Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom"Today the number and nature of interpretive strategies developed by contemporary theorists for reading Shakespeare's texts may not only delight but also disconcert the scholars, critics, teachers, and students who study them. In this work, six leading Shakespearean scholar-critics, in a series of clear and elegant lectures delivered to undergraduate English majors, explain distinctive procedures that they and other influential, contemporary critics use for interpreting Shakespeare's poems and plays. Workshops, which illustrate with Shakespearean texts the practice of specific methods, follow the lectures." "Helen Vendler (Harvard) guides readers to Shakespeare's poetry by explaining and illustrating how to hear the unexpected and unobtrusive but crucial questions that sonnets pose, and by tracing the increasingly powerful perceptions that precise, informed aesthetic responses to these questions evoke. R. A. Foakes (UCLA) identifies basic cultural issues underlying traditional approaches to teaching Shakespeare's plays, especially the tragedies, and explains how poststructuralist responses to these issues lead to a reevaluation of the "Bard." Leah Marcus (U. Texas, Austin) also explains cultural issues, particularly about the "construct" that has become "Shakespeare," and introduces editorial questions about the actual textual versions offered to students, notably of Hamlet and King Lear. With emphasis on the plays in performance, John Wilders (Oxford, Middlebury) delivers a structure-oriented, acting-centered analysis of Julius Caesar and then directs, in similar fashion, a production of the first scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Patricia Parker (Stanford), on the other hand, follows intricate lines of wordplay through a series of deconstructions and reconstructions in The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bringing the series to a close, Annabel Patterson (Duke) presents an explicitly issue-oriented analysis of editorial, critical, scholarly, dramatic, and cinematic interpretations of Henry V; and she offers a concluding commentary on the workshops of her colleagues."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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Page 117
This soliloquy appears in the following lurm in Q1 : To be . or not to be , I there ' s
the point . / . To Dic , 10 slccpe , is that all ? I all : / No , lo slccpc , to dreamc , I
mary there it gocs , / For in that dreame or death , when wce a wake , / And borne
...
This soliloquy appears in the following lurm in Q1 : To be . or not to be , I there ' s
the point . / . To Dic , 10 slccpe , is that all ? I all : / No , lo slccpc , to dreamc , I
mary there it gocs , / For in that dreame or death , when wce a wake , / And borne
...
Page 148
The apartness , the secretiveness , of Hamlet is also expressed visually when , in
the second scene of the play , the stage clears and he is left alone and , like
Antony , conveys his hostility to the regime in a soliloquy ( “ O that this too , too
solid ...
The apartness , the secretiveness , of Hamlet is also expressed visually when , in
the second scene of the play , the stage clears and he is left alone and , like
Antony , conveys his hostility to the regime in a soliloquy ( “ O that this too , too
solid ...
Page 149
How much more unexpected and astonishing , therefore , is the sudden outburst
of the soliloquy : Over thy wounds now do I prophesy ( Which like dumb mouths
do ope their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue ) , A curse ...
How much more unexpected and astonishing , therefore , is the sudden outburst
of the soliloquy : Over thy wounds now do I prophesy ( Which like dumb mouths
do ope their ruby lips To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue ) , A curse ...
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Contents
List of Figures | 9 |
Poems Posing Questions | 23 |
The Sonnets | 37 |
Copyright | |
13 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom Union College (Schenectady N y ) Limited preview - 1994 |
Teaching with Shakespeare: Critics in the Classroom Bruce McIver,Ruth Stevenson No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
action appear audience authority bear become beginning called carry character comes conveying Cordelia critical cultural death Dream early edition effect Elizabethan English Enter example extreme Falstaff father feel figure final Folio follow French Germans give Hamlet hand Henry interesting interpretation it's Kent kill kind King Lear language Latin less literary London look lord lovers Marcus mean Merry Wives mind morall never night Oxford performance play plot poem political possible present Press production Quarto question reason recent reference relation scene seems sense Shakespeare soliloquy sonnet speak stage stands structure suggests teaching tell thing thou thought tion tradition translation true turn University Vendler wall whole women