Human Conflict in ShakespeareRoutledge, 30 mars 2021 - 340 sidor Conflict is at the heart of much of Shakespeare’s drama. Frequently there is an overt setting of violence, as in Macbeth, but, more significantly there is often ‘interior’ conflict. Many of Shakespeare’s most striking and important characters – Hamlet and Othello are good examples – are at war with themselves. Originally published in 1987, S. C. Boorman makes this ‘warfare of our nature’ the central theme of his stimulating approach to Shakespeare. He points to the moral context within which Shakespeare wrote, in part comprising earlier notions of human nature, in part the new tentative perceptions of his own age. Boorman shows Shakespeare’s great skill in developing the traditional ideas of proper conduct to show the tensions these ideas produce in real life. In consequence, Shakespeare’s characters are not the clear-cut figures of earlier drama, rehearsing the set speeches of their moral types – they are so often complex and doubting, deeply disturbed by their discordant natures. The great merit of this fine book is that it displays the ways in which Shakespeare conjured up living beings of flesh and blood, making his plays as full of dramatic power and appeal for modern audiences as for those of his own day. In short, this book presents a human approach to Shakespeare, one which stresses that truth of mankind’s inner conflict which links virtually all his plays. |
Från bokens innehåll
Resultat 1-5 av 68
... dangerous assumption that every play by Shakespeare must, in production, be 'reinterpreted' to a modern audience. Such 're-interpretation' frequently appears to involve using the Elizabethan text largely as a basis for alterations, and ...
... dangers of the irrational by enjoying the portrayal of other men's failure to control it; here again the drama and stories ... danger, cruell where he hateth, and gentle to those he loueth, hardy against a naked faynt harted enemie, and ...
... dangers are greater. As Elyot warns: For moste harde and greuous iugement shall be on them that haue rule ouer other. To the poure man mercy is graunted, but the great men shall suffre great tourmentes... The stronger or of more mighte ...
... dangers of discord within the private man with those, more widespread and terrible in their effects, in the public man. In his introduction, Baldwin, after quoting Plato: 'Well is that realme gouerned, in which the ambicious desyer not ...
... dangerous. It was an Elizabethan commonplace that the life of a king was harder than the people realised. As Henry Howard (himself later Earl of Northampton, and a prominent politician under James I) wrote in 1593: And they that are ...