OXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS General Editors: Peter Holland and Stanley
Wells Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with
short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and
scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and
combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject.
This book considers the impact and influence of Shakespeare on writing
of the eighteenth century, and also how eighteenth-century Shakespeare
scholarship influenced how we read Shakespeare today. The most
influential English actor of the eighteenth century, David Garrick,
could hail Shakespeare as 'the god of our idolatry', yet perform an
adaptation of King Lear with a happy ending, add a dying speech to
Macbeth, and remove the puns from Romeo and Juliet. Garrick's friend
Samuel Johnson thought of Shakespeare as 'above all writers, at least
above all modern writers, the poet of nature'. Voltaire thought he was
a sublime genius without taste. The Bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu,
meanwhile, could be found arguing with Johnson's biographer James
Boswell over whether Shakespeare or Milton was the greater poet.
Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century traces the course of a
many-faceted metamorphosis. Drawing on fresh research as well as the
most recent scholarship in the field, it argues that the story of
Shakespeare in the eighteenth century has become a significant
'subplot' in later scholarship, made up of great debates about how to
read Shakespeare and how to rank him among the great English writers,
how to perform his plays and how to edit the texts of those plays.
This book surveys the critical and creative responses of actors and
audiences, literary critics and textual editors, painters and
philosophes to Shakespeare's works, while also suggesting how the
Shakespeare of the theatre influenced the Shakespeare of the study,
and how other, less straightforward interactions combined to bring
about this sea-change in English cultural life. It speaks of the
crucial role of Shakespeare in eighteenth-century culture, and the
importance of that culture's absorption of Shakespeare for subsequent
generations. This is a book about what the eighteenth century did to
Shakespeare - and vice versa.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191642937
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter