Shakespeare Up Close

Reading Early Modern Texts

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• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781408158784
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781408172377
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Shakespeare Drama
• Index: Literature

This landmark collection of newly-commissioned essays by leading international scholars, offers expert close readings of Shakespeare and other early modern authors. The book is an intervention into current critical methodology as well as an invaluable tool for all students of the literature of the period, exemplifying the possibilities of close reading in the hands of a range of gifted practitioners. Chapters cover a range of key texts from Shakespeare and other major writers of the period such as Milton, Donne, Jonson and Sidney.

This is a unique collection as no other book offers such a rich variety of self-contained, short-form close readings. As such it can be used in the undergraduate classroom as well as by scholars and post-graduates and will also appeal to literary readers with an enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Contributors include leading Shakespeareans Stanley Wells, Stanley Fish, Coppelia Kahn and Lukas Erne.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• A NOTE ON TEXTS
• Close Reading Beginnings
• 1 Editorial Emendation and the Opening of A Midsummer Night’s Dream LUKAS ERNE
• 2 The Story of O: Reading Letters in the Prologue to Henry V TRAVIS D. WILLIAMS
• 3 The Sense of a Beginning DONALD M. FRIEDMAN
• Close Reading Experiences
• 4 Spenser Up Close: Temporality in The Faerie Queene LINDA GREGERSON
• 5 ‘at heaven’s gate’ PAUL EDMONDSON and STANLEY WELLS
• 6 On Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60 BRIAN GIBBONS
• 7 Balthasar’s Song in Much Ado About Nothing MARK WOMACK
• 8 The Persistence of the Flesh in Deaths Duell KIMBERLY JOHNSON
• 9 The Syntax of Understanding: Herbert’s ‘Prayer (I)’ DANIEL SHORE
• 10 The Real Presence of Unstated Puns: Herbert’s ‘Love (III)’ MICHAEL SCHOENFELDT
• Close Reading Both Ways
• 11 ‘Hardly they heard’ JEFF DOLVEN
• 12 Having It Both Ways in Juliet’s ‘Gallop apace’ Speech BRETT GAMBOA
• 13 ‘To Celia’: Not Too Close ERIK GRAY
• 14 Marvell’s ‘Mourning’ STANLEY FISH
• 15 On the Value of the Town-Bayes DAVID A. BREWER
• 16 Pointless Milton: A Close Reading in Negative NICHOLAS D. NACE
• Close Rereading
• 17 Marlowe’s Will, Marlowe’s Shall DREW DANIEL
• 18 Reading Intensity: Sonnet 12 SUSAN J. WOLFSON
• 19 ‘Against’ Interpretations: Rereading Sonnet 49 HEATHER DUBROW
• 20 The Chimney-Sweepers Conceit in the Song for Fidele in Cymbeline MARGARET MAURER
• 21 Mille viae mortis A. R. BRAUNMULLER
• 22 Donne the Time Traveller: Reading ‘The Relic’ STEPHEN BURT
• 23 Fletcher’s Mad Lover and the Late Shakespeare JEREMY LOPEZ
• Close Reading Techniques
• 24 ‘And Ten Low Words Oft Creep in One Dull Line’: Sidney’s Perfection of a Sonnet Device † NORMAN RABKIN
• 25 The Fox and His Pause: Punctuating Consciousness in Jonson’s Volpone ROBERT N. WATSON
• 26 Some Similes in Paradise Lost, Book 9 PAUL ALPERS
• 27 Telling Stories RUSS MCDONALD
• 28 Richard’s Soliloquy: Richard II, 5.5.1-49 HARRY BERGER, JR
• 29 Virtual Presence and Vicarious Identity in the First Tetralogy JOEL B. ALTMAN
• 30 Unmuffling Isabella GEORGE T. WRIGHT
• Close Reading Hamlet
• 31 Hamlet’s ‘Serious Hearing’: ‘Sound’ vs. ‘Use’ of ‘Voice’ GARRETT STEWART
• 32 Hamlet’s Couplets JAMES GRANTHAM TURNER
• 33 The Dumb Show in Hamlet TIFFANY STERN
• 34 Claudius On His Knees COPPÈLLA KAHN
• 35 Gertrude’s Gallery LENA COWEN ORLIN
• Close Reading Endings
• 36 The Fool’s Promised Exit MARGRETA DE GRAZIA
• 37 How Can Act 5 Forget Lear and Cordelia? CHARLES ALTIERI
• 38 Exits without Exiting RALPH ALAN COHEN
• 39 Playing Prospero Against the Grain MICHAEL ELLIS-TOLAYDO
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX
• Imprint Page