assures us he can have any woman his ambition requires . To the audience , this inventively wicked Richard gives a thrill both of foreboding and of ...
Page 131
... rhetoric and extreme situations . It does contain one of Shakespeare's worst half - lines of verse , the announcement that ' Alarbus ' limbs are lopped ' ( 1. 1. 143 ) . And Alarbus ' aren't the only limbs that fall in the gruesome ...
... rhetoric and extreme situations . It does contain one of Shakespeare's worst half - lines of verse , the announcement that ' Alarbus ' limbs are lopped ' ( 1. 1. 143 ) . And Alarbus ' aren't the only limbs that fall in the gruesome ...
Contents
The Genres Staged | 30 |
Mr William Shakespeares Comedies | 57 |
History | 86 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
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