This afternoon, I finished the eighth chapter of C. L. Barber‘s Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, titled “Rule and Misrule in Henry IV“. The chapter is polished off with a splendid paragraph which crackles with insights that both sum up and point beyond the discussion just concluded. “Historically, Shakespeare’s drama can be [Read more…]
I have nearly finished C. L. Barber‘s, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy. I came across a remarkable passage today, on the 210th page, which refers to the way in which the Elizabethans thought about the relation between a man and the name of the role he performed in the “divinely ordained pageant” [Read more…]
In the brief sixth scene of the second act of Romeo and Juliet, while Romeo and Friar Laurence await the arrival of Juliet, Friar Laurence offers offers up this orison, expressive of a certain anxiety about the clandestine nature of the marriage ceremony: “So smile the heavens upon this holy [Read more…]
Here are some extracts from my current reading of C. L. Barber’s Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy that I found of particular interest, either because of what was written or how it was written, or, best of all, both together. “No figure in the carpet is the carpet. There is in the [Read more…]
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