Shakespeare's Late Style - Hardcover

McDonald, Russ

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521820685 ISBN 13: 9780521820684

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Synopsis

When Shakespeare gave up tragedy around 1607 and turned to the new form we call romance or tragicomedy, he created a distinctive poetic idiom that often bewildered audiences and readers. The plays of this period, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as Shakespeare's part in the collaborations with John Fletcher (Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen), exhibit a challenging verse style - verbally condensed, metrically and syntactically sophisticated, both conversational and highly wrought. In Shakespeare's Late Style, McDonald anatomizes the components of this late style, illustrating in a series of topically organized chapters the contribution of such features as ellipsis, grammatical suspension, and various forms of repetition. Resisting the sentimentality that frequently attends discussion of an artist's 'late' period, Shakespeare's Late Style shows how the poetry of the last plays reveals their creator's ambivalent attitude towards art, language, men and women, the theatre, and his own professional career.

About this title

Book Description:

A detailed study of the difficult poetry spoken in such plays as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, Shakespeare's Late Style considers new ways of thinking about some of Shakespeare's favourite topics in his last phase: art, language, men and women, the theatre, and his own career.

About the Author:

Russ McDonald is Bank of America Excellence Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0521820685
• ISBN 13: 9780521820684
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272