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Title: The Life and Death of King John (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0-671-72273-5 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 28 November, 2000 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Disorder
Comment: Timon of Athens has often been thought the work of a madman. Disjointed, polemical, irrational, and downright inelegant, many have thought that Shakespeare (or whosoever it may be) suffered a mental breakdown. This and more surrounds what I believe to be a tragic under-appreciation of this play. This play is NOT the story of a naively generous soul who eventually "faces reality". This is instead the story of a glorious Dionysian self-expender, who, upon realizing the cowardly conservatism of his so-called "peers", runs off to the wilds, to continue expending himself in body and soul. He dies on a curse, the climax of all the "evil wind" he has been sending out, the ultimate self-expension, his ultimate glory. The "tragedy" is the stone cold tablet that lies atop his corpse at the end, and the message of frugality it seems to send out, which is all too easily accepted by fatally declining cultures.
Rating: 3
Summary: One of Shakespeare's statelier plays.
Comment: the Oxford Shakespeare has been touted as 'a new conception' of Shakespeare, but is in fact merely an update of the cumbersome old Arden editions. Like these, 'King John' begins with a 100-page introduction, divided into 'Dates and Sources' (full of what even the editor admits is 'tedious' nit-picking of documentary evidence); 'The Text' (the usual patronising conjecture about misprints in the Folio edition and illiterate copyists); 'A Critical Introduction', giving a conventional, but illuminating guide to the drama, its status as a political play dealing with the thorny problem of royal succession, the contemporary legal ambiguities surrounding inheritance, the patterning of characters, the use of language (by characters as political manoeuvring, by Shakespeare to subvert them); and an account of 'King John' 'In the Theatre', its former popularity in the 18th and 19th century as a spectacular pageant, the play distorted for patriotic purposes, and its subsequent decline, presumably for the same reasons. The text itself is full of stumbling, often unhelpful endnotes - what students surely want are explanations of difficult words and figures, not a history of scholarly pedantry. The edition concludes with textual appendices.
The play itself, as with most of Shakespeare's histories, is verbose, static and often dull. Too many scenes feature characters standing in a rigid tableau debating, with infinite hair-cavilling, issues such as the legitimacy to rule, the conjunction between the monarch's person and the country he rules; the finer points of loyalty. Most of the action takes place off stage, and the two reasons we remember King John (Robin Hood and the Magna Carta) don't feature at all. This doesn't usually matter in Shakespeare, the movement and interest arising from the development of the figurative language; but too often in 'King John', this is more bound up with sterile ideas of politics and history, than actual human truths. Characterisation and motivation are minimal; the conflations of history results in a choppy narrative. There are some startling moments, such as the description of a potential blood wedding, or the account of England's populace 'strangely fantasied/Possessed with rumours, full of idle dreams/Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear'. The decline of the king himself, from self-confident warrior to hallucinating madman, anticipates 'King Lear', while the scene where John's henchman sets out to brand the eyes of the pubescent Pretender, is is full of awful tension.
P.S. Maybe I'm missing something, but could someone tell me why this page on 'King John' has three reviews of 'Timon of Athens'? Is somebody having a laugh?
Rating: 5
Summary: Scandalously underrated
Comment: Timon, a wealthy, generous Athenian, is a man who never hesitates to help his friends in need. However, when he falls in dire straits and is forced to sell his property, he is deserted by all those who know him. Afflicted with a venomous hatred of mankind, he retreats into the forest, adopts a diet of roots and denounces his fellow humans in soliloquies of the most towering passion and most bitter invective. "Timon of Athens" should rank amongst Shakespeare's greatest and most renowned tragedies. It is a mature work, displaying much linguistic virtusoity, charm of expression and highly imaginative images and allegories. It is hard to imagine why so many critics are dead-set against acknowledging it for the masterpiece it is. It possibly contains the direst abuse of human fickleness and folly and the most nihilistic (and most moving) yearning for death and extinction on the part of the maligned Timon. The real stealer of the play, however, is Timon's foil, the philosopher, Apemantus. Embodying the most systematic misanthrophy, he smilingly and scornfully looks on Timon's open-handedness during his days of prosperity. Their encounter later in the forest is one of the most gripping of confrontations in literary history, containing some of the most exciting exchanges and the most inflammatory put-downs. A sadly unrecognised masterpiece.
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Title: All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722549 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: HENRY IV PART 1 by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722638 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: COMEDY OF ERRORS by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722573 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowatt, Paul Werstine, Barbara A. Mowat ISBN: 0671039164 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: The Two Gentlemen Of Verona by William Shakespeare, Dr. Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine ISBN: 0671039547 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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