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The Secret of Shakespeare
Martin Lings clarifies the essential greatness of Shakespeare by focussing our attention on the total impact his best plays make on us when acted. For this purpose he concentrates on the texts and their theatrical rendering, in such a way as to transmit to us, at the same time, a powerful impression of Shakespeare the man, such as perhaps no other book can give us. For the second edition the chapters on Macbeth and The Tempest were rewrittten to more than twice their original length; and now, for this third edition, the same has been done for the chapters of Hamlet, King Lear and The Winter's Tale, as well as for the 'Notes on Performance and Production', with additions to other chapters also. The Foreword to third edition was written by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales.
144 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1984
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About the author
Martin Lings
113 books472 followersMartin Lings was an English writer and scholar, a student and follower of Frithjof Schuon, and Shakespearean scholar. He is best known as the author of a very popular and positively reviewed biography, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, first published in 1983 and still in print.
Lings was born in Burnage, Manchester in 1909 to a Protestant family. The young Lings gained an introduction to travelling at a young age, spending significant time in the United States due to his father's employment.
Lings attended Clifton College and went on to Magdalen College, Oxford (BA (Oxon) English Language and Literature). At Magdalen he was a student of C. S. Lewis, who would become a close friend of his. After graduating from Oxford Lings went to Vytautas Magnus University, in Lithuania, where he taught Anglo-Saxon and Middle English.
For Lings himself, however, the most important event that occurred while he was at Oxford was his discovery of the writings of the René Guénon, a French metaphysician and Muslim convert and those of Frithjof Schuon, a German spiritual authority, metaphysician and Perennialist. In 1938 Lings went to Basle to make Schuon's acquaintance and he remained Frithjof Schuon's disciple and expositor for the rest of his life.
In 1939 Lings went to Cairo, Egypt in order to visit a friend of his who was an assistant of René Guénon. Not long after arriving in Cairo, his friend died and Lings began studying and learned Arabic.
Cairo became his home for over a decade; he became an English teacher at the University of Cairo and produced Shakespeare plays annually. Lings married Lesley Smalley in 1944 and lived with her in a village near the pyramids. Despite having settled comfortably in Egypt, Lings was forced to leave in 1952 after anti-British disturbances.
Upon returning to the United Kingdom he continued his education, earning a BA in Arabic and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). His doctoral thesis became a well-received book on Algerian Sufi Ahmad al-Alawi (see Sufi studies). After completing his doctorate, Lings worked at the British Museum and later British Library, overseeing eastern manuscripts and other textual works, rising to the position of Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts 1970-73. He was also a frequent contributor to the journal, Studies in Comparative Religion.
A writer throughout this period, Lings' output increased in the last quarter of his life. While his thesis work on Ahmad al-Alawi had been well-regarded, his most famous work was a biography of Muhammad, written in 1983, which earned him acclaim in the Muslim world and prizes from the governments of Pakistan and Egypt. His work was hailed as the "best biography of the prophet in English" at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad.[2] He also continued travelling extensively, although he made his home in Kent. He died in 2005.
In addition to his writings on Sufism, Lings was a Shakespeare scholar. His contribution to Shakespeare scholarship was to point out the deeper esoteric meanings found in Shakespeare's plays, and the spirituality of Shakespeare himself. More recent editions of Lings's books on Shakespeare include a Foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales. Just before his death he gave an interview on this topic, which was posthumously made into the film Shakespeare's Spirituality: A Perspective. An Interview With Dr. Martin Lings.
Lings was born in Burnage, Manchester in 1909 to a Protestant family. The young Lings gained an introduction to travelling at a young age, spending significant time in the United States due to his father's employment.
Lings attended Clifton College and went on to Magdalen College, Oxford (BA (Oxon) English Language and Literature). At Magdalen he was a student of C. S. Lewis, who would become a close friend of his. After graduating from Oxford Lings went to Vytautas Magnus University, in Lithuania, where he taught Anglo-Saxon and Middle English.
For Lings himself, however, the most important event that occurred while he was at Oxford was his discovery of the writings of the René Guénon, a French metaphysician and Muslim convert and those of Frithjof Schuon, a German spiritual authority, metaphysician and Perennialist. In 1938 Lings went to Basle to make Schuon's acquaintance and he remained Frithjof Schuon's disciple and expositor for the rest of his life.
In 1939 Lings went to Cairo, Egypt in order to visit a friend of his who was an assistant of René Guénon. Not long after arriving in Cairo, his friend died and Lings began studying and learned Arabic.
Cairo became his home for over a decade; he became an English teacher at the University of Cairo and produced Shakespeare plays annually. Lings married Lesley Smalley in 1944 and lived with her in a village near the pyramids. Despite having settled comfortably in Egypt, Lings was forced to leave in 1952 after anti-British disturbances.
Upon returning to the United Kingdom he continued his education, earning a BA in Arabic and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). His doctoral thesis became a well-received book on Algerian Sufi Ahmad al-Alawi (see Sufi studies). After completing his doctorate, Lings worked at the British Museum and later British Library, overseeing eastern manuscripts and other textual works, rising to the position of Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts 1970-73. He was also a frequent contributor to the journal, Studies in Comparative Religion.
A writer throughout this period, Lings' output increased in the last quarter of his life. While his thesis work on Ahmad al-Alawi had been well-regarded, his most famous work was a biography of Muhammad, written in 1983, which earned him acclaim in the Muslim world and prizes from the governments of Pakistan and Egypt. His work was hailed as the "best biography of the prophet in English" at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad.[2] He also continued travelling extensively, although he made his home in Kent. He died in 2005.
In addition to his writings on Sufism, Lings was a Shakespeare scholar. His contribution to Shakespeare scholarship was to point out the deeper esoteric meanings found in Shakespeare's plays, and the spirituality of Shakespeare himself. More recent editions of Lings's books on Shakespeare include a Foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales. Just before his death he gave an interview on this topic, which was posthumously made into the film Shakespeare's Spirituality: A Perspective. An Interview With Dr. Martin Lings.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 15, 2025
"In life we have no view of the whole: we see only bits and pieces here and there, and our view is quite distorted. What is near to us we look at with feverish subjectivity; what is not near to us we look at with more or less cold objectivity. Above all we fail to see the pattern. It is as if life were a great piece of tapestry and as if we looked at it from the wrong side, where the pattern is obscured by a maze of threads, most of which seem to have no purpose. Now a play of Shakespeare's is like a much smaller piece of tapestry, partly copied from the other but also... copied from the transcendent Original of the other, that Divine Harmony of which the temporal and spatial cosmos is a reflection, but of which it is merely reflection, whence the superficial discords which, for fallen man, give the lie to the profound beauty of the image as a whole-- a totality that he cannot see, being, by definition, cut off from the vision of it. The remarkable intensity of Shakespeare's copy is redoubled by the corresponding intensity of those who hear it and see it. ... Shakespeare holds out this smaller piece of tapestry to us in the theater, between ourselves and him. He is on the right side of it and we are again on the wrong side just as, unlike him, we are on the wrong side of the great tapestry of life. To begin with we look at the rather chaotic maze of threads with the same cold objectivity with which we view the threads of our neighbors' lives. But little by little, as the play goes on, we are drawn into it and become more and more bound up with its threads. Our cold objectivity vanishes and we feel the warmth of subjectivity.... By the closing of the play we have become objective once more, but with a higher objectivity that is completely different from the initial one; for Shakespeare has drawn us through the tapestry and out the other side, so that we now see it as it really is, a unity in which all parts fit marvelously together to make up a perfect whole."
This is in the last chapter of this book and (although I had to cut out a lot of truly beautiful parts) explains why to read Shakespeare beautifully. Why read literature any other way? Backing himself up with lines from the plays he discusses, Lings shows how Shakespeare is writing spiritual allegories, and the genius of how he, the bard that is, accomplishes this.
Although I did disagree with Lings once or twice with his conclusion, the way he reached the answers were all rather solid. (I feel like critics are allowed to disagree on how to interpret "Hamlet" even while reading things the same way. Northrop Frye, another student of C. S. Lewis whom I respect, comes out with the opposite conclusion that Lings does, and I love and respect both.) A few chapters left me either jumping around with glee or simply sitting and pondering the beauty of the cosmos, and all the rest left me itching to read more Shakespeare.
10 out of 5 stars. Even if you aren't exceptionally in love with Shakespeare and you don't think you ever will be, the first two chapters of this go into how to read in general and are spot on. I highly recommend.
This is in the last chapter of this book and (although I had to cut out a lot of truly beautiful parts) explains why to read Shakespeare beautifully. Why read literature any other way? Backing himself up with lines from the plays he discusses, Lings shows how Shakespeare is writing spiritual allegories, and the genius of how he, the bard that is, accomplishes this.
Although I did disagree with Lings once or twice with his conclusion, the way he reached the answers were all rather solid. (I feel like critics are allowed to disagree on how to interpret "Hamlet" even while reading things the same way. Northrop Frye, another student of C. S. Lewis whom I respect, comes out with the opposite conclusion that Lings does, and I love and respect both.) A few chapters left me either jumping around with glee or simply sitting and pondering the beauty of the cosmos, and all the rest left me itching to read more Shakespeare.
10 out of 5 stars. Even if you aren't exceptionally in love with Shakespeare and you don't think you ever will be, the first two chapters of this go into how to read in general and are spot on. I highly recommend.
August 12, 2012
A superb book.
May 16, 2019
A arte sagrada, muito presente na Idade Média, pressupõe uma autoridade espiritual a que ela se subordina, por entender que a verdadeira realidade está além deste mundo. Desta forma, a realidade mundana é uma sombra do mundo do espírito, o mundo perfeito do Criador. O homem vive a separação entre o céu e a terra, que representam o casamento entre o espírito e a alma. Levada por seus vícios, a alma se separa do espírito e se entrega a eles, sendo necessário um processo de purificação para que possa promover o matrimônio verdadeiro. Lings argumenta que em muitas peças, particularmente as tardias, Shakespeare representou acima de tudo esta arte sagrada, tratando dos temas do casamento do céu e da terra, da providência divina, do diabo, da queda do homem e sua redenção, através de um processo de purificação.
June 5, 2025
اولینبار با عنوان «شکسپیر در پرتو هنر عرفانی» در سال 65 و در نشر نقره چاپ شد. لینگز در چاپ سوم عنوان و محتوا رو تغییر میده و این میشه که حجم «راز شکسپیر» یکونیم برابر نسخه اولشه.
از اون کتابهاییه که از هیجان نمیتونم طولانیمدت ادامهش بدم؛ یا باید راه برم و بخونم یا عین یه هیجانزا، چندوقت یه بار برم سراغش.
دیالوگ آغازین کتاب از لیر شاه:
امیر گلاستر: خاصگی این صدا را چه نیک یاد میارم. آیا شاه نیست که سخن میگوید؟... آه بگذارید تا این دستها را ببوسم.
شاه لیر: بگذار نخست بپالایمش، که بوی مردار میدهد.
از اون کتابهاییه که از هیجان نمیتونم طولانیمدت ادامهش بدم؛ یا باید راه برم و بخونم یا عین یه هیجانزا، چندوقت یه بار برم سراغش.
دیالوگ آغازین کتاب از لیر شاه:
امیر گلاستر: خاصگی این صدا را چه نیک یاد میارم. آیا شاه نیست که سخن میگوید؟... آه بگذارید تا این دستها را ببوسم.
شاه لیر: بگذار نخست بپالایمش، که بوی مردار میدهد.
August 9, 2014
Was the Bard Catholic? Is the Pope Polish - (or Argentinian as the case may be)? Not a bad book …
http://corjesusacratissimum.org
http://corjesusacratissimum.org
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews