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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Most of Thomas Dekker’s (1572 – 1632) best poetry is found in his plays; unfortunately, since most of his plays were collaborations, it is often difficult to assign particular poetic pas-sages to Dekker, and perhaps even harder to assign the… Read More ›
Richard Crashaw’s (1613 – 1649) poetry may be divided into three groups of unequal significance for the scholar: the early epigrams, the secular poetry, and the religious poetry. The early epigrams and translations are studied, meticulous, and often occasional. The… Read More ›
Abraham Cowley (1618—1667) is a transitional figure, a poet who tended to relinquish the emotional values of John Donne and George Herbert and grasp the edges of reason and wit.He was more versatile than the early Metaphysicals: He embraced the… Read More ›
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