Play Reviews: The Roman Actor, Pericles, The Malcontent, The Merry Wives of Windsor, King Lear, Eastward Ho! As You like it, Measure for Measure Malaya, The Tempest, The Tempest, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Beaucoup de bruit pour rien, Richard III, La Tragédie d'Hamlet, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été, Le songe d'une nuit d'été, Falstaff, Le Songe d'une nuit d'été

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-133
Author(s):  
Paul Prescott ◽  
Paul Prescott ◽  
Peter J. Smith ◽  
Greg Walker ◽  
Greg Walker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Measure For Measure

Shakespeare's Essays

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter G. Platt
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Stress Fractures ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
English Reading ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
Judicial Rhetoric ◽  
Self Knowledge

This revisionist study argues that the Essais of Montaigne—made available to Shakespeare and the English-reading world via John Florio’s translated Essayes in 1603—were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean drama. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric, and the alterations in Shakespeare’s acting company undoubtedly helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear, and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare’s reading of Montaigne is an under-recognized driving force. Both authors quest for approaches to self, knowledge, and form that stress fractures, interruptions, and alternatives. Indeed, Montaigne himself claimed, in his “Of the Force of the Imagination,” that “Some writers there are, whose ende is but to relate the events. Mine, if I could attaine to it, should be to declare, what may come to passe….” In testing—essaying—Montaigne’s writing, Shakespeare, like his French forebear, focuses on possibility, multiple selves, and brave new worlds—what has not been but might yet be.

Triangulation as a Problem in the Plays and Sonnets

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Richard H. Weisberg
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Public Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Measure For Measure

Abstract As to the risks of what I call the ‘triangulation’ of both public power and private emotion, I extend my earlier treatment of ‘mediation’ in The Merchant of Venice to Measure for Measure, King Lear, Hamlet, and The Tempest, linking to them Shakespeare’s Sonnet 134. For Shakespeare, whether poet or playwright, a private triangulation of direct romantic obligation is as nettlesome as the public official’s similar behaviour – as when the Duke ‘outsources’ Viennese power to Angelo – and the results are quite as disastrous. The complex and highly legalistic sonnet concerns the triangulation of passion from the speaker to a friend. The beloved winds up ensnaring both through ‘the statute of [her] beauty’. The word ‘surety’ – used centrally in the poem and twice in Merchant – pinpoints, through the delegation to a third party of obligations otherwise charged directly to two committed parties, the underlying Shakespearean problematic

Triangulation as a Problem in the Plays and Sonnets

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Richard H. Weisberg
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Public Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Measure For Measure

As to the risks of what I call the ‘triangulation’ of both public power and private emotion, I extend my earlier treatment of ‘mediation’ in The Merchant of Venice to Measure for Measure, King Lear, Hamlet, and The Tempest, linking to them Shakespeare’s Sonnet 134. For Shakespeare, whether poet or playwright, a private triangulation of direct romantic obligation is as nettlesome as the public official’s similar behaviour – as when the Duke ‘outsources’ Viennese power to Angelo – and the results are quite as disastrous. The complex and highly legalistic sonnet concerns the triangulation of passion from the speaker to a friend. The beloved winds up ensnaring both through ‘the statute of [her] beauty’. The word ‘surety’ – used centrally in the poem and twice in Merchant – pinpoints, through the delegation to a third party of obligations otherwise charged directly to two committed parties, the underlying Shakespearean problematic.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document