![]() Bottom does become the Fairy Queen’s lover, however briefly. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, often read as one of the most relentlessly hierarchical of the plays, is a celebration of the common man. For Ryan, The Taming of the Shrew is not misogynistic Merchant of Venice is not anti-Semitic. Tillyard and critiqued by cultural materialists) that the plays articulate the world view of a hierarchical, monarchical, patriarchal society. As in his 2001 Shakespeare, Ryan rejects the notion (celebrated by E. Thus, Antonio’s melancholy at the opening of Merchant is a symbolic response to the spiritual emptiness of capitalism, not grief and frustration that Bassanio, for whom Antonio clearly has deep affection, is so keen to woo Portia.Īn unspoken principle underlying Ryan’s study is that Shakespeare was a fundamentally progressive liberal humanist, with an expansive and relatively egalitarian vision of life. Homoeroticism, for example, is discussed in relation to As You Like It and Twelfth Night but not mentioned in the chapters on The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Merchant of Venice. Ryan deals with what he feels is most significant without attempting to address a single issue across all the plays. The point is for Ryan to be able to free himself of the burden of history and the weight of recent scholarship in order to simply read Shakespeare, unshackled.Īnd why not? The readings are detailed, insightful, loving, and intelligent they engage deeply, at times idiosyncratically, with the plays. Shakespeare himself seems to have had a lively interest in all these things. ![]() Now, it is quite possible to be interested in cosmetics, as well as the power of acting, or to be fascinated by maps, as well as poetry. Instead, he wants to “engage with each play first and foremost as a singular work of dramatic and poetic art” (xi). no colon, no subtitle.Īlthough earlier in his career Ryan edited a reader on new historicism and cultural materialism, here he is disdainful of anyone invested in “shackling to extraneous archival material,” especially those “cultural historians more interested in maps, make-up or medicine than in the power of plays” (xii). No introduction containing a theoretical overview followed by chapter summaries. ![]() He cheerfully rejects most contemporary Shakespeare criticism along with most of the apparatus of a contemporary scholarly study. ![]() Kiernan Ryan’s Shakespeare’s Comedies is a solid collection of old-fashioned close readings. ![]()
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