Shakespearean Moment and Its Place in Poetry in the Seventeenth Century

by Patrick Cruttwell

Mr. Cruttwell brilliantly identifies as "the Shakespearean Moment" that poetic revolution, following a major "shift of thought and feeling" in the 1590's, which produced by 1640 some of the greatest works of English poetry and drama. At the center of this creativity lay the poetic drama, which flourished during those decades into one of the great ages of world drama, with Shakespeare as its master. In the non-dramatic works of the period there is also an essentially dramatic note making possible the richly significant and various literature we find in the works of Donne and other contemporaries of Shakespeare. The nature of the underlying forces that produced this complex greatness, and the transformations these forces underwent in the course of the seventeenth century, are Mr. Cruttwell's main subject.

Genres: Shakespeare, Poetry, History, Nonfiction

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Patrick Cruttwell was born in India in 1911, and educated at Cambridge University. In 1935 he was appointed Lecturer in English at the University of Rangoon, Burma, which post he left in 1942 for Army service in Burma, India and Ceylon. At the conclusion of his military service in 1946, Mr. Cruttwell was appointed Lecturer in English at what is now the University of Exeter. During 1958 and 1959 he was visiting associate professor at the College of Santa Barbara, University of California. Although he wrote mainly on literary subjects, he also wrote one novel, A Kind of Fighting.

Reviews

[David Loveland · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to focus on iconic Shakespearean moments and speeches ('To Be Or Not To Be', 'Is This The Dagger...', Enobarbus's account of the barge at Cydnus etc.) but it didn't. There was a lot of Donne and not a whole lot of Shakespeare really. Overall it was ok and I got a few good quotes for my dissertation, but not very relevant to my topic.