Shakespeare

by Mark van Doren, David Lehman (Foreword)

This legendary book by an esteemed poet and beloved professor at Columbia University features a series of smart, witty, deeply perceptive essays about each of Shakespeare's plays, together with a further discussion of the poems. Writing with an incomparable knowledge of his subject but without a hint of pedantry, Van Doren elucidates both the astonishing boldness and myriad subtleties of Shakespeare's protean art. His Shakespeare is a book to be treasured by both new and longtime students of the Bard.

Genres: Shakespeare, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism, Literature, History

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Mark van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938 and he was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am going to come back and finish this when I've read the rest of the plays, and perhaps write a real review. I've read all the essays for all the plays I've read so far. For now, for those of you thinking about reading this, you absolutely should. And I hope all these quotes I have below convince you of why:

Round I:

On the sonnets: "By so much does the caliber of the sonnets at their best surpass in interest the crux of the occasion. At their poorest they are perhaps quite personal in the biographer's sense of the term. At their richest, when the volume of their sound suggests a deep, an almost subterranean hum of energy coming from the dark center of all the power there is, they may be personal too; but they are personal at such times rather to the artist than to the man. Shakespeare had found his subject..."

On Richard III: "Attractive as his brilliance makes him, and close to us as he sometimes comes through the sheer lonely force of his wit, he is nevertheless a murderer by nature, he likes to kill. Shakespeare has not yet discovered the secret of true success in fables of this kind. For true success the villain must be a hero too, must be a better man than we at the same time as he is worse... The great stories of murder are about men who could not have done it but who did...

Richard is only stunning in his craft, a serpent whose movements we follow for their own sake, because in themselves they have strength and beauty."

On Comedy of Errors: "... these are plays in which, obedient to the laws governing such matters, he confines his interest, or almost confines it, to physical predicament- to things that happen to certain persons not because of who they are but because of what they are...
... If Shakespeare's spirit reposed in comedy it was not in this kind of comedy. He could write it very well and it is hugely funny, but the heart of his interest was elsewhere- the poet had abdicated."

On Taming of the Shrew: "Petruchio is hero of farce, not of romance. Comedy is made once more from situation... a certain callousness will be induced to form in the sensibilities of the beholder so that whereas in another case he would be outraged he will now laugh freely and steadily for two hours. The practitioner in farce, no less than the practitioner in melodrama, must possess the art of insulating his audience's heart so that it cannot be shocked while the machinery hums."

"A play in which a heroine can be called devil, a wench, a field of hell, a rotten apple, a thing to be boarded, an irksome scold... has in fact been saved, but saved as farce. How otherwise could we behold so callously the wringing of ears and the knocking of heads which appear to be Petruchio's natural habits?... In the end, she has been tamed, and the logic of farce is that she should say so."

On Love's Labor's Lost: "Biron is the only inhabitant of Love's Labor's Lost who talks like a person of this world. Shakespeare obviously likes him and sees more life in him thant he play can use. He will reappear in better plays and indeed there will be something of him in Shakespeare's finest poets- Hotspur and Hamlet."

On Romeo and Juliet: "Romeo and Juliet is still a youthful play, its author, no less than its hero and heroine, is furiously literary. He has written at last a tragedy which is crowded with life."

"Few other plays, even by Shakespeare, engage the audience so intimately. The hearts of the hearers, surrendered early, are handled with the greatest care until the end, and with the greatest human respect. No distinction of Shakespeare is so hard to define as this distinction of his which consists of knowing the spectator through and through, and of valuing what is there."

"At least it is clear that one who has witnessed 'Romeo and Juliet' has been taken apart and put together again; has been strangely and normally moved; has learned a variety of good things about himself; and has been steadily happy in the knowledge."

Round II:

On Midsummer: "The world of this play is both veritable and large. It is not the tiny toy-shop that most such spectacles present, with quaint little people scampering on dry little errands... There is room here for mortals no less than for fairies; both classes are at home, both groups move freely in a wide world where indeed they seem to have sometimes exchanged functions with one another... The buisness may be trivial, but the world is as big as any world we know."

"Dr. Johnson and Hazlitt copied Addison in saying that if there could be persons like this they would act like this. Dryden's tribute to its charm:

But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he.

... has an identical source: wonder that such things can be at all and be so genuine."

Richard II:

"There can be no question as to Shakespeare's affection for the hero of his new historical play. But he has not made a great man of him. He has made a poet, a great minor poet. The author of "Richard II" is perhaps more interested in poetry than he will ever be again...It is the work of an awakening genius who has fallen in love with the language he writes. The subject of "Richard II" is the reign and deposition of an English king. It is also the beauty of the English language considered as an instrument upon which music can be made."

"Richard is Shakespeare's finest poet thus far and in spite of everything he is a touching person. He is not a great man, nor is the play in consequence a considerable tragedy. But as a performer on the lyre Richard has no match among Shakespeare's many people. And as dramatizer of himself he will be tutor to a long posterity, though none of his pupils- Hamlet is the best known- will be exactly like him. As for his favorite subject, sorrow, there will be Constance in King John to explore it even farther than he has explored it..."

Merchant of Venice: (this one's starts a bit rough, guys)
"Where Shakespeare's sympathies lay it has long since been useless to inquire. His gentlemen within the code are as harsh to Shylock as Shylock is to them; however much love they have, they cannot love him. Nor has Shakespeare made the least inch of him lovely. He would seem in fact to have attempted a monster, one whose question whether a Jew hath eyes, hands organs, dimensions, senses and passions would reveal its rhetorical form, the answer being no. Yet Shylock is not a monster. He is a man thrust into a world bound not to endure him. In such a world he necessarily looks and sounds ugly. In other universe his voice might have its properties and its uses. Here it can issue as nothing but a snarl, an animal cry sounding outrageously among the flute and recorder voices of persons whose very names, unlike his own, are flowing musical phrases. The contrast between harmony and hate, love and discord, is here complete, and Shakespeare for the time being is content to resolve it in comedy. Even in its tragedies it cannot be more complete."

Henry IV:
"No play of Shakespeare's is better than 'Henry IV'. Certain subsequent ones may show him more settled in maturity which he here attains almost at a single bound, but nothing he wrote is more crowded with life or happier in its imitation of human talk. The pen that moves across these pages is perfectly free of itself. The host of persons assembled for our pleasure can say anything for their author he wants to say."

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Quiz Show, one of my favorite movies, Paul Scofield played Mark Van Doren as the epitome of kindly, genial learning, a scrupulous, drolly cultivated mind in humanist tweed (as opposed to the TV executives, all sheathed in sharkish blues, teals and grays). The scene where he finds out that his son cheated on the show is heartbreaking; you see his bemusement before television turn into horror. Anyway, I love this book because reading it I hear and picture Scofield-as-Van Doren professing in an old Columbia lecture hall, a profound love of and lifelong familiarity with Shakespeare having smoothed his lectures to graceful yarns, delivered note-less, thrilling revelations coming at you on a stream of easy, cultured talk. Van Doren's first book, on Dryden, the one that is the occasion for T.S. Eliot's famous essay-review, is awe-inspiring but doesn't have this book's warm-hued patina.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful work, but one that I can only recommend to people who have read Shakespeare's complete works. Reading these one at a time would hardly be beneficial, as much of his evaluation of Shakespeare's early plays and poetry rests heavily on references to their similarities to his later works. Van Doren's prose is both pretty and effective, never plain but never quite crossing over into overwriting.

I found his essay on Hamlet to be at first a bit disappointing, but one of its main points is that it is impossible to summarize Hamlet or to analyze any one piece of it without all the rest, so I find it now to have been satisfactory.

Van Doren's opinions of certain plays, especially Henry V, are very different from mine. However, I don't read things in order to agree with them, so I do not dislike his work for our disagreements. Also, his reasoning is so compelling that I suspect that my opinions after my second readings will line up more with Van Doren's evaluations than with mine upon my initial readings. More often than not, however, his evaluations agree with mine, especially his sincere appreciation for Romeo and Juliet, his proposal of a satiric interpretation of Titus Andronicus, and his perplexed admiration for Cymbeline, but in many other cases, too.

It is unfortunate that Van Doren did not have access to current scholarship, which opens holes in his work. For instance, it makes no mention of Edward III (which, however, I appreciated, since I have not read it), and I suspect, if he were writing today, his opinion of the authorship (if not quality) of Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen would have been different. I also would have liked to read his opinion of Double Falsehood. In the end, however, I obviously cannot fault Van Doren for existing only during his lifetime.

Again, I recommend this to anyone who has read Shakespeare's complete works, but sadly, I suspect that its full splendor will only be available to that small crowd.

Also, it's worth noting that I read the first edition of this, not NYRB's, but the first edition is not listed on Goodreads, and the page count does not differ too much, so I left it with NYRB's.

[Crito · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will flat out recommend this to anyone who has just read the complete works, this is exactly what I wanted. Mark Van Doren gets down to business. Here is a collection of essays on average 10 pages dedicated to each play dedicating the same eye to each one. He focuses on language, character, and mood roughly in that order and how each relate to the other. He gives everything just enough attention, he doesn't dwell too long and he doesn't skimp either while delivering in readable yet eloquent prose. This consistently perfect balance is what makes this impressive. He dissects but never butchers; you get a peak at how the parts move but the intrigue and mystique of each play is not only preserved but intensified. The only thing he assumes of the reader is having read the complete works, nothing else. And even then there isn't any heavy cross reference between essays, at most he'll refer to plays 4 essays forward and 4 essays back. He never comes close into falling into the Harold Bloom snare of drowning the critique with mounds of namedropping and referencing. And it helps that Van Doren doesn't absolutely deify Shakespeare. He'll gush over Hamlet and Henry IV and then later drop something like "If Aristotle was right when he called plot the soul of tragedy, 'Timon of Athens' has no soul." (p. 249) Fuckin, owch. He is with his personal tastes and never claims otherwise. For example he somehow likes Pericles, and as much as that confounds me I still respect that he can articulate why. The only time I feel he showed a little academic arrogance was when he bestowed an implied dismissal of the collaborative plays Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen of any of Shakespeare's involvement. He didn't "say it" but he said it and only made faint reference to the scholars who would disagree. And speaking of academically divisive, this book has a particular structure, it follows an arc of what Van Doren holds to be the chronological order of the plays. It is why this is a book to be read all at once after reading the complete works, not one essay at a time as you complete each play. Though we have a good idea, from what I understand the chronology still isn't 100% perfect and proven. Despite this, Van Doren weaves a fairly convincing thread through these essays, showing how one play might anticipate the next, how Shakespeare as an artist may have developed himself. Which is funny considering his self proclaimed efforts of focusing explicitly on the texts and not the man who wrote them. Overall I'll say this book is good as an accessible entry into a larger world, reminding you that just simply having read the plays once is not enough. I can't speak for seasoned vets if they'd get anything new out of this but it was enjoyable as survey and review.

[Matt Ely · Rating 3 out of 5]

The parameters for reading this book fruitfully are pretty narrow. Van Doren has an essay of variable length for each of Shakespeare's plays (excluding, to no one's dismay, Two Noble Kinsmen). The challenge is that each essay depends on minimally-explained allusions not just to the play in question, but also to the rest of Shakespeare's corpus and the preceding essays in the book.

As such, in order to feel engaged with Van Doren's text the reader should have already read most or all of Shakespeare's plays. Additionally, because Van Doren does so much quoting with so little context, it is best if the reader has read the play in question quite recently or retains it in a deeper part of themselves.

So in order to feel like you're following properly, the reader should have previously read all the plays and currently be reading the plays again, stopping after each to reflect with Van Doren.

Now, frankly, that sounds like a fine time. But it's a lot of pressure to put on one book that is as much a reference as anything. There are many moments where Van Doren shines, particularly in the plays that shine for him; I found myself underlining and nodding along throughout his section on Hamlet (have I ever written something so pretentious?). But when the plays drag for him he drags the reader with him. Extended quotations after which Van Doren writes, in effect, "Now you see how dumb that quote was, right?" do not inspire much page turning.

I am glad I own this, and I do imagine I'll revisit it in small doses as I revisit the plays over the years. But as a standalone book read in sequence, it can get a bit bumpy.

[James F · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the opposite pole from the previous book I read this week [Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery], Van Doren's Shakespeare seems like a reversion to the nineteenth century school of impressionistic criticism. It consists of short chapters, which seem almost like reviews, on the poems and each of the plays. Each chapter concentrates on one or two aspects of the play and tells us whether it is one of Shakespeare's successes or failures in the opinion of the author. He seems to miss the point of some of the plays entirely. I'm not sure why this book is listed in so many bibliographies of important works on Shakespeare; while there were some insights it was basically not all that useful to anyone who has read or seen the plays, and to anyone who hasn't it would make no sense at all.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a charming little book. Mark gives brief, sometimes incisive comments into all the plays, at times very eclectically. Oftentimes his insights are at least valid, and some of them are very clever, and his focus is on the development of Shakespeare as a poet from the immature early comedies to the almost divine mastery of his greatest works. He has the excellent quality of being able to admit it when a shakespeare play is bad (my metric for Shakespearean criticism is how much time they spend on Titus, Gentlemen of Verona, etc - the bad critics will try to make too much of it but good guys like Mark are willing to call Taming of the Shrew, for example, a bad play), and he manages to overcome bardolatry well enough to evaluate the plays a bit fairly. However, he's not a thorough critic and it seems like a brief survey of the complete works - if you're looking to amuse yourself with a little bit of reading about Shakespeare, this is your guy, but the world of Shakespearean criticism is much larger, and, to use Mark's own standards, there is a world of more thorough and more creative readings of Shakespeare than this. Yet he is very enjoyable to read and, given all I've read about Mark's personality, resembles the comforting quality of listening to a person wiser than you explain things to you in a clear, unpretentious way.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: Remedial Shakespeare

As a lifelong lover of literature who considers himself a "catholic" (universal) reader, I am surprisingly behind on my attention to the great Bard. During my working career I had the great fortune of spending a couple of years in England so I have been to the reconstructed Globe theater and his birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon (where I bought a unique guide to the writings I'll reference here), and I have read about the context of his plays and their place in history: James Shapiro's look at the years 1599 and 1606, and Shakespeare: Staging the World, were excellent choices.

But other than a few versions of "Romeo and Juliet", a rough idea of the plot lines of Hamlet and Macbeth, and the movie version of "Much Ado about Nothing" a couple decades ago, I have been behind in my appreciation for his actual writing. So when we picked up a couple of used books related to it I decided to get caught up by using them as study guides, since reading through the collected plays (which we do own thanks to my wife the retired high school English teacher) seemed arduous and unlikely to be enlightening for an uninitiated novice like myself, and I suspect for many reading this review. So, I have in hand:

The What on Earth Wallbook of Shakespeare, from the gift shop at his birthplace. This is a unique format, a very tall but thin foldout book with a cartoon synopsis of each play on one side above a time line of the events of Shakespeare's life and times, and on the other side "newspaper articles" of events during and since his life.

Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb's now classic narrative versions of many of the plays, written as stories for young readers, but using much of the language of the plays.

Charles Van Doren's Shakespeare, classic collection of critical essays of the plays in chronological order.

I followed this sequence in my remedial education in Shakespeare's plays: using Van Doren's chronology, I read the Wallbook synopsis for the play, then the Lambs's narrative for those they covered, and wrapped up with the Van Doren critical essay. Van Doren, beginning with a brief section on the poems and then chronologically--based on his best estimation, which was close but frequently different from the Wallbook--through the plays, describes Shakespeare as a mediocre poet, and through the first ten plays as a writer improving as his craft matures. Then, in "Richard II", Van Doren concludes that while Shakespeare "is still learning to write at a fabulous rate, he is still making the most remarkable discoveries of powers within his pen which he could not have guessed were there before. . . . It is the power to write the English language musically--with a continuous melody and with unfailing reserves of harmony." (p. 68). Now I am meeting the Bard in his element. I came to Van Doren, as I said, relatively ignorant of Shakespeare's works, so I was surprised when Van Doren claimed "Henry IV" as Shakespeare's best. I would have expected "Hamlet", "Macbeth", or "Romeo and Juliet" to figure in that category, but no: "nothing that he wrote is more crowded with life or happier in its imitation of human talk." (p. 97).

"All's Well that Ends Well", the play that I just learned was based on one of the stories in Boccaccio's Decameron , is assessed by Van Doren as an attempt to "pad a dry skeleton with living flesh, to force upon the imagination what only wit can credit. It has failed, but it is one of Shakespeare's most interesting failures." (p. 179). I agree: even though I found the Decameron stories fun reading, after reading several of Shakespeare's plays in the Lambs' story-narrative format and reading Van Doren's insightful and frank reviews, I realize that a play by Shakespeare based on one of those stories is bound to be limited compared to Shakespeare's fertile imagination. And, based on Van Doren's essay and the Lambs's narrative, I believe "Othello" must be the most powerful of his imaginings that I have encountered.

The narratives of the brother and sister Lambs are geared toward children, so they at times pare down or fail to include events documented in the Wallbook or mentioned by Van Doren, sometimes, as they document in their preface, to simplify the plot line and other times because the material is too intense or inappropriate for children, with the goal that their young intended readers encounter the stories as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity." (p. Ix) Clearly this goal may dull the sharp edges of some of the histories and tragedies, and clean up some of the Bard's comedic and romantic innuendo. Even with these caveats, though, I found the stories interesting reading that gave me that introductory understanding that I most likely would have missed by direct reading of the plays.

The Wallbook, following tradition, categorizes each play as history, tragedy, or comedy, lists major characters, and documents the setting. Of course these categories are porous; there are comic events in the historical plays, tragic events in the histories and comedies, and romance plays a key role in many of the plays. I'm surprised "romance" is not a traditional category for some of the plays. It would also be helpful to provide a timeline context for each play. Some appear to be contemporary or near-contemporary to Shakespeare's time, others are from ancient Egyptian or Roman times, others from early British or European history. For the novice like me this time context would help understand the significance of the events and characters in the synopsis. The synopses include some of the most famous quotes from each play, and describe the central conflicts, action, and outcome, so that even for plays without a Lambs's narrative I was ready to read the Van Doren essay with a reasonable level of understanding.

Van Doren was by design and by the execution of the essays the most academic of the guides I used for my remedial studies. As Shakespeare the writer has progressed in his art, his writing and his plots have become more powerful--and unremittingly tragic. While his early plays leaned into British history, and his middle period into comedies of love and life, so many of his middle and later plays are tragedies with no redemptive mercy. "Othello" is followed by "King Lear" by "Macbeth" with each flawed hero destined for sadness of such depth that death is both inevitable but incapable of redemptive power. Yet Van Doren concludes his discussion of "Macbeth": "Shakespeare again has enclosed his evil within a universe of good, his storm center within wide areas of peace." (p. 230). And in his final plays "the marriage between tears and integrity is permanent. Unjust men cannot weep." (p. 260). The Great Bard, in his final plays, leaves us feeling the redemptive power of love, tears, and even joy amidst the sometimes historical, sometimes tragic, and sometimes comic events that surround us and consume us.

So I conclude my remedial studies. I have yet to read the plays in Shakespeare's originals, but I now understand what they are, and why they are considered the greatest of the English language. These three tools were effective teachers and have taught me well. I can recommend them for other truants like me.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually kind of cool, especially if you've been out of school for awhile or haven't taken any adult education classes recently. It's sort of like having that stodgy, tweed-wearing lit. Prof. right there in your very hands. Sure, it's old school, but Van Doren knows his stuff. It's based on close reading and not some post-post-post whatever, where things start off interesting and then you end up asking yourself, "where am I? what does this have to do with Shakespeare? Why did I have to pay for a book that contains a conversation I could have at nearly any coffee shop or bar in Cambridge, MA?" So grab some Penguin Shakespeare paperbacks, youtube some old BBC plays, and read Van Doren for your own Shakespeare class...free of charge.

[Adam Floridia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the introduction--Van Doren tells the reader exactly what his analyses will be: close readings and some reader response theory without a hint of biography, historical context, or any of the "isms" (marx, femin, formal, etc.).

The handful of play analyses that I have read so far have given me new insights to Shakespeare's works. My only quibble is that each analysis is so short (an average of 10-15 pages) that I would love if he further developed many of his interpretations. He packs so many ideas in to that scant space that his readings are not always presented as fully as I would like. Because he covers all of Shakespeare's canon, though, anything longer would be unwieldy.

[Roz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of interesting, if somewhat dated, essays on each of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, i found this sort of hit and miss. You can tell when he doesn’t think much of a play: he pads his essays with lots of quotes. And there are some interesting insights here, but on balance I think it’s more for people who are deeply into Shax, like in an academic or professional sense. For laypeople I’d suggest maybe Women of Will, Shakespeare After All or that big Harold Bloom book I keep meaning to finish

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Van Doren was a poet as well as a scholar, and the concise poetic imagery he occasionally uses communicates more than a score of pages. Both the play and the statement gain when juxtaposed with one another.

Poems
"The songs that shoot like stars across his plays are brightest at the beginning, and often burn out before the end." (1)

Romeo and Juliett
"[T]he principal tragic effect ... is that of a lightning flash against the night." (54)

Richard II
"It [the play] sings in its own darkness, listening sweetly to itself." (79)

[Jason Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Van Doren analyzes every one of the plays in under 350 pages, but this very concise work is never simplistic. Subtle, vigorous, evocative--if you want to understand Shakespeare's achievement, this book seems ideal to me. (Van Doren is most remembered these days as the father of his cheating quiz-show contestant son, but he was an accomplished poet and, as a Columbia prof, was teacher to a murders row of future scholars and poets.)

[Steven Andersson]

A very clear thinker and careful writer, Van Doren boils down the essence of many Shakespearean themes in the volume of essays. Timeo Hominem Unius Libri (Terence). Be sure to read widely in Shakespearean criticism.

[Steven]

Terrific preface; starts out with a bang; from which it plummets to unenlightening line readings.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you read a book and it triggers a whole host of reactions as you start, wade into the middle, and come to the conclusion (and truth be told, I'm actually not yet finished as I pen this review, but I already knew how this was going to go when I went to bed last night and, a few pages from the end, I feel confident that I'll feel the same when I do reach the last page). Like a lecture from a warm, beguiling professor who wears his or her knowledge not like a badge of honor but more humbly, with an air of bewilderment that anyone could think differently on the subject or feel any more passion than they themselves already feel for the subject, is Mark Van Doren's extremely fun and engaging survey of the body of work that made William Shakespeare (and yes, only Shakespeare, not any of the numerous folks put forward by the anti-Stratfordians) a household name.

"Shakespeare" is, first and foremost, not a work to be approached casually if you're not already familiar with some of the plays. Because my man Mark doesn't want to break down the plot of each play, specifically, but get to the meat of the topic: meaning, quotes, impressions that the play inspires, and a general conveying of his love for even the lesser plays (and his views might not square with yours or mine). When I read "Stoner" by John Williams, the author there made a point that William Stoner wrote a book that no one read, but which contained his passion for his particular topic. While this book by Van Doren is certainly more widely read in academic circles (hell, it's got the stamp of approval from NYRB), it feels like the sort of book Stoner would have written had his interest lie in Shakespeare. The essays cover, in varying degrees of detail, each one of the Bard's plays (the earliest essay, on his poetry, can be skipped if you're so inclined, as I was; I like Shakespeare's verse, but the plays are the thing for my money). Here, Van Doren gives us an idea of what each play is about, and more importantly what it means.

Far from couching his analysis in deep terms familiar to scholars, Van Doren is almost coy in his use of terms that more high-falutin' critics might employ. Yes, the essays don't always break down the plays scene by scene, but you can go to other sources for that. If you need a more user-friendly synopsis of each play, there is the excellent (and appropriately titled) "Friendly Shakespeare," by Norrie Epstein, which has pride of place on my bookshelf. But if you want a friendly lecture full of well-informed opinions and gentle good grace, you can't go wrong with Mark Van Doren's "Shakespeare."

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you have not read the plays of Shakespeare this book will still be immensely amazing. Van Doren has a skill with words that perfectly explains the plays, if in miniature, or maybe merely one ot two facets of each. He is a poet, Van Doren, and it shows. Not only does he do a tremendously adept job at critique, he fashions it fabulously with his use of language. If you have read the plays of Shakespeare - which I have - then this book will probably be shelved alongside those fabulous tragedies, histories, and comedies. I absolutely swooned in the stylistics of this book, though not as much as I absorbed and relished in the analysis and cross-referencing Van Doren accomplishes.
I definitely prefer reading something to reading analysis about that something, but this is one time the something written about works in sublime symbiosis with the analysis of that something. Understand?
Essential.

[Mattschratz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like that Van Doren thanks his students, along with Dr. Johnson, in the dedication/acknowledgments at the beginning. This book reminded me of Paul Fussell's book about Johnson that I loved so much--a heartfelt appreciation of what Shakespeare was trying to do and what he was able to do, and what, with Van Doren's guidance, you could think about with him.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essay on Hamlet is worth the price of the entire book. All lovers of Shakespeare need to read this book.

[Michael I · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too flowery

[AB Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d heard of Mark Van Doren before, but only in the context of Robert Redford’s Twenty-One, which tells the story of his disgraced son, Charles Van Doren, and the corrupt practices of that television game show in the 1950s. Yet, Mark Van Doren was a highly regarded intellectual, teaching at Columbia University. His knowledge was vast, his erudition expansive, his reputation unimpeachable. I’d never read anything by him.

Van Doren was an incredible Shakespearean scholar, it seems, each play examined in an interdisciplinary way, their relations examined in dialectical conversation. Even though I studied Shakespeare in university, I’d never considered exactly how his evolution as a writer infused the work with expression with increasing complexity. Van Doren’s examinations explicitly scrutinize this. I also ended up taking away a few more Shakespearean quotes to which I’d not yet paid any attention. For example:

From Henry IV: “Subtlety counts most in one who is capable of plainness.”

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon”

From Much Ado About Nothing: “a brilliant brocade of artifice”

4 stars. I learned more from this text than I admitting here. In fact, as I read through it, I felt the distinct impression that it would be worth finding and purchasing this book to included within my personal library. Fortunately, it’s easily found on the NYRB publishing house website.

[Jason Kinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

My brain was able to retain little of this information. Reading this book did not bring me joy. I can see why others love this guy. His essays in this volume aren't long and you can read one during a lunch half hour, so I imagine the essay on a particular play would be the perfect thing after reading or seeing that play. But then again, maybe not. I read the book straight through, and it became tedious.

[Nik Kane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seemed to me one of the most intolerably pretentious and hollow books I've ever read. Consists mostly of lists of antonym pairs (cold heat, lead feathers) or paradoxical statements (it soars in its depths) which the author takes for profound insight. After a few of the essays, when I saw that this pattern would persist through the entirety, I set the book aside unfinished.

[Lynne Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

These essays opened up Shakespeare and eventually English literature as a whole to me.