After Shakespeare: An Anthology - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192142682 ISBN 13: 9780192142689

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

No writer has served as such a powerful source of inspiration for other writers, or attracted such varied and widespread comment, as William Shakespeare. From West Side Story, Ivan Turgenev's A Lear of the Steppes, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead to Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert's "Elegy for Fortinbras," Shakespeare's presence in literature and theater has been powerful and pervasive.
Now, in After Shakespeare, editor John Gross brings together a lively gathering of writings that testify to that presence. More passionate and more personal than most Shakespeare criticism, these pieces reveal much more directly Shakespeare's effect on the generations of writers and thinkers who came after him. Novelists, poets, and playwrights are all represented, as one would expect. But Shakespeare's influence extends beyond the expected to philosophers, historians, composers, film-makers, and politicians. Here we see how Shakespearean characters and motifs fueled the genius of Goethe and Dostoevsky, Aldous Huxley and Emily Dickenson, John Updike and Duke Ellington, Marcel Proust and Grigor Kozintsev. We see Shakespeare the man firing the imaginations of Kipling, Joyce, Borges, and Burgess. Herman Melville writes a poem about Falstaff. D. H. Lawrence anatomizes Hamlet, (revealing much about his own aesthetic in the process). R. K. Narayan describes a Shakespeare lesson in an Indian classroom. John Osborne adapts Coriolanus. Eugene Ionescu reworks Macbeth. We even see Shakespeare's power to console the lonely prisoner in the writings of Alfred Dreyfus and Nelson Mandela.
Wide-ranging, surprising, and written with refreshing immediacy, After Shakespeare brings together a collection of writings that not only reflects Shakespeare's enduring spirit but brilliantly embodies it.

About this title

About the Author

John Gross is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969) and editor of The Oxford Book of Aphorisms (1983), and The Oxford Book of Essays (1999), among other publications. He was editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, and is currently theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph. He lives in England.

Review

`Review from other book by this author 'there can be no question that this is the book of comic verse. It makes you laugh!''
Anthony Thwaite, Sunday Telegraph on OB Comic Verse

`'a delight, providing exactly the right blend of the familiar and the unexpected. There are gems on almost every page.''
Daily Telegraph on OB Comic Verse

`'what a marvellous book it is to dip in anywhere, and keep going from entry to entry!''
John Updike, on NOB English Prose

`'it is hard to imagine how this anthology could be improved''
Evening Standard on NOB English Prose

`erudite and fascinating book. One could brood over it for hours . . . .splendidly wide ranging book is and will continue to be a treasure trove . . .'
The Spectator, 20 April 2002

`Every passage in this quite wonderful anthology has a sparkle of something, be it malice, humour, passion, parody, critical insight or wrong-headedness so radical that it becomes illuminating . . . This, as a really great anthology, is deliciously light-handed in the way it debunks some of
the more pretentious pronouncements by critics of Shakespeare through the ages . . .Buy it first . . .read it right through and then buy copies for your friends and nag them until they read it. It is absolutely splendid.'
Evening Standard 22/04/2002

There is plenty to savour

`rich and immensely wide-ranging anthology . . . . But this is finely produced and reasonably priced volume admirably fills a real gap on the shelves of anyone interested in Shakespeare'
The Daily Telegraph 13/04/2002

wonderfully rich compendium of writings . . . One of the joys of After Shakespeare is its juxtaposition of the familiar and the surprising . . . . Gross' coleetion is remarkably international . . . The anthology provokes constant thought and frequent amusement

`John Gross is one of the best read men in Britain and it shows clearly in this new anthology of his. After Shakespeare ranges dauntingly wide through both time and space to reveal the impact our Bard has had on the world. . . .'
The Times 17/04/2002

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0192142682
• ISBN 13: 9780192142689
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376
• Editor: Gross John