Overview

From his own lifetime thorugh to the present day, the one constant feature of the English theatre has been the work of William Shakespeare. Correspondingly, the influence of his poetry on the critical tradition of successive ages has been central. With the growing influence of neo-classicism after the Restoration, Shakespeare came to be viewed with a mixture of awe and contempt; as a brilliant but flawed artist. He was both subjected to prescriptive literary criticism and frequently ""re-invented"" according to largely irrelevant criteria, in his intepretation on the stage. However, whether admired or reviled he was never ignored and was consistently a seminal influence in the work of poets, critics and actors. As the Romantic movement emerged and the fiery genius of Edmund Kean erupted on the London stage, the rift between the worlds of literature and the theatre began slowly to heal and Shakespeare as the basis for serious theatrical art appeared to become a possibility. An increasing respect for his text by actors was accompanied by a growing spectacular, pictorial tradition of staging whcih eventually gave way to the work of William Poel and the Elizabethan Revival, when a serious critical and historically informed view of Shakespeare became the basis for his interpretation in the theatre. This important collection of facsimile reproductions from the time of Elizabeth I to the First World War, illustrates the shifting and vicarious relationship between poetry and the stage. Its comprehensive range includes the critical insights and reflections on Shakespeare of creative writers such as Johnson, Milton, Pope, Dryden, Coleridge, Swinburne, Byron, Shelley and Keats and the overview of editors, critics and essayists who range from Johnson, Capell, Rymer and Warburton to Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt and Bernard Shaw. The responses to Shakespeare of artists in the theatre are comprehensively covered, revealing the art of actors and producers from Burbage, Betterton, Garrick and Macklin to Macready, Beerbohm Tree, Irving and William Poel, whose own reflections are related to contemporary eye-witness accounts of their work.

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9780415163217

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