Shakespeare of the Comedies : A Multiple Approach

In his first ten comedies Shakespeare is at his most myriad-minded and companionable. He concentrates on giving wide, deep, serious pleasure. «We'll strive to please you every day». So these plays suit a multiple approach which in turn centres on pleasure.
The connected approaches begin with sources and their construction into multiple plot, whose firmness and pleasure Shakespeare well understood. His transforming of sources is also the surest evidence we have of genesis. Next, moving from structure to texture, the study examines the moment-to-moment excitements of the text. Their pleasure principle is then theorised. But pleasure impinges both in the completed effect of each play and in its succession of intense pleasures: the diversity of relations between whole and parts is examined and theorised. Finally, a theory of comedy and of «multiple» approach to it is adumbrated, and briefly tested on Shakespeare's comic work beyond the ten comedies.
Throughout, the reader is offered a method, by which to teach as well as research these inimitable plays. The method moves from probabilities, then probes pleasure seriously, as indeed Shakespeare himself did.

The Author: John K. Hale, born in London, studied classical languages (Literae Humaniores) at Oxford University, then English literature at Edinburgh University. After two years teaching at the University of Manitoba he has taught at the University of Otago - apart from periods of research leave in Britain and guest-lecturing in Japan. His publications include numerous essays, especially on Shakespeare, Milton and the classical tradition. He has edited Sonnets of Four Centuries (Otago, 1992). He is currently working on a book, Milton's Tongues. The Impact of Multilingualism on Style and he will contribute to the Cambridge University Press History of the Book in Britain, on Milton's perception of books and bookform.