Shakespeare: A Life in ArtShakespeare: A Life in Art brings together in a single volume Fraser's previously published two-volume biography (Young Shakespeare, 1988, and Shakespeare: The Later Years, 1992). This volume includes a new introduction, which looks back on the author's lifelong commitment to Shakespeare's work and seeks to find the pattern in his carpet.Fraser's approach places Shakespeare's work first but shows how the life and art interpenetrate, like the yolk and white of one shell. What Shakespeare was doing in Stratford and London underlies what he was writing, or more exactly, the two flow together. Most of the book is devoted to Shakespeare the man and artist, but it simultaneously throws light on his literary and personal relations with contemporaries such as Jonson, Marlowe, and others known as the University Wits. His experience as an actor and man of theater is absorbingly recounted here, as well as his relations to well-born patrons like the Earl of Southampton and Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon (England's Lord Chamberlain). In 1603 when James I ascended the throne, the Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, passing under the sovereign's protection. How Shakespeare responded to his ambiguous role--he was both servant to the great and their remorseless critic--is another of Fraser's subjects. In short, Fraser's principal purpose is to advance our understanding of Shakespeare, at the same time throwing light on the work of the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. John Dryden, Shakespeare's first great critic, said that, and Fraser tries to estimate what he meant. |
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A Life in Art Russell Fraser. jesting in earnest. Essential Shakespeare is the playwright of the agon, the Greek word for an athletic contest, more generally a struggle. In Shakespeare's tragedies the struggle is to the death and fought ...
A Life in Art Russell Fraser. jesting in earnest. Essential Shakespeare is the playwright of the agon, the Greek word for an athletic contest, more generally a struggle. In Shakespeare's tragedies the struggle is to the death and fought ...
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... playwright puts his hand on the scales. Events don't demonstrate a merely linear pattern, occurring post hoc, one after another. They occur propter hoc, one on account of another. The formulation is Aristotle's in his Poetics, and ...
... playwright puts his hand on the scales. Events don't demonstrate a merely linear pattern, occurring post hoc, one after another. They occur propter hoc, one on account of another. The formulation is Aristotle's in his Poetics, and ...
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... playwright, putting on deific power. I like to imagine another act for the play, something like the ending of Cosi Fan Tutte. In Twelfth Night, Act VI, the lovers' vows unsay themselves. That is how things ought to turn out, given the ...
... playwright, putting on deific power. I like to imagine another act for the play, something like the ending of Cosi Fan Tutte. In Twelfth Night, Act VI, the lovers' vows unsay themselves. That is how things ought to turn out, given the ...
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... playwright, our familiar. He stresses the difference, laying it to “consideration,” one of a hundred synonyms for reasonable behavior. consideration whips “the offending Adam” out of a man (Henry V 1.1). But the passage from Macbeth ...
... playwright, our familiar. He stresses the difference, laying it to “consideration,” one of a hundred synonyms for reasonable behavior. consideration whips “the offending Adam” out of a man (Henry V 1.1). But the passage from Macbeth ...
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... offstage or anterior to the beginning. Practically speaking, it looks as if the playwright hands the unwitting hero his fate. Assess Shakespeare's achievement from a high place, and you may be tempted to say of his tragedies and comedies.
... offstage or anterior to the beginning. Practically speaking, it looks as if the playwright hands the unwitting hero his fate. Assess Shakespeare's achievement from a high place, and you may be tempted to say of his tragedies and comedies.
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actors Antony Blackfriars blood Burbage Caesar called Chamberlain’s church comedy comic Coriolanus Court Cymbeline dark daughter death died doesn’t Duke Earl Elizabeth England English Essex Falstaff famous father fellow Garden Globe God’s Hamlet hand Henry VIII hero’s heroine history plays honor isn’t John Shakespeare Jonson King Lear King’s knew later lived London looks Lord Love’s Macbeth man’s Marlowe Marlowe’s master means Measure for Measure Midsummer Night’s Dream moral nature Othello Paul’s perhaps play’s players playhouse playwright plot poem poet Puritans Queen readers remembered Richard Richard II Romeo says scene Shakespeare’s characters Shakespeare’s hero Shakespeare’s play Snitterfield sonnets Southampton stage story Stratford Street tale tells theater things thinks Thomas thought Titus Andronicus took tragedy Troilus and Cressida truth turned Twelfth Night villain wanted William words wrote young Shakespeare