Overview

One of the greatest literary critics of our time here provides a remarkable introduction to the genius of William Shakespeare through a study of ten of Shakespeare’s most popular plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Henry IV, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.  The outgrowth of a lifetime of study and teaching, Frye’s insights will inform and delight both the expert and the first-time reader of Shakespeare. “The sensibility and wisdom informing the book make it a delight.”—S. Schoenbaum, New York Times Book Review “The most accessible and sheerly enjoyable of [Frye’s] books….The effect is that of listening to a fluent, genial conversationalist who loves Shakespeare and unabashedly celebrates him in that high aspect of criticism well called ‘appreciation.’”—Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal “A boon to both Shakespearean scholars and readers dipping into the Bard’s work for the first time. … Written with verve, erudition and more-than-occasional humor, this ‘summing-up’ of 50 years of scholarship will be read with pleasure, profit and gratitude by drama lovers for years to come.”—Kirkus Reviews Northrop Frye, professor of English, has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto for almost fifty years.  He is the author of numerous books, including the seminal work Anatomy of Criticism

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Reviews

A boon to both Shakespearean scholars and readers dipping into the Bard's works for the first time. Frye, after nearly a half-century as one of the world's most eminent literary critics, retains an enthusiasm for and a refreshingly down-to-earth approach to material that seems to bring out the Polonius in many interpreters. No pontificating here, no overworked aphorisms; just lively, sensible, constantly stimulating insights into Shakespeare's plays, their anther, conventions, layered meanings, the times in which they were composed and their relevance to us today. Frye focuses his attention on 10 works - comedies, histories, tragedies and romances. In analyzing these, he compares and contrasts them with other examples, finally discussing almost the entire canon in the process. The lengthy treatise is dotted with perceptive comments about everything from the attempts of some of today's directors to update the plays ( if he's some idiot who wants to. . .set The Tempest on the planet Mars, you're not all right, and neither is the play ) to hints for reading the texts most rewardingly ( assume you're directing the play and have to think of what kind of people you would choose to play what parts, and where you would place them on stage and get them on and off ), In one of his most provocative passages, Frye speculates that, while Hamlet may have been the central Shakespearean play to 19th-and early 20th-century audiences, King Lear, with its sense of the world's absurdity, speaks most forcefully to today's viewers. The play that may prove central to the 21st century? Antony and Cleopatra gets Frye's reasoned nod because of its investigations of the uses and abuses of power. Written with verve, erudition and more-than-occasional humor, this summing-up of 50 years of scholarship will be read with pleasure, profit and gratitude by drama lovers for years to come. (Kirkus Reviews)

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