Author Archives
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Nothing by Shakespeare before A Midsummer Night’s Dream is its equal and in some respects nothing by him afterwards surpasses it. It is his first undoubted masterpiece, with-out flaws, and one of his dozen or so plays of overwhelming originality… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night is the climax of Shakespeare’s early achievement in comedy. The effects and values of the earlier comedies are here subtly embodied in the most complex structure which Shakespeare had yet created. But the play also looks forward: the… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is the definitive tragedy of passion, and in it the ironic and heroic themes, the day world of history and the night world of passion, expand into natural forces of cosmological proportions. —Northrup Frye, “The Tailors of… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Many commentators agree in the belief that The Tempest is the last creation of Shakespeare. I will readily believe it. There is in The Tempest the solemn tone of a testament. It might be said that, before his death, the… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare, more than any other author, has instructed the West in the catastrophes of sexuality, and has invented the formula that the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death. There had to be one high song… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Othello
Of all Shakespeare’s tragedies . . . Othello is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader’s heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
With Shakespeare the dramatic resolution conveys us, beyond the man-made sphere of poetic justice, toward the ever-receding horizons of cosmic irony. This is peculiarly the case with Hamlet, for the same reasons that it excites such intensive empathy from actors… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s King Lear
There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry Vaughan’s Poems
Henry Vaughan’s first collection, Poems, is very derivative; in it can be found borrowings from Donne, Jonson, William Hobington, William Cartwright, and others. It contains only thirteen poems in addition to the translation of Juvenal. Seven poems are written to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey’s Poems
An aristocrat with a humanistic education, Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, considered literature a pleasant diversion. As a member of the Tudor court, he was encouraged to display his learning, wit, and eloquence by writing love poems and translating continental… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Poems
By an eclectic mingling of old traditions, Edmund Spenser created new poetry—new in verse forms, in language, and in genre. From the Middle Ages, Spenser had inherited complex allegorical traditions and a habit of interlacing narrative strands; these traditions were… Read More ›
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Analysis of Robert Southwell’s Poems
Robert Southwell (1561 – 1595) wrote religious poetry with a didactic purpose. In the prose preface to a manuscript, addressed to his cousin, he says that poets who write of the “follies and fayninges” of love have discredited poetry to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Philip Sidney’s Poems
Sir Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586) was educated to embrace an unusual degree of political, religious,and cultural responsibility, yet it is clear from his comments in Defence of Poesie that he took his literary role as seriously. Both this critical… Read More ›
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Analysis of Walter Raleigh’s Poems
If readers take him at his face value (or at the value of one of his many faces), Sir Walter Raleigh (1554? – 1618) epitomized, accepted, and chose to live out the daring expansiveness and buoyancy of the Elizabethan court…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Nashe’s Poems
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) the satirical pamphleteer, who was wont to use language as a cudgel in a broad prose style, seldom disciplined himself to the more delicate work of writing poetry. Both his temperament and his pocketbook directed him to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Andrew Marvell’s Poems
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) is firmly established today in the ranks of the Metaphysical poets, and there is no question that much of his work clearly displays the qualities appropriate to such a position. He reveals a kinship with the Metaphysical… Read More ›
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Analysis of Christopher Marlowe’s Poems
Christopher Marlowe’s (1564-1593) lyric poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is known in several versions of varying length. C. F. Tucker Brooke’s 1962 reprint of his 1910edition of Marlowe’s works cites the six-stanza version of England’s Helicon, with variant… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ben Jonson’s Poems
Until the last few decades, attention to Ben Jonson’s (1572-1637) poetry focused largely on the famous songs and the moving epitaphs on children. Such choices were not ill-advised, but they are unrepresentative. The works in these modes certainly rank among… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Herbert’s Poems
The Temple is unquestionably one of the most inventive and varied collections of poems published in the seventeenth century, and a reader can go a long way toward appreciating George Herbert (1593 – 1633) by studying this inventiveness and variety…. Read More ›
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