Overview

The first purpose of this book is to provide new readings of many of Shakespeare's major plays, unhampered by bardolatry and, so far as possible, by critical preconceptions. Among the interpretations is an argument that contradictions found in Othello emerge ultimately from Shakespeare's inability to portray a developing heterosexual relationship in any of his plays; that King Lear operates by a technique of psychological and spiritual discontinuity that forces the audience beyond rational or common-sense awareness to the deeper levels of the play; that in Macbeth the hero is portrayed as killing his king not so much for any positive motive as out of an inability to find a reason not to do so; that in Timon of Athens and Coriolanus Shakespeare's judgement is fatally divided; and that in the late romances evil is too lightly treated for the plays to be seen as serious accounts of life. At the same time throughout the book the central theme is Shakespeare's preoccupation with dichotomy and division, a preoccupation that cannot be explained away by reference to his Renaissance or Jacobean milieu, but emerges from himself. It is the subject of many of his plays; it is at the heart of the means by which he produces his greatest dramatic work; and it is equally the source of his blind spots and failures. The changing forms in which it manifests itself throughout his dramas resolve into a coherent pattern of psychological development.

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9781532677489

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Reviews

"""This is a stimulatingly iconoclastic book, free from critical in-fighting, the result of a good, fresh reading of mature Shakespeare, and not the reductive blind ride into obsession that the title might suggest."" --The Year's Work in English Studies ""For Colin Manlove, the 'opposites and divisions' in the plays, which his book explores often shrewdly and suggestively, point toward an essential dividedness in the character of Shakespeare himself. . . . The book has extremely perceptive chapters on dividedness in Othello, Lear, and Coriolanus, where the criticism . . . enters into tough and detailed analyses of individual plays."" --Paul Taylor, Times Literary Supplement ""Colin Manlove's lively and personal book. . . . This is a book which will stimulate fruitful disagreement."" --Maurice Evans, Times Higher Education Supplement ""The careful student will find incentive to pursue the author's recommendation to ask a great many more questions of Shakespeare than we do."" --Peter Orr, British Book News"

This is a stimulatingly iconoclastic book, free from critical in-fighting, the result of a good, fresh reading of mature Shakespeare, and not the reductive blind ride into obsession that the title might suggest. --The Year's Work in English Studies For Colin Manlove, the 'opposites and divisions' in the plays, which his book explores often shrewdly and suggestively, point toward an essential dividedness in the character of Shakespeare himself. . . . The book has extremely perceptive chapters on dividedness in Othello, Lear, and Coriolanus, where the criticism . . . enters into tough and detailed analyses of individual plays. --Paul Taylor, Times Literary Supplement Colin Manlove's lively and personal book. . . . This is a book which will stimulate fruitful disagreement. --Maurice Evans, Times Higher Education Supplement The careful student will find incentive to pursue the author's recommendation to ask a great many more questions of Shakespeare than we do. --Peter Orr, British Book News

Author Information

A pioneer of criticism on fantasy literature, Colin Manlove (1942-2020) taught English and Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh for more than twenty-six years, retiring as reader in 1993; he was awarded a DLitt in 1990. During his long and prolific career, he wrote numerous books including Modern Fantasy (1975), Christian Fantasy (1992), Scottish Fantasy Literature (1994), and The Fantasy Literature of England (1999). He also wrote books on Shakespeare, children's literature, science fiction, and George MacDonald, the most recent of which, George MacDonald's Children's Fantasies and the Divine Imagination, was published in 2019.

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