Imagining Shakespeare

Rating:
Summary: Imagining Shakespeare
Review: With this book, Orgel (Stanford) makes a dramatic entrance into the debate over the nature of Shakespearean texts. On page 1, he proclaims, "Shakespeare never conceived, or even re-conceived, his plays as texts to be read. They were scripts, not books; the only readers were the performers, and the function of the script was to be realized on the stage." Orgel does not address recent arguments to the contrary (e.g., Lukas Erne's Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, 2003), but instead embarks on a witty, fascinating exercise, decoding small critical cruxes in several plays using his extraordinary knowledge of performance history, critical traditions, art history, and myth. The chapter on The Merchant of Venice scrutinizes both stage traditions of presenting Shylock as Jew and critical traditions of analyzing Shylock as Other. Orgel argues persuasively that Shylock represents a Puritan merchant, a recognizable Elizabethan type. Detailed illustrations of actors and reproductions of art accompany chapters on Shakespeare's portraiture, the function of anachronism in history plays, the mystery of Shakespeare's reference to Guilio Romano in The Winter's Tale, and the mythic signs surrounding Hippolyta and Theseus's marriage in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Engrossing, erudite, and wickedly entertaining, this is a book for all Shakespeare collections.

Rating:
Summary: Imagining Shakespeare
Review: With this book, Orgel (Stanford) makes a dramatic entrance into the debate over the nature of Shakespearean texts. On page 1, he proclaims, "Shakespeare never conceived, or even re-conceived, his plays as texts to be read. They were scripts, not books; the only readers were the performers, and the function of the script was to be realized on the stage." Orgel does not address recent arguments to the contrary (e.g., Lukas Erne's Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, 2003), but instead embarks on a witty, fascinating exercise, decoding small critical cruxes in several plays using his extraordinary knowledge of performance history, critical traditions, art history, and myth. The chapter on The Merchant of Venice scrutinizes both stage traditions of presenting Shylock as Jew and critical traditions of analyzing Shylock as Other. Orgel argues persuasively that Shylock represents a Puritan merchant, a recognizable Elizabethan type. Detailed illustrations of actors and reproductions of art accompany chapters on Shakespeare's portraiture, the function of anachronism in history plays, the mystery of Shakespeare's reference to Guilio Romano in The Winter's Tale, and the mythic signs surrounding Hippolyta and Theseus's marriage in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Engrossing, erudite, and wickedly entertaining, this is a book for all Shakespeare collections.