Shakespeare's Style

Maurice Charney isretired from Rutgers University as a distinguished professor and was president of both the Shakespeare Association of America and the Academy of Literary Studies.

• Contents Introduction 1. Antipholus of Syracuse as Comic Hero in The Comedy of Errors 2. The Satire on Learning in Love’s Labor’s Lost 3. Richard’s Physical Deformities in 3 Henry VI and Richard III 4. The Sardonic Aaron in Titus Andronicus5. Who Tames Whom in The Taming of the Shrew? 6. The Conventions of Romantic Love in The Two Gentlemen of Verona 7. The Portentous Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet 8. Audience Response to Richard in Richard II9. The Fairy World of A Midsummer Night’s Dream 10. Shylock’s Monomaniacal Style in The Merchant of Venice 11.Commodity and the Bastard in King John 12. Falstaff’s Hyperbole in the Henry IV Plays 13. The Banishment of Falstaff in the Henry IVPlays 14. Shakespeare’s Illiterates 15. The Wit Combat of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing 16. The Roman Style of Julius Caesar 17. Jaques as Satiric Observer in As You Like It 18. Feste as Corrupter of Words in Twelfth Night 19. Hamlet as Actor 20. Sex Nausea in Troilus and Cressida 21. Parolles the Braggart in All’s Well That Ends Well 22. Iago’s and Othello’s “Ha’s” 23. Lucio the Calumniator in Measure for Measure 24. Madness in King Lear 25. The Macbeths’s Insomnia 26. Roman Values in Antony and Cleopatra 27. The Cultivation of Excess in Timon of Athens 28. Coriolanus’s Manliness 29. The Saintly Marina in Pericles 30. Imogen: Romance Heroine of Cymbeline 31. Speech Rhythms in The Winter’s Tale 32. Prospero’s “Art” in The Tempest 33. The Tragedy of Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII 34. The Pretty Madness of the Jailer’s Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen Conclusion

Referring to each of Shakespeare’s plays in at least one chapter, this volume comprises 34 brief but thoughtful essays. Charney conceives of ‘style’ broadly as he discusses more than the formal aspects of Shakespeare’s work. The topics range from the lack of figurative language in Julius Caesar and Iago’s ‘Ha!’ (which Othello picks up as he accepts Iago’s accusations of Desdemona) to the insomnia of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and the ‘harsh cruelty’ of Falstaff’s banishment in 2 Henry IV. The author even includes an appreciative chapter on the jailer’s daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen. An accomplished scholar conversant with the literature, Charney provides close readings that pick up characteristics of individual plays that readers might miss: for example, he notes that the speech rhythms of The Winter’s Tale are quite irregular, the lines often deviating from the conventional blank verse. [T]his book will interest scholars as well as a general audience. It will remind readers that Charney's excellent How to Read Shakespeare is still the best book to introduce students to Shakespeare. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers.