Famous Introductions To Shakespeares Plays

Author : Beverley Warner
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330390122
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Download or read book Famous Introductions to Shakespeare's Plays written by Beverley Warner and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-25 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Famous Introductions to Shakespeare's Plays: By the Notable Editors of the Eighteenth Century; Edited With a Critical Introduction, Biographical and Explanatory Notes The eternal charm of Shakespeare to the English-speaking peoples is not that of an exotic forced into bloom by the nourishing of the commentators. There were other playwrights and poets in the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, whose puppets passed across the stage of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, as popular in their day perhaps as the great dramatist. The play-going world of the twentieth century knows them not at all, and even to students of literature they are hardly more than lists of names. A few stray bits of flotsam and jetsam from the vessels of Marlowe, Jonson and others of that day, have floated down the stream of time. But stately and fair swept on the precious bark of Shakespeare's lading, breasting the rude waves of the Puritan tempest, and riding the shallows of the French reaction, reaching safely the ports of a new world, its bulk undiminished and its value unharmed. There was no criticism properly so called in the seventeenth century. So far from any attempt to purify the text of Shakespeare, every actor on the stage felt himself authorised to corrupt it by his own additions or emendations. In printing the Folio of 1623, the first complete edition of the dramatist's works, John Heminge and Henry Condell rendered the most precious service to English literature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.