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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... nearly all the plays have been labeled as " prob- lematic . " Few readers today would willingly associate themselves with the emphatic cheeriness of J. Dover Wilson in his assertion that " the quality the first ten comedies have in ...
... nearly every stage of his discussion , Barber is careful to avoid overstatement . Thus he detects the problem one faces in concentrat- ing on structure , he knows the sort of falsification it requires , yet he persists : “ every new ...
... nearly all the comedies . The curious fact , though , is that such a dispute should persist in nearly unaltered terms over a play that is itself quite unlike the other comedies in its fundamental structure . Nothing seems more ...
Contents
The Aggrandizement of Closure | 1 |
The Comic Pleasures | 22 |
three | 34 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown