A Choice of Shakespeare's Verse - Softcover

William Shakespeare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571165818 ISBN 13: 9780571165810

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1991

Synopsis

This is a new edition of Ted Hughes' selection of Shakespeare's verse, which includes an essay by the Poet Laureate. In it he describes the religious and philosophical tensions of Shakespeare's time and the way in which Shakespeare's language becomes "a language of common bond", uniting in its linguistic substance the full range of Elizabethan preoccupations and the social structure, from the court to the common man.

About this title

About the Author

Ted Hughes (1930–98) produced more than forty books of poetry, prose, drama, translation, and children's literature, including, in his last decade, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Tales from Ovid, and Birthday Letters.

From Publishers Weekly

Admired since the 1950s for the primal force of his own verse, former British poet laureate Hughes (1930-1998) also won praise in his home country for numerous projects of editing, literary criticism and translation, among them this enlightening selection (first published in 1971) of favorite passages from the Bard's sonnets, narrative poems, and (especially) his plays. Familiar and unfamiliar sonnets ("Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme") mingle with great speeches and lengthy passages, famous and not-so-famous, taken from most of the plays: "Once more into the breach, dear friends" (Henry V), "the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office" (King Lear) and over a hundred more. The reissue preserves both Hughes' brief 1991 introduction and his far more substantial "Note" (which follows the main text): more argument than simple explanation, this superb afterward is Hughes at his critical best, showing how Shakespeare's "common language of the highest and the lowest" set forth a "profoundly articulated, esoteric, spiritual vision." (Hughes pursued such ideas at far greater length in his Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being.) Destined for substantial sales as a gift, this compact volume might also inspire readers who already know some of Shakespeare's plays quite well to look at the rest with new eyes and ears.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0571165818
• ISBN 13: 9780571165810
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 224