The Merchant of Venice: A Study (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

J. Macmillan Brown

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1332809391 ISBN 13: 9781332809394

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from The Merchant of Venice: A Study

The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer tingle with the life that was just vanishing when they were written, and yet they give us so much of the human nature all men have that their interest never passes away. The tragedies of Z - Eschylus were part of the history of their time but they have the thews and limbs of the giant spirit of man in them only a tragic struggle could have produced them but the struggle represented that which must recur as long as the human race is human. The Divine Comedy of Dante is full of the petty strifes and jealousies and hatreds of his day; but round them floats a mist of human tears and a sound as of the sorrows of the whole world his age had in it much of what the future was to be, most of the enduring elements of human tragedy and joy. The Gargantua of Rabelais teems with ephemeral jests that are long dead and gone: but there are in it both mockery and serious thought that will live till man is perfect. The Paradise Lost is saturated with the spirit of Puritanism 5 but it is Puritanism risen to its noblest when it feels it must pass away as a political and social power and retire into the hearts and lives of men; it contains the sublimer elements of the unending struggle between evil and good. The Faust of Goethe expresses the sceptical superiority to common beliefs and partialities that marked his own life and time in Germany but it also embodies the everlasting problem of desire and its nemesis and the passionate detachment from creed that belongs to all revolutionary times it gathers up the universal lessons of the French Revolution and writes them in letters of fire upon the records of human history. All the long-lived books of imagination have thus their roots down through the strata of their own age into those that rest upon the foundations of the world.

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About this title

About the Author

Arguably the greatest English-language playwright, William Shakespeare was a seventeenth-century writer and dramatist, and is known as the Bard of Avon. Under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I, he penned more than 30 plays, 154 sonnets, and numerous narrative poems and short verses. Equally accomplished in histories, tragedies, comedy, and romance, Shakespeare s most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like It.

Like many of his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare began his career on the stage, eventually rising to become part-owner of Lord Chamberlain s Men, a popular dramatic company of his day, and of the storied Globe Theatre in London.

Extremely popular in his lifetime, Shakespeare s works continue to resonate more than three hundred years after his death. His plays are performed more often than any other playwright s, have been translated into every major language in the world, and are studied widely by scholars and students.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1332809391
• ISBN 13: 9781332809394
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140