Shakespeare on Love and Lust [Hardcover]

Maurice Charney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1999

"Shakespeare on Love and Lust" looks at the complex and sometimes contradictory expressions of love in Shakespeare's works - ranging from the serious to the absurd and back again - and argues that they arise primarily from his dramatic and theatrical flair rather than from a unified philosophy of love. Untangling his witty, bawdy (and ambiguous) treatment of love, sex and desire requires a sharp eye and a steady hand. In "Shakespeare on Love and Lust", scholar Maurice Charney delves into Shakespeare's rhetorical and thematic development of this subject to reveal what makes his plays and poems resonate with contemporary audiences. The paradigmatic star-crossed lovers of "Romeo and Juliet", the comic confusions of couples wandering through the wood in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Othello's tragic jealousy, the homoerotic ways Shakespeare played with cross-dressing on the Elizabethan stage - Charney explores the world in which Shakespeare lived, and how it is reflected and transformed in the one he created. While focusing primarily on desire between young lovers, Charney also explores themes of love in marriage (Brutus and Portia) and in same-sex pairings (Antonio and Sebastian). Against the conventions of Renaissance literature, Shakespeare qualified the Platonic view that true love transcends the physical. Instead, as Charney demonstrates, love in Shakespeare's work is almost always sexual as well as spiritual, and the full range of desire's dramatic possibilities is displayed. "Shakespeare on Love and Lust" begins by considering the ways in which Shakespeare drew upon and satirized the conventions of Petrarchan Renaissance love poetry in plays like "Romeo and Juliet", then explores how courtship is woven into the basic plot formula of the comedies. Next, Charney examines love in the tragedies and the enemies of love (Iago, for example). Later chapters cover the gender complications in such plays as "Macbeth" and "The Taming of the Shrew" as well as the homoerotic themes woven into many of the poems and plays. Charney concludes with a discussion of paradoxes and ambivalences about love expressed by Shakespeare's word play and sexual innuendoes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A fascinating overview of every aspect of love expressed in Shakespeares works. Young love, married love, same-sex bonds, humorous or ribald, lusty or wistful . . . a delightful treatment of a subject that was played out on Shakespeares stage in all its infinite variety.

About the Author

Maurice Charney is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University and the past president of the Shakespeare Association of America. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including How to Read Shakespeare; Style in Hamlet; Shakespeare´s Roman Plays; Sexual Fiction; and All of Shakespeare (Columbia) and is a recipient of the Medal of the City of Tours.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (November 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231104286
• ISBN-13: 978-0231104289
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,410,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not for everybody!, May 30, 2006

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Sylviastel - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shakespeare on Love and Lust (Paperback)

Unless you are totally and absolutely into William Shakespeare, this book will probably not be for you. Dr. Maurice Charney was a professor of English at my alma mater, Rutgers, but he was never my teacher nor have I ever met him. Dr. Charney does his best to emphasize the relationships in Shakespeare's plays. While I prefer Harold Bloom usually, Maurice Charny is a great alternative if you're not into Bloom. The book has a great cover and there is stuff worth reading but I wasn't dazzled by it. It just made me think more about Shakespeare which is the goal of most literary critics.