Shakespeare and the Reason: A Study of the Tragedies and the Problem Plays (Routledge Library Editions: Shakespeare) - Hardcover

Hawkes, Terence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 041535322X ISBN 13: 9780415353229

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

'Mr Hawkes is a good critic, oriented towards history of ideas. He operates on the formula that Shakespeare was interested in the available distinctions between discursive and intuitive reason, and disliked a growing tendency for the first to be thought of as manly and the second effeminate. One sees how this action-contemplation polarity works, in Hamlet for instance, and Mr Hawkes thinks the kind of choices forced on tragic heroes can be better understood in terms of it.'Frank Kermode, New Statesman.

In the seven plays on which the book concentrates, Terence Hawkes finds Shakespeare investigating the operation of two opposed forms of reason, and constructing dramatic metaphors such as the opposition between appearance and reality, or that between true 'manliness' and its false counterpart, which express to the full the tragic nature of the situation.

About this title

About the Author

Terence Hawkes

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041535322X
• ISBN 13: 9780415353229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224