Characters of Shakespeare's Plays

by William Hazlitt, J. H. Lobban (Editor)

Overview

The critic, essayist and painter William Hazlitt (1778–1830) published and lectured widely on English literature, from Elizabethan drama to reviews of the latest work of his own time. His first extended work of literary criticism was Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, published in 1817. This volume from 1908 takes the text of the first edition and adds notes explaining complex terms to readers and an introduction by J. H. Lobban, a lecturer in English at Birkbeck College. As such it is the ideal introduction to Hazlitt's criticism. Hazlitt's political view of Shakespeare drew the ire of the Tory Quarterly review, whose hostile review destroyed sales of the second edition. The work remains of value, however, both as a contribution to the study of Shakespeare and, as with all of Hazlitt's prose, as a model of an elegant, persuasive essay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108005296
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/20/2009
Series:	Cambridge Library Collection - Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 - 18 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language,[1][2] placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell.[3][4] He is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age.[5] Despite his high standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print.[6][7] During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. The family of Hazlitt's father were Irish Protestants who moved from the county of Antrim to Tipperary in the early 18th century. Also named William Hazlitt, Hazlitt's father attended the University of Glasgow (where he was taught by Adam Smith),[9] receiving a master's degree in 1760. Not entirely satisfied with his Presbyterian faith, he became a Unitarian minister in England. In 1764 he became pastor at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, where in 1766 he married Grace Loftus, daughter of a recently deceased ironmonger. Of their many children, only three survived infancy. The first of these, John (later known as a portrait painter), was born in 1767 at Marshfield in Gloucestershire, where the Reverend William Hazlitt had accepted a new pastorate after his marriage. In 1770, the elder Hazlitt accepted yet another position and moved with his family to Maidstone, Kent, where his first and only surviving daughter, Margaret (usually known as "Peggy"), was born that same yea

Table of Contents

Introduction; Preface; 1. Cymbeline; 2. Macbeth; 3. Julius Caesar; 4. Othello; 5. Timon of Athens; 6. Coriolanus; 7. Troilus and Cressida; 8. Antony and Cleopatra; 9. Hamlet; 10. The Tempest; 11. A Midsummer Night's Dream; 12. Romeo and Juliet; 13. King Lear; 14. Richard II; 15. Henry IV; 16. Henry V; 17. Henry VI; 18. Richard III; 19. Henry VIII; 20. King John; 21. Twelfth Night; or, what you will; 22. The Two Gentlemen of Verona; 23. The Merchant of Venice; 24. The Winter's Tale; 25. All's Well That Ends Well; 26. Love's Labour's Lost; 27. Much Ado About Nothing; 28. As You Like It; 29. The Taming of the Shrew; 30. Measure for Measure; 31. The Merry Wives of Windsor; 32. The Comedy of Errors; 33. Doubtful plays of Shakespeare; 34. Poems and Sonnets.