The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare

by Arthur F. Kinney (Editor)

An essential resource for the study of Shakespeare, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare is edited by esteemed scholar Arthur Kinney and contains forty specially written essays. It provides fresh and imaginative readings of his plays and poems, reflects on the current state of Shakespeare Studies, and suggests the likely future directions it will take. The Handbook is divided into five sections: 'Texts' explores how Shakespeare wrote, who he collaborated with, the ways in which his works were transmitted, and the reactions of his early readers; 'Conditions' examines the economic, social, artistic, and linguistic forces at play on Shakespeare; 'Works' discusses the various stages of his career; 'Performances' is concerned with issues such as the reception of his plays, the theatre business, and film adaptations; and 'Current Speculations' includes essays on topics ranging from the role of philosophical thought and the influence of classical sources to the relevance of empire, technology, religion, and law. By covering the range of Shakespeare's work in his time and ours, this myriad-minded book deepens and enriches our understanding of the great poet and unparalleled playwright's accomplishments.

Genres: Shakespeare

846 pages, Hardcover

First published December 22, 2011

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book consists of forty essays by as many authors, divided into five parts as explained in its description:

The Handbook is divided into five sections: 'Texts' explores how Shakespeare wrote, who he collaborated with, the ways in which his works were transmitted, and the reactions of his early readers; 'Conditions' examines the economic, social, artistic, and linguistic forces at play on Shakespeare; 'Works' discusses the various stages of his career; 'Performances' is concerned with issues such as the reception of his plays, the theatre business, and film adaptations; and 'Current Speculations' includes essays on topics ranging from the role of philosophical thought and the influence of classical sources to the relevance of empire, technology, religion, and law.

The subjects were assigned to each of the authors by the editor who explains at the end of his biographically oriented introduction description that “...the coverage and perspective is wholly theirs.”

Each reader will have his own list of chapters he or she considers outstanding, according to his or her interests and background. I found the following chapters particularly interesting – in the part on Texts:

2 Collaboration;
4 Quarto and Folio;
6 Dramatic Metre;

in Conditions:

11 Domestic Life;
13 Language- this essay includes a wonderful and insightful analysis of The Merry Wives of Windsor;
14 Dramaturgy;
15 Censorship;

in Works

17 Middle Shakespeare;
18 Poetry;

in Performances:

24 Foreign Worlds;
26 Shakespeare on Film and Television -the best coverage is on pre-1960 film and television versions, and thereafter Hamlet, Othello and comedies;
27 Marketing - on advertising Shakespeare and Shakespeare in advertising;

in Current Speculations

30 Law -the varieties of Tudor laws, how mercy tempered and was expected to temper the letter of the law, points that are particularly relevant to The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure as the author cogently argues;
21 Formation of Nationhood - both from political and linguistic (the development of the English language) points of view, which are particularly pertinent to King John and The Merry Wives of Windsor and to a lesser degree to Henry V and Cymbeline);
32 Republicanism -particularly relevant to the Roman plays and ingeniously to the Venice republic in Othello;
33 Empire - a fascinating study especially relevant to The Tempest , the chapter includes a brief but striking comparison between English and Spanish approaches to justifying conquest and colonization in the Americas, Africa and Ireland;
38 Science and Technology;
39 Shakespeare and America -which sketches out the use and abuse of Shakespeare in “high culture” and “low culture” in the USA;
40 Shakespeare and the World -an excellent essay on translations, adaptations and derivations of Shakespeare in countries and regions apart from the United Kingdom and the USA. Curiously there is no coverage of Shakespeare in Canada or South Africa, the topic of Shakespeare in Australia is explicitly left for future studies, and the essay barely scratches the surface of Shakespeare in India and the West Indies. Curiously, the author omits two major translations into Spanish, the Nobel prize winner Pablo Neruda's outstanding translation of Romeo and Juliet and Nicanor Parra's -an outstanding contemporary Chilean poet in his own right- meticulous attempt to translate Lear paying close attention to verse forms.

Some chapters were too specialized for me (e.g. 3 Manuscript Circulation, Book Trade, 10 Status, 34 Philosophy, 35 Pragmatism).

I found chapter 37 on Architecture very tenuously related to Shakespeare and chapter 29, Character by Christy Desmet, a confusing hodge-podge of ideas. After nodding acknowledgement to A. C. Bradley's classic Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), which in Desmet's words “...represented the culmination of two centuries of Shakespearean character studies”, she outlines attacks on this approach ranging from L. C. Knights How many children had Lady Macbeth (1933) to the New Historicist and the Cultural Materialist critics and other “anti-character” critics, disparages Harold Bloom's efforts to revive character-based criticism in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), and briefly covers some more recent rhetorical approaches to character-based criticism She then jumps to a new section, Shakespearean character after computers where, in my opinion, she absurdly ends up equating character with word-clouds and word-graphs. In a rather truculent sleight of hand, she then jumps to a new recherché, and to me, incomprehensible, section, Four axioms for a New Rhetoric of Shakespearean Character, in which she also overviews some professional computer-based applications for exploring Shakespearean texts and YouTube appropriations of Shakespeare, that somehow end up looking at Lego or Barbie Shakespeare -what on earth do such videos have to do with character?

In short, there are some excellent essays in this handbook, well worth studying, but I recommend skipping others according to readers' interests and background.