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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... plot , a control grounded primarily on that plot's sources . In Prouty's inter- pretation , for example , Shakespeare arrived at his treatment of the play's main story by a judicious process of selection from among its various ...
... plot in Twelfth Night ? The short answer is " not much . " Not much , that is , if plot is thought of as the soul of the comedy . Certainly one can chart a plot in the conventional way , with the impetus and shifts of direction ...
... plot in the ordinary sense of that word . It finesses the whole idea of plot by appealing to another order of things . That order takes its most striking form ( to seize an easy pun ) in the appearances of Antonio and , later ...
Contents
The Aggrandizement of Closure | 1 |
The Comic Pleasures | 22 |
three | 34 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown