What do you think?
Rate this book
Shakspeare: A Biography
Excerpt from Shakspeare: A Biography
In issuing this biography in a separate form and at the present time, it is perhaps only necessary to mention, in justice to the author, that it was written in the year 1838, and had not the benefit of any revision before his lamented death, which occurred in the year 1859.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
In issuing this biography in a separate form and at the present time, it is perhaps only necessary to mention, in justice to the author, that it was written in the year 1838, and had not the benefit of any revision before his lamented death, which occurred in the year 1859.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
- GenresBiography
108 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2013
About the author
Thomas de Quincey
993 books284 followersThomas de Quincey was an English author and intellectual, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_d...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_d...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 29, 2019
This short work was a bit of a disappointment. I have been an admirer of DeQuincey for many years, and have fallen greatly in love—during readings and subsequent re-readings—with The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, “On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts,” and “The English Mail Coach.” But in addition, although I have not re-read it for at least a quarter of a century, I have a distinctly positive memory of “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,” a short essay based upon what I believe most good literary criticism should be based upon: the sensory and emotional effect of the individual work upon the sensibility of the intelligent viewer or reader. Hoping to get more of that sort of criticism, I decided to read De Quincey’s Shakespeare: a Biography. After all, it was free on-line. And—as I said—it was short.
What I didn’t realize, though, when I begun my reading, was that this was not a magazine essay, like “On the Knocking...”, “On Murder...”, or “The English Mail Coach,” but instead an entry that DeQuincey had been commissioned to write for the Encyclopedia Brittanica, 7th Edition (1838). His magnificent periodic sentences are still here, every phrase or clause another by-way or back-track in a convoluted but always fascinating mental journey, but this time—in keeping with the sedate character of an encyclopedia article—his destinations are not nearly as eccentric, surprising, or insightful as in his customary reveries.
Of course, to give De Quincey credit, writing a Shakespeare biography is not easy, since there is so little known of the great man, and I suspect De Quincey sometimes stretches his speculations to the breaking point in an effort to pad the word count. For example, he spends altogether too much time attempting to prove Shakespeare’s marriage must have been unhappy, based on the difference in age (his wife was older) and the fact that she may have trapped him into marriage (his first child was born six months after the wedding), but such a supposition is little more than conjecture, and does not really tell us much about the man. This, and other such speculations, I found long-winded and tedious. They do, however, add to the articles length (which may have been their real purpose).
At the end of the biography, though, De Quincey does have a few interesting things to say about the plays themselves. It was here that I felt the great Shakespearean critic of "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" briefly revive, at least for a few paragraphs:
ON SHAKESPEARE’S SKILL AT SUMMONING GHOSTS (HAMLET’S FATHER)
In summoning back to earth “the majesty of buried Denmark,” how like an awful necromancer does Shakspeare appear! All the pomps and grandeurs which religion, which the grave, which the popular superstition had gathered about the subject of apparitions, are here converted to his purpose, and bend to one awful effect. The wormy grave brought into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn; the trumpet of resurrection suggested, and again as an antagonist idea to the crowing of the cock, (a bird ennobled in the Christian mythus by the part he is made to play at the Crucifixion;) its starting “as a guilty thing” placed in opposition to its majestic expression of offended dignity when struck at by the partisans of the sentinels; its awful allusions to the secrets of its prison-house; its ubiquity, contrasted with its local presence; its aerial substance, yet clothed in palpable armor; the heart-shaking solemnity of its language, and the appropriate scenery of its haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital fortress, with no witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting guard at the dead of night,—what a mist, what a mirage of vapor, is here accumulated, through which the dreadful being in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions, than could have happened had it been insulated and left naked of this circumstantial pomp!
ON HIS APTNESS OF EXPRESSIONS OF THOUGHT AND SENTIMENT
From his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune.
ON THE NATURALNESS OF HIS DIALOGUE
. . . in Shakspeare . . . in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short, all modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement, —these are as rife in Shakspeare’s dialogue as in life itself . . . .
July 5, 2019
This has to be read in one of the original sets of De Quincey's collected works. Not some nasty paperback reprint. Really.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews