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by: Mark Van Doren
List Price: $15.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.85 You Save: $5.10 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.33
EAN: 9781590171684
ISBN: 1590171683
Label: NYRB Classics
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: August 31, 2005
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Release Date: August 31, 2005
Sales Rank: 384485
Studio: NYRB Classics
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This legendary book by an esteemed poet and beloved professor at Columbia University features a series of smart, witty, deeply perceptive essays about each of Shakespeare's plays, together with a further discussion of the poems. Writing with an incomparable knowledge of his subject but without a hint of pedantry, Van Doren elucidates both the astonishing boldness and myriad subtleties of Shakespeare's protean art. His Shakespeare is a book to be treasured by both new and longtime students of the Bard.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Frosting on the Cake, Not the Dough That Made It
Highly recommended for someone who has some familiarity with the plays and wants to see this terrain through sharper eyes. This is not "CliffsNotes." These are essays by a master critic who loves Shakespeare, written *for* readers who love Shakespeare. But be prepared when Van Doren plays the critic, not the worshipper. If your favorite is "Henry V," for example, keep an open mind and wince along.
A pleasant aspect of this book is that you can take the essays in any order. This ... Read More
Rating: - A treasure...
How often have you encountered a book on Shakespeare or his works that attains a level of writing that is often heart-meltingly gorgeous, even at times comparable to the beauty of the Shakespeare quotations it contains? Probably only once, and this is the book.
A helpful introduction by David Lehman reminds us that Mark Van Doren was a celebrated professor of literature at Columbia University, and a poet of considerable accomplishment, who served as mentor to a long list of students ... Read More
Rating: - Makes Shakespeare hum!!!
I have always loved Shakespeare but, even though I have studied it, sometimes, he is a little difficult to pin down on what exactly he is saying or meaning and it is often hard to get the feel or mood for certain scenes. After all, he was a playwright, not a journalist! And he wrote five centuries ago in the idiomatic English of that time. This critique is absolutely brilliant. Van Doren's feelings on Shakespeare are that he wrote his plays to be enacted on a mostly-bare stage in front of a noisy ... Read More
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