1st Edition

Shakespeare's Poetic Styles Verse into Drama

By John Baxter Copyright 1980
    266 Pages
    by Routledge

    266 Pages
    by Routledge

    First published in 1980.

    At their most successful, Shakespeare's styles are strategies to make plain the limits of thought and feeling which define the significance of human actions. John Baxter analyses the way in which these limits are reached, and also provides a strong argument for the idea that the power of Shakespearean drama depends upon the co-operation of poetic style and dramatic form. Three plays are examined in detail in the text: The Tragedy of Mustapha by Fulke Greville and Richard II and Macbeth by Shakespeare.

    1. Verse into drama 2. Sidney's Defence and Greville's Mustapha 3. Tragedy and history in Richard II 4. The standard: the moral and the golden 5. The standard: the metaphysical and the Shakespearean 6. Reductions: style and the character of Bolingbroke 7. Deflections: style and the character of Richard 8. Tragic doings, political order and the closed couplet 9. Astounding terms: bombast and wonder 10. Macbeth: style and form