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1. Vivian Thomas, Shakespeare's Roman Worlds (London and New York, 1989), P Notes PREFACE 1. Vivian Thomas, Shakespeare's Roman Worlds (London and New York, 1989), p. 4. 2. Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare's Tragic Sequence (Liverpool, 2nd edn, 1979), p. 12. 1 FROM THE HISTORIES TO THE TRAGEDIES 1. Quotations from Shakespeare here, and throughout, are from Peter Alexander (ed.), The Complete Works (London, 1951). 2. See particularly John Wilders, The Lost Garden (London, 1978). 3. See Philip Edwards's illuminating analysis of the 'rex absconditus' in Threshold of a Nation (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 110-30. 4. E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (London, 1944). 5. Arthur Sewell, Character and Society in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1951), pp. 77, 80. 6. J.L. Simmons, Shakespeare's Pagan World: the Roman Tragedies (Brighton, 1974). 7. This is the date assigned to it by the editors of the 1986 Oxford Complete Works, who also ascribe a share of its authorship to Middle­ ton. See Chapter 6 for a fuller discussion of the question. 2 JULIUS CAESAR 1. See particularly Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London and New York 1964), Vol. V, pp. 4-35. References for source material quoted from Bullough's collection throughout the book are given parenthetically in the text. 2. Bernard Shaw, Collected Plays with their Prefaces (London, 1971), Vol. II, p. 39. 3. Ernest Schanzer, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare (London, 1963), pp. 32-3. 4. J.E. Phillips Jr., The State in Shakespeare's Greek and Roman Plays (New York, 1940), p. 172. 5. Schanzer, Problem Plays of Shakespeare, p. 51. 6. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, 1977). 7. See, for example, Leo Kirschbaum, 'Shakespeare's Stage Blood and its Critical Significance', PMLA 64 (1949), 524, and Maurice Charney, 287 288 Notes Shakespeare's Roman Plays (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 49, both of whom stress the shock effect of the scene's bloodiness. Ernest Schan­ zer, however, is of a different opinion, suggesting that 'we feel towards [the assassination] more as we do towards "The Murder of Gonzago" than the murder of Duncan'. See Schanzer, Problem Plays of Shakespeare, p. 66. 8. Brents Stirling, Unity in Shakespearean Tragedy (New York, 1956), p. 49. 9. Stirling, Unity in Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 50. 10. Simmons, Shakespeare's Pagan World, p. 68. 11. Nicholas Brooke, Shakespeare's Early Tragedies (London, 1968), p. 143. 12. Schanzer, Problem Plays of Shakespeare, p. 37. 13. For a succinct summary of the question, see Arthur Humphreys (ed.), Julius Caesar (Oxford, 1984), V.i.l11n. 14. For a detailed treatment of the subject see Rowland Wymer, Suicide and Despair in the Jacobean Drama (Brighton, 1986). 15. Charney, Shakespeare's Roman Plays, p. 16. 16. Reuben A. Brower, Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (Oxford, 1971), p. 226. 3 HAMLET 1. For discussion of the question of dating see E.A.J. Honigmann, 'The Date of Hamlet', Shakespeare Suroey 9 (1956), 24-34. 2. See Harold Jenkins (ed.), Hamlet (London, 1982), III.ii.103n. 3. Philip Edwards (ed.), Hamlet (Cambridge, 1985), p. 6. 4. John Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet (Cambridge, 3rd edn, 1951), pp. 52-86. 5. Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford, 1967). 6. Compare Peter Mercer's comments on the 'doubleness of the structure of revenge tragedy' in his excellent book, Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge (London, 1987), p. 14. 7. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire (London, 4th edn, 1949), p. 33. 8. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, p. 33. 9. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, pp. 34, 35. 10. Jenkins, Hamlet, l.v.93n. 11. See Edwards, Hamlet, p. 14 and I.iv.17-38n. 12. Reuben Brower reads this speech as wholly admiring of Fortinbras, Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (Ox­ ford, 1971), p. 303. I find G.K. Hunter's analysis of the mixed tone of the speech much more convincing. See 'The Heroism of Hamlet', in Dramatic Identities and Cultural Tradition (Liverpool, 1978), pp. 235--6. 13. OED cites this passage as the first recorded instance of 'relative', adj. 3, 'having relation to the question or matter in hand: pertinent, relevant'. 14. Ernest Jones's fullest study is the book-length Hamlet and Oedipus (London, 1949). For a more recent psychoanalytic analysis of the play, see C.L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler, The Whole Journey: Shakes­ peare's Power of Development (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1986), pp. 237-81. Notes 289 15. L.C. Knights, 'An Approach to Hamlet', in 'Hamlet' and other Shakespea­ rean Essays (Cambridge, 1979), p. 45. 16. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, p. 32. 17. Hamlet glances at the doctrine of the king's two bodies in his riddling antics after the murder of Polonius: 'The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body' (N.ii.26-7). Rosencrantz enunciates a traditional exposition of the organic interrelation of king and king­ dom, m.iii.15-23. 18. Gilbert Murray, 'Hamlet and Orestes', in The Classical Tradition in Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1927). 19. Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, p. 267. 20. Harley Granville Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (London, 1958), Vol. I, p. 139. 21. Brower, Hero and Saint, p. 310. 22. See, for example, Martin Dodsworth's analysis of the graveyard-scene in Hamlet Closely Observed (London, 1985), pp. 236-51. 23. 'Fighting' in the heart is used as the same sort of semi-physiological sign of premonition in Arden of Faversham, Scene 9, 1, ed. K. Sturgess (Harmondsworth, 1969). 24. See, for example, Edwards, Hamlet, p. 58: 'There is no doubt of the extent of Hamlet's failure. In trying to restore "the beauteous majesty of Denmark" he has brought the country into an even worse state, in the hands of a foreigner.' 25. In one production, directed by Michael Bogdanov (Dublin, 1983), heavily influenced by memories of the Falklands War, Fortinbras' entry was a massive paratroop assault on the stage; the 1988 Renais­ sance Theatre Company version had an even more sinister militaristic coup d'etat, with the words 'Go bid the soldiers shoot' an order for immediate political liquidations, starting with Horatio. 26. D.G. James, The Dream of Learning (Oxford, 1951), p. 36. 27. C.S. Lewis, 'Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem', reprinted in Shakespeare's Tragedies: an Anthology of Modern Criticism, ed. Laurence Lerner (Har­ mondsworth, 1963), p. 75. See also Philip Edwards, 'Tragic Balance in Hamlet', Shakespeare Survey 36 (1983), 43-52. 4 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA 1. G.K. Hunter, 'Troilus and Cressida: a tragic satire', Shakespeare Studies (Tokyo) 13 (1977), 1-23. 2. See the interesting debate between T. McAlindon and Mark Sacharoff on 'Language, Style and Meaning in Troilus and Cressida', PMLA 87 (1972), 90-9, arising out of an original article by McAlindon in PMLA 84 (1969). 3. See, for example, Gayle Greene, 'Language and Value in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida', Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 21 (1981), 271-85. 4. See Peter Alexander, 'Troilus and Cressida, 1609', The Library (4th series) IX (1928), 267-86. 290 Notes 5. See Kenneth Palmer (ed.), Troilus and Cressida (London, 1982), p. 47, n. 2. 6. See, for example, Hamish F.G. Swanston, 'The Baroque Element in Troilus and Cressida', Durham University Journal, XIX (N.S.) (1957-8), 14-23, or Greene, 'Language and Value in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida', 285. 7. Troilus and Criseyde, Book III, 1776-78, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson (Oxford, 2nd edn, 1974). 8. A.J. Smith, Literary Love (London, 1983), p. 33. 9. Troilus and Criseyde, Book IV, 152-4. 10. Oscar J. Campbell, Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino, California, 1938), pp. 212, 213. 11. Kenneth Muir (ed.), Troilus and Cressida (Oxford, 1982), III.ii.11n. 12. See Palmer (ed.), Troilus and Cressida, Ill.ii.lln. 13. Campbell, Comicall Satyre, p. 212. 14. See Ann Thompson, Shakespeare's Chaucer (Liverpool, 1978), pp. 133, 141. 15. John Bayley, The Uses of Division (London, 1976), p. 205. 16. See Carolyn Asp, 'In Defense of Cressida', Studies in Philology, 74 (1977), 406-17, or Gayle Greene, 'Shakespeare's Cressida: "A kind of self'", in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, eds Carolyn R.S. Lenz, Gayle Greene and Carol T. Neely (Urbana, illinois, 1980), pp. 133-49. 17. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Adventures of Don Quixote, trans. J.M. Cohen (Harmondsworth, 1950), p. 108. 18. Bernard Shaw, Collected Plays with their Prefaces (London, 1970), Vol. I, p. 29. 19. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy (Brighton, 1984), pp. 40-50. 20. Rosalie Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton, 1974), p. 351. 21. Elizabeth Freund suggests that in future the play may come to be regarded not as a unique oddity in the Shakespeare canon but a paradigmatic Renaissance text in its simultaneous awareness of and challenge to its classical precursors. See "'Ariachne's broken woof': the rhetoric of citation in Troilus and Cressida', in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, eds Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (New York and London, 1985), pp. 19-36. 22. Jane Adamson, Troilus and Cressida (Brighton, 1987), p. 164. 5 OTHELLO 1. See G.M. Matthews, 'Othello and the Dignity of Man', in Shakespeare in a Changing World, ed. Arnold Kettle (London, 1964), pp. 123-45. 2. This is the hypothesis of Emrys Jones, 'Othello, Lepanto and the Cyprus Wars', reprinted from Shakespeare Survey in Aspects of Othello, eds Kenneth Muir and Philip Edwards (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 61-6. 3. 'The Lepanto', lines 10-11, The Poems of James VI of Scotland, ed.
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