Shakespeare's Late Style

Russ McDonald

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511483783

When Shakespeare gave up tragedy around 1607 and turned to the new form we call romance or tragicomedy, he created a distinctive poetic idiom that often bewildered audiences and readers. The plays of this period, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, as well as Shakespeare's part in the collaborations with John Fletcher (Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen), exhibit a challenging verse style - verbally condensed, metrically and syntactically sophisticated, both conversational and highly wrought. In Shakespeare's Late Style, McDonald anatomizes the components of this late style, illustrating in a series of topically organized chapters the contribution of such features as ellipsis, grammatical suspension, and various forms of repetition. Resisting the sentimentality that frequently attends discussion of an artist's 'late' period, Shakespeare's Late Style shows how the poetry of the last plays reveals their creator's ambivalent attitude towards art, language, men and women, the theatre, and his own professional career.

Review of the hardback:‘McDonald’s analysis is both original and convincing. He is an attuned close reader, combining sensitivity to tone and metre with precision.’

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

Review of the hardback:'… what stands out above all from Shakespeare’s Late Style is the critic’s sheer delight in the language of the plays, his determination to investigate the mechanics of their verbal force while never losing sight of the pleasure and frisson of their effect, and the sheer clarity of description that his enthusiasm brings with it. McDonald’s book feels like a genuine labour of love; it is also a tour de force, one that all Shakespeareans should read and absorb if we are to know what we really mean when we refer to the playwright’s ‘late style’.'

Gordon McMullan - King’s College London

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Shakespeare's Late Style

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-vi

Contents
pp vii-viii

Acknowledgements
pp ix-x

Introduction
pp 1-41

1 - The idioms of the late tragedies
pp 42-76

2 - Elision
pp 77-107

3 - Syntax (I): divagation
pp 108-148

4 - Syntax (II): suspension
pp 149-180

5 - Repetition
pp 181-218

6 - Style and the making of meaning
pp 219-254

Index
pp 255-260

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