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A Study of Shakespeare
Edited by Edmund Gosse
- GenresShakespeareNonfiction
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1,250 books144 followersIn musical, often erotic verse, British poet and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote and attacked the conventions of Victorian morality.
This controversial Englishman in his own day invented the roundel form and some novels and contributed to the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerno...
This controversial Englishman in his own day invented the roundel form and some novels and contributed to the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerno...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 31, 2026
There are sentences in this book you have to see to believe.
July 5, 2018
Words, words, words, frothy words. Swinburne indulges himself in pompous, circuitous verbosity without enlightening me.
December 18, 2024
A Study Of Shakespeare by Algernon Charles Swinburne is not an easy read for a twenty-first century reader. The prose is like sludge and feels like it sticks to the feet as one trudges through the mire. The concept of “over-written” was clearly unknown to Swinburne, but then perhaps I am merely making aesthetic judgments of culture “then” based on values that are “now”, which is inadmissible.
There are, however, multiple references to Shakespeare’s contemporaries and some classical allusions, which come across as insiders’ comments, where the assumed knowledge is gargantuan, but what is communicated is minuscule. This often leaves the reader thinking he has not understood some “in joke” that the initiated might assume is obvious.
The book arose because of an ongoing controversy about who had written much of the output that was labelled “Shakespeare”. The controversy continues, of course, but no longer in the form that Swinburne would recognise.
What we have on many occasions is the equivalent of a linguistic analysis in an age where computers did not exist. The fact that a known writer uses a construction that also appears in a text by Shakespeare is cited as evidence that the Shakespeare’s authorship might be questioned. At times, the similarities are valid observations, but others they have the status of saying that both of authors used a space between words. So what if, in an age when classical allusions were common, two people mentioned sirens?
And what about the signature of metre? This text regularly cites differences of metre between a Shakespeare and someone else, but there are precious few examples to illustrate the points.
I was not convinced by these attempts to transfer ownership of texts, which exist in published form bearing Shakespeare’s name. Precisely who was the William Shakespeare who wrote plays, we will perhaps never know. Maybe it was the person from Stratford-upon-Avon. Maybe it was a person from Stratford East. And perhaps there is evidence that there was collusion between authors when putting a work on stage. Ask George Frederick Handel how many versions of his oratorios might have existed.
But it’s clear that someone did write the plays and sources much closer to the authorship ascribe them to a certain William Shakespeare. Up jumps Swinburn in the latter part of the nineteenth century, with all his undeniable scholarship, and, on the basis of similarities of text or a wholly subjective appreciation of metre, ascribes authorship to someone else. Read A Study Of Shakespeare as an historical exercise in self-delusion, only if you are familiar with quantities of what Shakespeare actually did write.
There are, however, multiple references to Shakespeare’s contemporaries and some classical allusions, which come across as insiders’ comments, where the assumed knowledge is gargantuan, but what is communicated is minuscule. This often leaves the reader thinking he has not understood some “in joke” that the initiated might assume is obvious.
The book arose because of an ongoing controversy about who had written much of the output that was labelled “Shakespeare”. The controversy continues, of course, but no longer in the form that Swinburne would recognise.
What we have on many occasions is the equivalent of a linguistic analysis in an age where computers did not exist. The fact that a known writer uses a construction that also appears in a text by Shakespeare is cited as evidence that the Shakespeare’s authorship might be questioned. At times, the similarities are valid observations, but others they have the status of saying that both of authors used a space between words. So what if, in an age when classical allusions were common, two people mentioned sirens?
And what about the signature of metre? This text regularly cites differences of metre between a Shakespeare and someone else, but there are precious few examples to illustrate the points.
I was not convinced by these attempts to transfer ownership of texts, which exist in published form bearing Shakespeare’s name. Precisely who was the William Shakespeare who wrote plays, we will perhaps never know. Maybe it was the person from Stratford-upon-Avon. Maybe it was a person from Stratford East. And perhaps there is evidence that there was collusion between authors when putting a work on stage. Ask George Frederick Handel how many versions of his oratorios might have existed.
But it’s clear that someone did write the plays and sources much closer to the authorship ascribe them to a certain William Shakespeare. Up jumps Swinburn in the latter part of the nineteenth century, with all his undeniable scholarship, and, on the basis of similarities of text or a wholly subjective appreciation of metre, ascribes authorship to someone else. Read A Study Of Shakespeare as an historical exercise in self-delusion, only if you are familiar with quantities of what Shakespeare actually did write.
March 17, 2024
This might be some of the most overindulgent, melodramatic prose ever written, what a delight.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews