How to Read Shakespeare

How to Read Shakespeare offers an approach to Shakespeare through reading and seeing his plays. The assumption is that Shakespeare's plays are fully comprehensible to modern readers and theater-goers and that they can be thoroughly enjoyed. The author approaches the plays creatively without the barriers of academic study. Some of the specific topics studied are Dramatic Conventions, The Poetry of the Theater, Shakespeare's Characters, Structure and Dramatic Scene, The Presented Text, and The World of the Play: Theatrical Significances. How to Read Shakespeare encourages readers to develop their «histrionic imagination.»

How to read Shakespeare

Literature & Fiction

Charney, Maurice

History & Criticism

McGraw=Hill

In this broad-ranging exploration of the nature of comedy Professor Charney considers its popular roots as well as the major issues in comic theory. Comedy High and Low seeks to bridge the gap between comic literature, especially stage comedy, and the popular comedy of jokes, graffiti, and comic happenings of everyday life. With examples taken mainly from major figures of stage comedy from Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Jonson, the Restoration dramatists, and Molière to Beckett, Pinter, Dürrenmatt, Stoppard, and Orton, it brings a historical perspective to the subject, and also includes many allusions to the great film comedies of Keaton, Chaplin, Fields, and the Marx Brothers. An extensive critical bibliography supplements this provocative and highly readable book.

Comedy High and Low: An Introduction to the Experience of Comedy

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Oxford Univ. Pr.

All of Shakespeare

-- Richard Levin, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Dramas & Plays

Columbia University Press

In All of Shakespeare, Maurice Charney, former president of the Shakespeare Association of America, provides a play by play, poem by poem guide to all of Shakespeare's works. In succinct and lucid chapters, Charney brings to life every play, from The Comedy of Errors to The Tempest, in addition to the long poems and the Sonnets. The book is divided into sections according to genre: comedies, histories, tragedies, romances, and poems. Charney also considers works that may be only partly by Shakespeare: The Two Noble Kinsmen, Pericles, and A Lover's Complaint. Charney's account is accessibly written and infused with the belief that Shakespeare's works are intelligible and relevant to modern readers and audiences. The result is a volume that will be cherished and celebrated by readers who are just beginning to read Shakespeare and see his plays as well as those who are reacquainting themselves with his many delights.

Delves deeply into Shakespeare's rhetorical and thematic development of this largest of subjects to reveal what makes his work resonate with contemporary audiences. Focuses primarily on desire between young lovers, but also explores themes of love in marriage and in same-sex pairings. Explores how courtship is woven into the basic plot formula of the comedies, and examines love in the tragedies and the enemies of love. The author is a professor of English at Rutgers University, and a past president of the Shakespeare Association of America. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Shakespeare on Love and Lust

Columbia Univ. Pr.

The complex and sometimes contradictory expressions of love in Shakespeare's works―ranging from the serious to the absurd and back again―arise primarily from his dramatic and theatrical flair rather than from a unified philosophy of love. Untangling his witty, bawdy (and ambiguous) treatment of love, sex, and desire requires a sharp eye and a steady hand. In Shakespeare on Love and Lust, noted scholar Maurice Charney delves deeply into Shakespeare's rhetorical and thematic development of this largest of subjects to reveal what makes his plays and poems resonate with contemporary audiences. The paradigmatic star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet, the comic confusions of couples wandering through the wood in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello's tragic jealousy, the homoerotic ways Shakespeare played with cross-dressing on the Elizabethan stage―Charney explores the world in which Shakespeare lived, and how it is reflected and transformed in the one he created. While focusing primarily on desire between young lovers, Charney also explores themes of love in marriage (Brutus and Portia) and in same-sex pairings (Antonio and Sebastian). Against the conventions of Renaissance literature, Shakespeare qualified the Platonic view that true love transcends the physical. Instead, as Charney demonstrates, love in Shakespeare's work is almost always sexual as well as spiritual, and the full range of desire's dramatic possibilities is displayed. Shakespeare on Love and Lust begins by considering the ways in which Shakespeare drew upon and satirized the conventions of Petrarchan Renaissance love poetry in plays like Romeo and Juliet, then explores how courtship is woven into the basic plot formula of the comedies. Next, Charney examines love in the tragedies and the enemies of love (Iago, for example). Later chapters cover the gender complications in such plays as Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew as well as the homoerotic themes woven into many of the poems and plays. Charney concludes with a lively discussion of paradoxes and ambivalences about love expressed by Shakespeare's word play and sexual innuendoes.

Shakespeare was acutely aware of our intimate struggles with aging. His dramatic characters either prosper or suffer according to their relationship with maturity, and his sonnets eloquently explore time's ravaging effects. "Wrinkled deep in time" is how the queen describes herself in Antony and Cleopatra, and at the end of King Lear, there is a tragic sense that both the king and Gloucester have acquired a wisdom they otherwise lacked at the beginning of the play. Even Juliet matures considerably before she drinks Friar Lawrence's potion, and Macbeth and his wife prematurely grow old from their murderous schemes. Drawing on historical documents and the dramatist's own complex depictions, Maurice Charney conducts an original investigation into patterns of aging in Shakespeare, exploring the fulfillment or distress of Shakespeare's characters in combination with their mental and physical decline. Comparing the characterizations of elderly kings and queens, older lovers, patriarchal men, matriarchal women, and the senex—the stereotypical old man of Roman comedy—with the history of life expectancy in Shakespeare's England, Charney uncovers similarities and differences between our contemporary attitudes toward aging and aging as it was understood more than four hundred years ago. From this dynamic examination, a new perspective on Shakespeare emerges, one that celebrates and deepens our knowledge of his subtler themes and characters.

Wrinkled Deep in Time: Aging in Shakespeare

British & Irish

Comedy is a fundamental part of the human experience. Collecting the work of today's leading scholars, Maurice Charney presents 40 essays on the many forms that comedy has taken throughout history. Ranging from the comic plays of ancient times to Renaissance and Restoration comedies, from Commedia dell'Arte to stand-up performers, from trickster tales to television sitcoms, these surveys trace the evolution of the comic genre. Chapters on geographically based traditions (American regional humor, Irish comedy, Spanish comedy, etc.) contribute a multicultural understanding, while essays on such topics as Irony, Satire, and the Comedy of Philosophy examine the theoretical aspects of comedy. A glossary for important figures and terms will be of added value to readers of this wonderfully eclectic collection.
Comedy is a fundamental part of the human experience. Collecting the work of today's leading scholars, Maurice Charney presents 40 essays on the many forms that comedy has taken throughout history. Ranging from the comic plays of ancient times to Renaissance and Restoration comedies, from Commedia dell'Arte to stand-up performers, from trickster tales to television sitcoms, these surveys trace the evolution of the comic genre. Chapters on geographically based traditions (American regional humor, Irish comedy, Spanish comedy, etc.) contribute a multicultural understanding, while essays on such topics as Irony, Satire, and the Comedy of Philosophy examine the theoretical aspects of comedy. A glossary for important figures and terms adds even more to this wonderfully eclectic collection.
Editor Maurice Charney brings his lifetime of scholarship on comedy and drama to these volumes, which collect new essays from today's leading scholars on the subject of comedy in its many forms.

Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide [2 volumes]

Praeger

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Charney, Maurice. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Charney, Maurice

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Charney, Maurice. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

How to read Shakespeare

How to Read Shakespeare

Comedy High and Low: An Introduction to the Experience of Comedy

All of Shakespeare

All of Shakespeare

Shakespeare on Love and Lust

Shakespeare on Love and Lust

Wrinkled Deep in Time: Aging in Shakespeare

Wrinkled Deep in Time: Aging in Shakespeare

Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide [2 volumes]