A History of English Literature

smiles’ and his efforts at ‘popularity’. But acting is now a necessary part of political life: Henry sends into the battlefield ...

The sacred ideals of England and of kingship, set up at the start ofRichard II and turned into theatre by Richard at Flint Castl ...

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive. They sparkle still the right Promethean fire. They are the books, the arts, the academ ...

laugh at the lovers’ suicide: ‘very tragical mirth’. It is a brilliantly unsuitable play for a wedding. Shakespeare had used a s ...

This pair of exchanges tells us much about Shakespearian drama. The play- within-a-play was a device he favoured: the players be ...

Twelfth Night Twelfth Night, which marks the mid-point of Shakespeare’s career, is a ripe love- comedy with a happy ending. Ship ...

or compared – Rosalind/Celia, Helena/Hermia, Edgar/Edmund, Leontes/Polixenes – and many more. Sexual possessiveness is a theme o ...

men ride’, yet the poet’s illicit relation with her requires mutual pretences of love. Finally, in sonnet 144, ‘Two loves I have ...

addressed to a Stella or a Delia, named in the title. The selling point ofShake-speares Sonnetswas the name of the author. Yet t ...

ofHamlet: ‘What is it you would see; / If aught of woe, or wonder, cease your search.’ Shakespeare does not exemplify Aristotle’ ...

King Lear King Lear is larger than the other tragedies in its moral scope. It is a play of good and evil, a parable with little ...

We feel what Edgar says, having seen the most suffering that man can bear. Yet evil has lost: Edgar defeats Edmund; Goneril kill ...

EDGAR: What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all. Come on. GLO ...

The assassin now asks himself whether the ocean is enough to wash Duncan’s blood from his hand, and answers ‘No, this my hand wi ...

fixes on the relation of father and daughter. The strong and often subversive role played by sexual attraction in Shakespeare’s ...

and put into a rotten boat with his 3-year-old daughter. Her presence saved him: ‘A cherubin / Thou wast, that didst preserve me ...

his master. At the end of the play he is released, and Prospero’s final words to the audience also ask that he, like his servant ...

man, this side idolatry’; he also mentioned his ‘small Latin and less Greek’ and his carelessness. Ben Jonson was given a feroci ...

The Alchemist In The AlchemistSir Epicure Mammon plans the sexual conquests he will enjoy after taking the elixir of youth: ‘I w ...

Overview The 17th century is divided into two by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 and the temporary overthrow of the monarc ...