The little white attic

1/ For a long time, I knew about “ King Lear with a happy ending” but didn’t know, until reading Maynard Mack’s King Lear in Our Time , that...

What can I possibly say about King Lear that hasn’t been said over the past 4 centuries? But I’m going to try anyway, and try to poke at i...

I’ve been to sea with Herman Melville a few times: on a whaler ( Moby Dick ), on a man-of-war ( White-Jacket ), and now on a merchant ship. ...

This essay is in  The Crown of Life .  “Prospero is a composite of many Shakespearian heroes; not in ‘character’  , since there is no one qu...

After The Wheel of Fire , I’ve been reading The Crown of Life , G. Wilson Knight’s book about Shakespeare’s late plays (the 4 romance plays ...

1/ How could anyone read Shakespeare and not be in awe of the language?  “ANTONY Let Rome in Tiber melt, and my wide arch Of the ranged empi...

I’ve been reading and very much enjoying G. Wilson Knight’s The Wheel of Fire .  Both of his essays on Hamlet are brilliant and should be re...

1/ Jealousy seems to be one of Shakespeare’s obsessions, but if Claudio and Othello are tricked and manipulated by someone else, Leontes’s j...