Shakespeare and the Ends of Comedy"This is a congenial, lucidly written work, the product of careful thought and attention to performance." --Shakespeare Bulletin "... Jensen has done a service by reminding readers of the variety and richness of the comedy and comic devices in Shakespeare's plays." --Choice "The ear that Jensen brings to the plays themselves results in close readings that are always insightful and stimulate new questions." --English Language Notes "Here is a genuinely readable and enjoyable book... humane, balanced, unpolemical, good humored, and fundamentally sane." --Charles R. Forker "... Jensen has produced a sensitive and eminently readable book that will no doubt figure prominently in future attempts to understand Shakespeare's comic practice." --Shakespeare Yearbook Jensen questions a persistent critical emphasis that finds the meanings of Shakespeare's comedies in their endings. Analyzing The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure, he shows how much vitality is sacrificed when critics assume that "the end crowns the work." |
From inside the book
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... episode has an impulse and an outcome of its own . It is a measure of the play's energy that it presses forward from ... episodes . Two instances of plotting on this level stand out . The first is , like Jonson's comic preparation for ...
... episode furnishes an abundance of rewards both in the theatre and in the study . It takes its place in the total ... episodes have their own logic ; they are not elements shaped wholly to serve the play's purposes as those are finally ...
... episode ( 209-58 ) , a testimony to Shakespeare's confidence in his actors , since Olivia ( and Antonio , for that matter ) must spend most of this episode in mute amazement and delight . Once again , the moment is full . In the theatre ...
Contents
The Aggrandizement of Closure | 1 |
The Comic Pleasures | 22 |
three | 34 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown