“Tony Tanner was probably the most versatile and ingenious English critic of his time. His prose was exemplary, full of life and humor, and his literary range was extraordinary. The acknowledged leader of British Americanists, he was also admired for his books on Jane Austen, and he broke new ground in Adultery in the Novel and Venice Desired. But in his own opinion the Shakespeare prefaces were his finest work, and it would be difficult to disagree. The essays cover the entire range of the plays, treating them with characteristic brio in that very personal style that accommodates new insights, based on expert close reading, with an easy command of historical and linguistic contexts. I would recommend this book above all others to an interested young person, provided he or she was both intelligent and capable of delight in the poetry of the plays as Tanner makes it manifest.”
—Sir Frank Kermode
Author(s): Tony Tanner
Publisher: THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 827
City: Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, England
Tags: William Shakespeare, drama
Foreword by Stephen Heath ix
COMEDIES
The Comedy of Errors 20 The Taming of the Shrew 39 The Two Gentlemen of Verona 56 Love’s Labor’s Lost 75 Romeo and Juliet 92 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 114 The Merchant of Venice 140
The Merry Wives of Windsor 167 Much Ado About Nothing 180
As You Like It 199
Twelfth Night 226
All’s Well That Ends Well 250
Measure for Measure 275
VI
Contents
HISTORIES
303
Henry VI, Part One
3l8
Henry VI, Part Two
33°
Henry VI, Part Three Richard III 348
King John 364
Richard II 380
338
Henry IV, Part One
401
Henry IV, Part Two
Henry V 445
Henry VIII 468
429
MAJOR TRAGEDIES
487
Hamlet 494
Othello 515
King Lear 534
Macbeth 554
GREEK AND ROMAN
PLAYS
577
Titus Andronicus
579
3
Troilus and Cressida
589
Julius Caesar 604
Antony and Cleopatra
622
Timon of Athens
640
Coriolanus
653
Contents
vii
ROMANCES_677
Pericles 695 Cymbeline 721 The Winter’s Tale 755 The Tempest 792
About the Author 827
