Shakespeare Books

As a High School Literature teacher, my students have a DO NOW when they come into class. The Shakespeare Daily Warm-ups are great for introducing concepts that we will continue to discuss in class.

This book aims at joy--nothing else. Joy is intensified in the despair of (post)modern life. Leithart also neatly connects joy (think comedy) with the Trinity. Leithart aims to show eschatological moments within the Trinity. And if these moments take place within space-time, then this book also aims at eschatology. An eschatology of hope.

The short thesis of this book is that Western literature moves from Tragedy to Comedy and from Comedy to Deep Comedy.

Beginning with Tragedy:
The pivotal work of ancient history is Homer. The Iliad--here Leithat defies convential terms--is a tragedy. Good people (well, protagonists anyway) gone bad. It is hard to find a happy ending to this story. More importantly, such a framework tending toward despair is inherent in a pagan (greek) culture.

Western literature, then, while still pagan, tries to move towards Comedy. Of course, the Odessy has a happier ending than the Iliad. But it lacks the deep resorvoirs of the Christian story. Odesseus knows he will die. And having been to Tarturas, he knows it is better to remain alive.

But The Aeneid is happier, right? Well, kind of. Aeneus does build a mighty house, but only by toppling other houses. Aeneas brings the destruction of Troy with him to Carthage. Aeneas, despite great moments, turns Carthage, represented by the suicidal funeral pyres of Dido, into another Troy.

But something happens with the Western Story. Christ in a way takes the Platonic worldview and subverts it. This is Leithart's most brilliant moment in any of his books. He wrestles with the challenge given by postmodern philosopher Derrida: All literature (or story) must have a supplement to the Origin. But the supplement is almost always a degeneration of the Origin. This shows up in literature. The sons (Zeus and the gods) overthrow the fathers (Chronus and the Titans). Supplementation for Derrida--and the greeks--is violent.

Interestingly, there is no such thing as "origin" unless there is also a moment of "supplementation." Accordling (and contra to Plato), there is no such thing as pure origin, pure essence, or a pure stream. It is already supplemented. At this point Derrida, himself an unbeliever, comes very close to a dark Trinitarianism. He, like Athanasius, sees that there can be no Father without a Son. But Derrida prefers Hesiod (violence) to the Gospel of Jon (perichoreisis).

This is the eschatological moment in the Trinity, and in Western History. Unlike all of history before it, this time the Son does not violence the Father. Christ reveals the Father. Does the Father's will. Incarnates the Father's love.

Here is a Trinitarian argument for you: There can be no Father without the Son. But he has also been the Father for all eternity. Therefore, there must have been a Son for all eternity.

Deep Comedy:
The newly revealed (although ancient) Trinitarian theolgoy was a joyful theology. The Christian gospel--the Christian story--moves from "glory to glory" (1 Cor. 3). The end is always better than the beginning. The medieval romances, despite some lapses, are much happier than Homer. The Christian (medieval) world is thus supernaturalized. The Christian hero is thus an adventurer.

Conclusion:
This book may well be Leithart's best work. The chapter "Supplement at the Origin" may well be the best thing on trinitarian theology I have read. It is hard to say how much I recommend this work.

This monumental work in three large volumes is the one which I use most frequently when wanting to inform myself on the use of "bawdy", or sexually "indecent" language or imagery, in Renaissance literature (especially plays, but also poetry like Donne's). The author has for one thing assembled a much larger range of examples to illustrate sexual meanings than are provided by any other scholars. In the case of this area of language, that really matters. Many readers, even today, vastly underrate the frequency of sexual meanings in e.g. Shakespeare or other Renaissance dramatists. The truth is that they and their audiences were almost addictively fond of sexual jokes, and these often are not understood by people today, or at best glimpsed as just possibly a local "quibble". What Williams shows is that most of such instances of word-play are not at all incidental, but so frequent that one can in fact speak of a sexual "language" or "code" which was clearly widely shared and understood during the period he covers. This can only be done by producing MANY examples of a particular usage, as he does. He also demonstrates that many hitherto "unsuspected" words frequently carried a sexual meaning. Neither he nor I want to suggest that the sexual meaning is usually the ONLY (or even the DOMINANT) meaning in all but a limited number of words which are "merely" sexual. Our point is, rather, that many seemingly "innocuous" words are so frequently used in a sexual sense that that sense should not be seen as something occasional or additional, but as commonplace and central.

The dictionary is, for all its comprehensiveness, by no means complete. See for example Joost Daalder and Antony Telford Moore, "*Mandrakes* and *Whiblins* in *The Honest Whore*" (*Studies in Philology*, Fall 1997, 494-507) as a discussion of words not adequately covered - or understood - by Williams. Another word he does not list (or at least not as a separate entry) is *thatch* for "pubic hair". And there certainly are other omissions. Nevertheless, this work far more often helps one out than it lets one down, and it is difficult to see how any editor of a Renaissance play containing sexual punning (and many do!) can afford to ignore this work. All university libraries should own it as an important reference tool. - Joost Daalder, Profesor of English, South Australia

This is a great book. It shows you that disability is not about charity, it is about rights, about social exclusion, and about oppression. The book contains articles from some of the early British pioneers of the disability movement, right up to today. If you're interested in disability studies, read this book. It engages with debates about disability and gender, disability and ethnicity, disability and the built environment.

I particularly liked the chapters by Ayesha Vernon (on multiple oppression), Rob Imrie (on the wya the built environment is disablist) and by Paul Hunt (an early disability rights activist) on the early struggles of disabled people to get out of institutions.

The social model of disability moved the focus of disability studies away from what is "wrong" with a disabled person's mind/body/senses etc onto the disabling barriers in society. But the social model still left a lot of personal and theoretical questions largely unexplored. For instance, it didn't really grapple with the question of identity in any serious way. And it didn't really engage with contemporary postmodernist thinking. This edited collection, which examines a range of disabilities, goes some way towards suggesting how a more serious engagement with theories like postmodernism might be done. A pretty heavily theoretical topic, one that might be interesting for graduate students especially.

I highly recommend this book to any teacher who wants to introduce her students to performing Shakespeare. We used this abridged version with our fifth and sixth grade students (we added in the whole of Puck's final speech, however!). The book pairs Shakespeare's language with a vernacular version of the play; the original language and vernacular "translation" are placed on facing pages. With the help of the vernacular version and a lot of coaching, our students were able to understand the play, memorize the lines, and perform the play in front of an audience. What was most exciting about the experience was that you could tell the kids *understood* the Shakespearian language from the way they spoke the lines -- they *said* them, rather than recited them. I credit this book's design and approach to the play with helping the kids to understand so much. We approached the idea of doing Shakespeare with this age group with some trepidation -- but with the help of this book, it was the highlight of our school year. (The book also has helpful sections which introduce the kids to the basics of the theater).

If you need a quick and dirty, but highly authoritative low-down on Shakespeare, this book by a traditionally revered Shake academic literary critic is for you.
John Russell Brown is Prof Emeritus on Theatre/Drama and English Language/Literature. Everyone who studies Shakespeare has read some reference to him or one of his articles.
He's old-school so you won't be deluged w/ deconstructionalist or other literary criticism arguments and terms. So, in this sense ANYBODY will understand this book, even if they aren't a navel-gazing graduate student.
Like any good Prof of Drama he throws in several chapters about acting and interpreting the play from an actor's point of view.

Waldin's knowledge of his subject is immense but conveyed with an ease.

He is clearly no stooge to the grand marques and is forthright in his opinions without being pompous.

Whether you're a wine lover or merely someone that loves the countryside, this book is really all you'll need for a terrific week in Bordeaux.

This is a wonderful way to become acquainted with the thought of Stanley Cavell--one of the most important living philosophers in America. The essays on Shakespeare are stunning, and one can feel the force of a restless, moral, rigorous mind at work in every turn of the arguments. Some of these essays are collected from earlier publications, but the reprinting of all his essays on Shakespeare, plus some new work, make it very worth owning!

Simon Palfrey's "Doing Shakespeare" is one of the most under-named books around. You would hardly expect much of a work with such a name but I'm more inclined now to take the age-old advice of not judging a book by what you see in the front.

Because when you turn the pages the power of the writing hits you like a body-slam. Rarely have I come across such natural and unrestrained verbosity and flair in writing.

Yet, again, despite of the fact that, the book's structure is uncomplicated. Palfrey has organised his discussion around understanding Shakespeare's WORDS (metaphor, hendiadys [e.g. "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", "backward and abysm of time", etc.] repetition, 'high style', rhyme, prose and puns) and his CHARACTERS (what are these 'speaking things'? where is a character? soliloquies, sex[!] and a focus on Iago and Hamlet).

So there I am in the car, waiting for my wife to get some groceries, just 'flipping through' the first chapter and I see something like:

"(A) drama committed to original metaphor as a primary means of making its worlds means...that language is not primarily there to descibr what is arleady known and observed. Instead, it is itself finding out what might be present; it is its own barometer of possibility. It is at once tangible and speculative, rooted in the body's immediacy but commited to an almost magical apprehension of what might be.

"Above all, it gives us minds and societies in process. Dramatic character, plot and scene can be understood as experiments in language's capability of embodiment. There is nothing safe or static about this sort of language. Everything is up for grabs, and as perilous as precious." (p.38)

This was just after 1.5 pages commenting on Hamlet's "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,/Thaw and resolve itself into a dew", about which Palfrey writes:

"Is 'dew' a metaphor? (Does it) represent blank annihilation(?). But as the word completes the thought, it also stops one thought and inaugurated another; or perhaps secretes a certain wistfulness within the enveloping despair. For Hamlet concentrates himself - literally - into this image (which) becomes a concentration of the hero's dramatic possibilities.

"So, a 'dew' can suggest dawn, youth and freshness. It aestheticises both conception and birth, removing one from the taint of sperm, the other from the taint of woman...The phrase's miniaturist transcendence suggests some kind of reincarnation or redemption; or perhaps hibernation, a burying away until circumstances are more auspicious."

"Hamlet is fully aware of literary cliche and generic models: but he wants to shake the image out of any pastoral complacency and claim it as his own. Hence the three verbs (melt, thaw, resolve) that work to so concentrate the climatic noun...(this) simple surplus of meaning creates a sort of supra-context, an alternative world in which a play's or a character's most vital preoccupations find their air." (p.35-36)

So now I'm gasping for air...(smile)...do all Literature commentators write like this? Or is it a British thing? I almost suspect it is as British theologians (Wright, Fiddes, Gunton, Crossan, etc.) seem to put more serious colour into their language than American ones.

Back to Palfrey. One of my favorite passages was about the pun.

"Consider the basic architecture of a pun: it is multiple, folded, or at cross-purposes; things lurk or move at angels; it beckons toward different pasts and possibilities; it evokes alternatives within predetermination, a 'virtuality' to rival actuality, perhaps a consciousness of waste.

"All of this makes the pun peculiarly able to concentrate, intensify, and unfold a moment's situational and psychic layers. Shakespeare's punning becomes almost the least dispensable of his techniques." (p.157)


The only downside for me is that my brain circuitry really ignite only when three plays are mentioned: Hamlet, R&J, As You Like It. But if the worth of a book can be judged by the force with which one is inspired to be more acquainted with its subject matter, then "Doing Shakespeare" has done it for me.

Even if you're a seasoned Shakespeare enthusiast, this book should still be invaluable, if nothing more than as a great example of how to write like and about the great dramatist.