Customer Reviews

Proverbial Language in English Drama Exclusive of Shakespeare, 1495-1616: An Index

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This large, very comprehensive book (about 800 pages) was published some years after the authors's well-known and excellent classic Shakespeare's Proverbial Language. It is compiled in much the same way, and does for other Renaissance dramatists what the earlier book did for Shakespeare. Hence, it seems to me appropriate to quote here what I wrote about the earlier book. Readers can, in essence, substitute for "Shakespeare", in the review below, "Renaissance dramatists". So here comes a repeat of my review of Shakespeare's Proverbial Language:

"Many of today's readers - including many Shakespeare scholars - do not realise how frequently Shakespeare uses, or adapts, proverbs or similar sayings current and popular in his day. Thus, as not even the Oxford English Dictionary is strong in this area, a good reference book listing the proverbs we find in Shakespeare is quite indispensable: without it, we frequently cannot understand his originality and/or contact with 'folk wisdom" of his day, and even run the risk - quite often - of simply misunderstanding what he says. This compilation by Dent is generally recognised as the best of its kind: while much help is also provided by M.P. Tilley's famous Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1950), and by F.P. Wilson's updated Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1970), Dent is yet more comprehensive. He might have offered more explanation of the meaning of the proverbs, but usually that becomes clear from the many examples he quotes. A REPRINT IS VERY MUCH NEEDED." - Joost Daalder, Profesor of English, Flinders University (South Australia)