By William Empson
ISBN-10: 0511627491
ISBN-13: 9780511627491
ISBN-10: 0521255775
ISBN-13: 9780521255776
ISBN-10: 0521311500
ISBN-13: 9780521311502
On the time of his loss of life in 1984, the poet and critic William Empson used to be getting ready and revising a suite of his essays on Shakespeare. This assortment edited through David Pirie, is a ebook which the literary international has sought after for over part a century. the following, in one quantity, are significant readings of Hamlet and Macbeth; a witty and occasionally impassioned defence of Falstaff, and a brand new piece at the structure of the Globe theatre and different Renaissance playhouses, during which Empson explores the issues that the layout of latest levels posed for a operating playwright; there also are essays at the narrative poems, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the final performs. The essays exhibit the subtlety and agility of Empson's brain, in addition to his striking breadth of information, whereas the just about racy wit of his casual prose type argues for a literary feedback which shouldn't ever develop into solemn whether it is to be actually severe.
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Additional info for William Empson: Essays on Shakespeare
Sample text
The question whether Falstaff is a coward may be said to have started the whole snowball of modern Shakespearean criticism; it was the chief topic of Morgann's essay nearly two hundred years ago, the first time a psychological paradox was dug out of a Shakespeare text. Dover Wilson, discussing the plot about the robbery in the first three scenes where we meet Falstaff, says that the question whether Falstaff sees through the plot against him, and if so at what point he sees through it - for instance, whether he runs away from the Prince on purpose or only tells increasingly grotesque lies to him afterwards on purpose - is meant to be a puzzle, one that the audience are challenged to exercise their wits over; and that this had an important practical effect (it is not a matter of deep intellectual subtlety of course) because you would pay to see the play again with your curiosity undiminished.
The introduction to an edition by Carleton Brown (1914) of Poems by Sir John Salusbury and Robert Chester (Early English Text Society, 113) is a mine of information and entertainment about these characters, and ought I think to have settled the question. Salisbury (we may use the ordinary spelling because Chester's book does) was squire of Lleweny in north Wales, and had married in 1586 at the age of twenty an illegitimate but recognised daughter of the King of Man (or Earl of Derby); some verses written for the wedding already call her a royal bird.
One cannot help feeling some doubt when Dover Wilson insists that Hal was never a "sinner", only a bit wild; especially when it becomes rather doubtful, as he goes on, what even the wildness may have consisted in. Not sex, we gather; it seems only old men like Falstaff go wrong like that. The same applies to drunkenness. Even the bishops in Henry V, Dover Wilson maintains, do not say that he has been converted, only that he has begun working hard (actually they say more); and even his father in reproaching him only speaks of sins in others which his wildness might encourage.