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
Results 1-3 of 21
... major English - speaking countries - Shakespeare's comedies came under increasing scrutiny . But although this growing attention , noticed first by John Russell Brown in 1955 , has continued uninterrupted to the present day , its ...
... major feature of The Merchant of Venice . Yet the use of audience is crucial to the play's comedy . Almost every major action in the play , and many of its subsidiary events , take on a particular coloring from the presence of an ...
... major event of Much Ado about Nothing , and preceding most of its significant comic mo- ments , Shakespeare prepares his audience for what they are about to witness . This technique is fundamental to comedy . It operates , for example ...
Contents
The Aggrandizement of Closure | 1 |
The Comic Pleasures | 22 |
three | 34 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown