The ghost behind the masks : the Victorian poets and Shakespeare /
Shaw, W. David(William David),author.
In The Ghost behind the Masks, W. David Shaw traces Shakespeare's influence on nine Victorian poets: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Algernon Swinburne, Arthur Hugh Clough, and George Meredith. Often, he writes, the transparency of Shakespeare's influence on Victorian poets and the degree of their engagement with Shakespeare exist in inverse ratio. Instead of imitating a play by Shakespeare or merely quoting his lines, a Victorian poet may embrace more elusive elements of rhetoric and style, adapting them to his or her own ends. Shaw argues that the most Shakespearean attribute of the Victorian poets is not their addiction to any particular trope or figure of speech but their reticence, the classical restraint of their great monologues, and their sudden descent from grandeur to simplicity. He explores such topics as man-made law versus natural right, Stoic fatalism versus self-reliance, and the sanity of lunatics, lovers, and poets versus the madness of commonplace minds.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-275) and index.
pt. 1. Poetic beginnings -- Word and love games: Berowne and Ida's prince -- The trespass of intimacy: artists in crime -- pt. 2. Hamlet's afterlives -- Toils of fate: Dickens, Hamlet, and Malvolio -- The angel of dust: a god in exile -- pt. 3. Shades of King Lear -- Thou, nature, art my goddess: the garden and the heath -- A choral mind trap: Hardy and the homilists -- Wisdom and wit: Lear's fool to Dagonet -- The end of illusion: Childe Roland and Caliban -- pt. 4. Grace and death -- A toil of grace: Cleopatra and her heirs -- Off the edge: end games and elegy -- The hills are shadows: time the devourer -- Oracle meets wit: the promised end.
In The Ghost behind the Masks, W. David Shaw traces Shakespeare's influence on nine Victorian poets: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Algernon Swinburne, Arthur Hugh Clough, and George Meredith. Often, he writes, the transparency of Shakespeare's influence on Victorian poets and the degree of their engagement with Shakespeare exist in inverse ratio. Instead of imitating a play by Shakespeare or merely quoting his lines, a Victorian poet may embrace more elusive elements of rhetoric and style, adapting them to his or her own ends. Shaw argues that the most Shakespearean attribute of the Victorian poets is not their addiction to any particular trope or figure of speech but their reticence, the classical restraint of their great monologues, and their sudden descent from grandeur to simplicity. He explores such topics as man-made law versus natural right, Stoic fatalism versus self-reliance, and the sanity of lunatics, lovers, and poets versus the madness of commonplace minds.
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
English poetry
Aesthetics, Modern
Poetics