Shakespeare

Editor’s NoteixLanham proposes an analysis of Hamlet that I find deeply congenial: “Humanflesh is sullied with self-consciousness and with theatricality.”Patricia Parker organizes her formidable study of All’s Well That Ends Welland Troilus and Cressida by centering upon Shakespearean metaphors of“increase,” and with dialectical agility opens up fresh perspectives upon boththese “problem plays.”In a sensitive account of Measure for Measure, Ronald R. Macdonaldexamines Shakespeare’s final comedy and concludes it shows an ebbing faith inthe comic genre.Graham Bradshaw, one of the most original of Shakespearean critics,denies the scholarly myth of “double time” in Othello, and argues persuasivelythat the marriage between Othello and Desdemona is never consummated.The important modern English critic, William Empson, defends Macbethon many fronts, and preserves the integrity of Shakespeare’s most ruthlesslyeconomical drama.Antony and Cleopatra frequently seems to set its poetry and its action intoconflict, with each qualifying the other. Janet Adelman shows that we can believeneither the one nor the other when poetry and action diverge in the play.Stephen Orgel, considering the poetics of The Winter’s Tale, argues fordeliberate opacity and even confusion as components in this drama. WhetherOrgel proves his case may be disputable, but he opens the play to fecund furtherdiscussion.Another of my favorites among contemporary Shakespearean critics, A. D.Nuttall, explores the double nature of The Tempest, at once skeptical and quasimystical,perhaps even Hermetic. Nuttall’s grasp of the play is so beautifully firmthat his emphasis upon its infinite suggestiveness is all the more convincing, andis an apt conclusion to the present volume.