Shakespeare

by Van Doren, Mark; Lehman, David

• ISBN13: 9781590171684
• ISBN10: 1590171683
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-31
• Publisher: NYRB Classics

Summary

This legendary book by an esteemed poet and beloved professor at Columbia University features a series of smart, witty, deeply perceptive essays about each of Shakespeare's plays, together with a further discussion of the poems. Writing with an incomparable knowledge of his subject but without a hint of pedantry, Van Doren elucidates both the astonishing boldness and myriad subtleties of Shakespeare's protean art. HisShakespeareis a book to be treasured by both new and longtime students of the Bard.

Author Biography

Mark Van Doren (1894-1972) was born in Hope, Illinois, and received his A.M. and Ph.D. from Columbia, where he taught literature for nearly forty years and where his students included Thomas Merton, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsberg. It was there, and with his book The Liberal Education, that he helped promote the influential “great books” movement. Van Doren was literary editor of The Nation and president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his books are critical biographies of such writers as Dryden and Hawthorne; a study of epic poetry, The Noble Voice; several plays; an auto-biography; novels; and many volumes of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Collected Poems, 1922-1938.

David Lehman’s new book of poems, his sixth, is When a Woman Loves a Man. He is the series editor of The Best American Poetry, the annual anthology he founded in 1988, and is currently preparing a new edition of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His nonfiction books include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets and Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Introduction	xix
Poems	1	(9)
Henry VI	10	(9)
Richard III	19	(9)
Titus Andronicus	28	(5)
The Comedy of Errors	33	(3)
The Taming of the Shrew	36	(4)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona	40	(5)
Love's Labour's Lost	45	(6)
Romeo and Juliet	51	(10)
A Midsummer Night's Dream	61	(7)
Richard II	68	(11)
The Merchant of Venice	79	(9)
King John	88	(9)
Henry IV	97	(18)
The Merry Wives of Windsor	115	(4)
Much Ado About Nothing	119	(8)
As You Like It	127	(8)
Twelfth Night	135	(8)
Henry V	143	(9)
Julius Caesar	152	(9)
Hamlet	161	(11)
Troilus and Cressida	172	(6)
All's Well That Ends Well	178	(7)
Measure for Measure	185	(7)
Othello	192	(12)
King Lear	204	(12)
Macbeth	216	(14)
Antony and Cleopatra	230	(13)
Coriolanus	243	(6)
Timon of Athens	249	(4)
Pericles	253	(9)
Cymbeline	262	(9)
The Winter's Tale	271	(9)
The Tempest	280	(9)
Henry VIII	289	(6)
Index	295