-
Seasonal Offer:
This title is part of our Seasonal Offers promotion.
Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
the clearest and simplest explanation of Shakespeare's thought I have yet read (Auberon Waugh )
robust and forthright. (Hermione Lee, Observer )
Writing with full awareness that the plays were intended for the theatre, Greer is interested in the dialectic of language, performence, audience ... her clarity and her insistence on response make this an admirable book for sixth-formers. (Times Educational Supplement )
robust and forthright. (Hermione Lee, Observer )
Writing with full awareness that the plays were intended for the theatre, Greer is interested in the dialectic of language, performence, audience ... her clarity and her insistence on response make this an admirable book for sixth-formers. (Times Educational Supplement )
Hermione Lee, Observer
"robust and forthright."
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
The notices of the life and career of England's greatest poet are not only sparse and brief, but unusually cryptic. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The notices of the life and career of England's greatest poet are not only sparse and brief, but unusually cryptic. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Greer writes passionately and eloquently about Shakespeare in another great volume from the OUP, A Very Short Introduction To series. She ranges across a wide cross section of the plays, using just snippets from some to illuminate a particular idea or point, and with others such as King Lear or Henry V, giving more of an in depth case study of the play.
I agree with the person who gave this only one star that this is not a book for beginners. There is no chronology, no idiot's guide play by play break down, no thematic or symbolic run down. What there is however, is absolutely brilliant. Greer works hard to show us how what Shakespeare wrote informs what we know of him, and what we know of Elizabethan life and thought. She argues passionately the case for his continuing relevance in our lives today, and gives a real sense of Shakespeare as a committed playwright of vision and genius.
What is most interesting to me about this book is her argument about the importance that Shakespeare gives to the audience in the plays. She continually brings us back to the remembrance that these are plays to be performed, not books to be read 'intellectually' within the confines of a study. She reminds us that Shakespeare is continually aware of his audience, their desires, their needs and their importance in understanding and being an active part of the performance itself.
A fascinating and well written book, ideal for anyone with more than a passing interest in Shakespeare. If you want idiot proof Shakespeare there's bound to be a 'for dummies' guide out there somewhere. If you want engaging critical thought about what it means to watch Shakespearean plays, then this is the book for you.
I agree with the person who gave this only one star that this is not a book for beginners. There is no chronology, no idiot's guide play by play break down, no thematic or symbolic run down. What there is however, is absolutely brilliant. Greer works hard to show us how what Shakespeare wrote informs what we know of him, and what we know of Elizabethan life and thought. She argues passionately the case for his continuing relevance in our lives today, and gives a real sense of Shakespeare as a committed playwright of vision and genius.
What is most interesting to me about this book is her argument about the importance that Shakespeare gives to the audience in the plays. She continually brings us back to the remembrance that these are plays to be performed, not books to be read 'intellectually' within the confines of a study. She reminds us that Shakespeare is continually aware of his audience, their desires, their needs and their importance in understanding and being an active part of the performance itself.
A fascinating and well written book, ideal for anyone with more than a passing interest in Shakespeare. If you want idiot proof Shakespeare there's bound to be a 'for dummies' guide out there somewhere. If you want engaging critical thought about what it means to watch Shakespearean plays, then this is the book for you.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
In focusing on Shakespeare's thought, not his biography, this VSI is refreshing. The opening chapter, headed 'Life', is a bald outline of known facts that refuses to speculate beyond them. What follows is dense, and often challenging, but entirely rewarding.
At times, Greer is iconoclastic - she considers many modern performances of the plays so stuffed with irrelevant stage business that even a bad school performance is preferable. Most of the time, she is original and illuminating. She sees Iago as needing no motivation beyond his attempt to destroy Othello. He is a descendant of a morality play Vice and an externalisation of the protagonist's 'psychomachia' (ie the moral battle taking place in his mind). Greer thinks it equally pointless trying to psychoanalyse Prince Hal. His elevation to Henry V brings about a 'character' change that can only be explained by his change of role: from private citizen to the embodiment of the English state.
Elsewhere, her presentation of ideas is poetic. As the exclusive 'theatre of lamplight' eclipsed the inclusive 'theatre of daylight', she says, didacticism and imagination were replaced by the purely sensational, while 'smells of cowslips and violets [gave way] to musk and civet'. Although this particular idea is not original, it is conveyed in typically vivid prose.
This VSI is emphatically NOT for the complete novice. But nor is it inaccessible to those prepared to grapple, despite its references to Wittgenstein and the Second Law of Thermodynamics - talking of which, 'Entropy' is not used here in the way physicists or cosmologists use it. It refers to the doctrine of inevitable social decay and degeneration (to which Gloucester would probably subscribe in King Lear).
Above all, Greer suggests that Shakespeare's major triumph lay in his ability to give the abstractions of Elizabethan thought concrete, physical reality, in order to communicate complex ideas to his audience more easily. He is presented as a playwright more egalitarian than most commentators will allow, ever in touch with his unsophisticated roots. She considers his theatre, meanwhile, best viewed as didactic and moral, and his characters as exemplars rather than, simply and anachronistically, as subjects for psychoanalysis.
At times, Greer is iconoclastic - she considers many modern performances of the plays so stuffed with irrelevant stage business that even a bad school performance is preferable. Most of the time, she is original and illuminating. She sees Iago as needing no motivation beyond his attempt to destroy Othello. He is a descendant of a morality play Vice and an externalisation of the protagonist's 'psychomachia' (ie the moral battle taking place in his mind). Greer thinks it equally pointless trying to psychoanalyse Prince Hal. His elevation to Henry V brings about a 'character' change that can only be explained by his change of role: from private citizen to the embodiment of the English state.
Elsewhere, her presentation of ideas is poetic. As the exclusive 'theatre of lamplight' eclipsed the inclusive 'theatre of daylight', she says, didacticism and imagination were replaced by the purely sensational, while 'smells of cowslips and violets [gave way] to musk and civet'. Although this particular idea is not original, it is conveyed in typically vivid prose.
This VSI is emphatically NOT for the complete novice. But nor is it inaccessible to those prepared to grapple, despite its references to Wittgenstein and the Second Law of Thermodynamics - talking of which, 'Entropy' is not used here in the way physicists or cosmologists use it. It refers to the doctrine of inevitable social decay and degeneration (to which Gloucester would probably subscribe in King Lear).
Above all, Greer suggests that Shakespeare's major triumph lay in his ability to give the abstractions of Elizabethan thought concrete, physical reality, in order to communicate complex ideas to his audience more easily. He is presented as a playwright more egalitarian than most commentators will allow, ever in touch with his unsophisticated roots. She considers his theatre, meanwhile, best viewed as didactic and moral, and his characters as exemplars rather than, simply and anachronistically, as subjects for psychoanalysis.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Essential for both for those who are new and those who know.
Ms Greer manages, in a very short space, to lay out the foundations and major structural lines of modern Shakespeare Studies.
What she gives is the clearest possible statement of some quite complex ideas which will require those new to seriously studying Shakespeare (eg, older Secondary School students) to take time to pause and absorb what is being said.
Having said that, I think this should be required reading for anyone studying Shakespeare for A/AS/IB level or at undergraduate level. You will give yourself the best possible start to your voyage of descovery and be able to put in context an awful lot of more difficult material.
The first chapter is the best antidote I have seen to the loony Shakespeare didn't write it brigade. The second uses the Tempest to explore Shakespeare's Poetics. And she continues using individual texts and quotes to explore his ethics, and other aspects of his world.
As someone who has taught Shakespeare for years, I have never come across such a transparent and stimulating text.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not slipshod at all
I wanted a VSI of the same quality as those on Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, but given Ms Greer's public persona, only feared the worst. My fear was, happily, entirely unfounded! Read more
Published 4 months ago by opus
no Germaine Greer sparkle at all
Seems to be a university EngLit course lecture series: an introduction to the academic study of Shakespeare for students expected to already have at least begun carefully reading... Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2010 by G.Bennet
Great follow through of Shakespeare
The previous reviews all summarise this book better than I could, and I agree with all the points, including he that gave a single star. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2008 by A reader
Not easy ....
I thought these were 'very short introductions' for beginners. I found this very hard work. Not the straight forward intro. I was looking for. Read more
Published on 11 May 2005 by P. Spencer
a very usable gem!
Germaine Greer rocks!
This is a very useful introduction but written with spirit so that it isn't just an anonymous, consensus-filled book. Read more
This is a very useful introduction but written with spirit so that it isn't just an anonymous, consensus-filled book. Read more
Published on 6 Feb 2004
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
