Volume 51, Number 6 · April 8, 2004
Shakespeare, Stage or Page?
By James Fenton
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
Shakespeare for All Time
by Stanley Wells
Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist
by Lukas Erne
Cambridge University Press, 287 pp., $65.00
The Age of Shakespeare
by Frank Kermode
Modern Library, 214 pp., $21.95
Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life: A Radical Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy
by Fintan O'Toole
Granta Books, 164 pp., $12.95 (paper)
After Shakespeare: Writing Inspired by the World's Greatest Author
edited by John Gross
Oxford University Press, 360 pp., $19.95 (paper)
In 1811, Charles Lamb published his subtle and pugnacious essay 'On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their fitness for stage representation.' In it he argued not that Shakespeare's tragedies should never be acted, but that they are made 'another thing' by being acted. 'Nine parts in ten' of what Hamlet does are 'the effusions of his solitary musings, which he retires to holes and corners and the most sequestered parts of the palace to pour forth.' How, Lamb asks, 'can they be represented by a gesticulating actor, who comes and mouths them out before an audience, making four hundred people his confidants at once?'[2] And again:
Review, 4875 words
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