Shakespeare After All

867 Pages·2013·4.14 MB·English

by  Marjorie Garber

ACCLAIM FOR MARJORIE GARBER'S
Shakespeare After All

“A return to the times when the critic's primary function was as an enthusiast, to open up
the glories of the written word for the reader.”
—The New York Times
“A lifetime of learning has gone into the production of this massive volume.… Garber is
sensitive to significant details in the language … and she gives cogent accounts of historical
contexts.”
—The Boston Globe
“She lights up the plays with insights you'll kick yourself for not having had first.”
—Newsweek
“A delight…. Polished, thoughtful, eminently useful…. Not only a wonderful guide to the
plays, but just as importantly, it's a guide to the reading of the plays…. Garber writes
elegantly and insightfully…. The reader seeking an informed guide to each play simply can
not do better.”
—The Providence Journal
“Impossibly full … engagingly written…. It fills you with gratitude on virtually every
page. Here, in a book, is a Shakespearean course for our time.”
—The Buffalo News
“An absolute joy…. Extremely lively and witty…. Remarkable…. Authoritative.”
—Tucson Citizen
“Stimulating and informative.”
—The Charlotte Observer
“Garber keeps her eye on the goal, to illuminate the experience of reading and seeing the
plays, and achieves it with quiet efficiency.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“A commanding performance, not to be missed…. Garber brings the Bard into our
hearts…. Fascinating.”
—Republican-American (Waterbury, CT)
“Shakespeare After All is worth the cost for the introduction alone.”
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Every page has something that will make you rethink what you've seen or read, or make
you want to read a work for the first time.”
—The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)
“Her chapters on individual plays have the rhythm of the classroom and the voice of the
master teacher who still marvels at her subject.”
—The Bloomsbury Review

Shakespeare After All

Marjorie Garber is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and American Literature and
Language and chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.
She lives in Cambridge and Nantucket, Massachusetts.
ALSO BY MARJORIE GARBER

A Manifesto for Literary Studies

Quotation Marks

Academic Instincts

Sex and Real Estate

Symptoms of Culture

Dog Love

Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life

Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety

Shakespeare's Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality

Coming of Age in Shakespeare

Dream in Shakespeare

For B. J., the onlie begetter
Indeed all the great Masters have understood that there cannot be great art
without the little limited life of the fable, which is always the better the simpler it
is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the self-seen world beyond it.
William Butler Yeats, “Emotion of Multitude”
CONTENTS

A Note on the Text
Introduction
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
Titus Andronicus
Henry VI Part 1
Henry VI Part 2
Henry VI Part 3
Richard III
The Comedy of Errors
Love's Labour's Lost
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Richard II
King John
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV Part 1
Henry IV Part 2
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
Henry V
Julius Caesar
As You Like It
Hamlet
Twelfth Night
Troilus and Cressida
Measure for Measure
Othello
All's Well That Ends Well
Timon of Athens
King Lear
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
Pericles