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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... shared insights about Shakespeare's method of composition . Characteristically , in plays with double plots - both comedies and tragedies - Shakespeare con- trives to have the events involving one set of characters mirror those ...
... shared mockery they relish at the expense of the failed suitors . It is even more like the shared assurance they possess as they watch Shylock entrap himself , insisting as he does on the very rigor and precision in the law's operation ...
... shared powerlessness in calling upon forces greater than those at their disposal , Olivia by an invocation- " Fate , show thy force ; ourselves we do not owe " -Viola , more humbly , in an admission of weakness : O time , thou must ...
Contents
The Aggrandizement of Closure | 1 |
The Comic Pleasures | 22 |
three | 34 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown