Shakespeare and the Modern Poet

Neil Corcoran is King Alfred Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool.

• Introduction; Part I. Yeats's Shakespeare: 1. Setting a sail for shipwreck: Yeats's Shakespeare criticism; 2. Myself must I remake: Shakespeare in Yeats's poetry; Part II. Eliot's Shakespeare: 3. That man's scope: Eliot's Shakespeare criticism; 4. This man's gift: Shakespeare in Eliot's poetry; Part III. Auden's Shakespeare: 5. A plenum of experience: Auden's Shakespeare criticism; 6. The reality of the mirror: Shakespeare in Auden's poetry; Part IV. Ted Hughes's Shakespeare: 7. A language of the common bond; 8. The Shakespearean moment; 9. Survivor of cease: Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath in Ted Hughes's poems.

'This book is an outstanding achievement, full of brilliant readings of both important careers and individual poems, and written in a lucid, acute and witty style. It is both accessible to the undergraduate and informative for the expert. It is deeply sympathetic with its subjects, and yet always judicious and cold-eyed in its appraisals. It is the work of a critic writing at the height of his powers.' Justin Quinn, Charles University, Prague