As You Like It (Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages) - PDF
نویسندگان: Frederick D. Lipman
خلاصه: hakespeare Through the Ages presents not the most current of Shakespearecriticism, but the best of Shakespeare criticism, from the seventeenth centuryto today. In the process, each volume also charts the flow over time of criticaldiscussion of a particular play. Other useful and fascinating collections of his-torical Shakespearean criticism exist, but no collection that we know of containssuch a range of commentary on each of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and at thesame time emphasizes the greatest critics in our literary tradition: from JohnDryden in the seventeenth century, to Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth cen-tury, to William Hazlitt and Samuel Coleridge in the nineteenth century, toA.C. Bradley and William empson in the twentieth century, to the most per-ceptive critics of our own day. This canon of Shakespearean criticism empha-sizes aesthetic rather than political or social analysis.Some of the pieces included here are full-length essays; others are excerptsdesigned to present a key point. Much (but not all) of the earliest criticismconsists only of brief mentions of specific plays. In addition to the classics ofcriticism, some pieces of mainly historical importance have been included, oftento provide background for important reactions from future critics.These volumes are intended for students, particularly those just beginningtheir explorations of Shakespeare. We have therefore also included basicmaterials designed to provide a solid grounding in each play: a biography ofShakespeare, a synopsis of the play, a list of characters, and an explication ofkey passages. In addition, each selection of the criticism of a particular centurybegins with an introductory essay discussing the general nature of that century’scommentary and the particular issues and controversies addressed by criticspresented in the volume.