Shakespeare the Thinker (Hardcover)

~ Prof. A. D. Nuttall (Author)
Key Phrases: artificial fool, ethical objectivism, Love's Labour's Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Nuttall, who died earlier this year, and who trained in both philosophy and literature, here traces ideas about motivation, identity, speech, and symbol in Shakespeare’s plays. His study is rich in unexpected juxtapositions: Hippolyta, of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," finds herself in casual conversation with David Hume, and Titus Andronicus is seen in the context of "Goodfellas." The analysis never pulls too far away from the action onstage; indeed, Nuttall painstakingly shows Shakespeare’s skill at negotiating abstract ideas through suspense, conflict, and character. For example, he observes, Shakespeare often uses minor characters who form "islands" in the drama to think through philosophical ideas. The Shakespeare who emerges here is a "systematically elusive" intelligence, whose brilliance lay in his ability to join "verisimilitude to wonder."
Copyright © 2007 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

Review

"'The delight of Nuttall's book springs not just from the incisiveness of his ideas but from the deftness with which he unfolds scenes and speeches. It is like walking through the countryside with someone who recognises every bird's song and each wild flower.' John Carey, The Sunday Times 'Shakespeare was above all interested in the process of making sense of life... A.D. Nuttall's Shakespeare the Thinker is a marvellously wise and humane account of that mind at work. Always highly intelligent and effortlessly readable, it is a book that draws a firm line under the age of 'theory' in Shakespeare studies.' Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph '... wonderfully incisive and unstuffy look at the Bard's ideas.' The Sunday Times 'A.D. Nuttall is an attentive, intelligent, common-sense reader of the plays. He has a good ear and a subtle mind, and delights in words and the placement of words.' A.S. Byatt, The Guardian" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (April 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300119283
• ISBN-13: 978-0300119282
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #479,818 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 121 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Brilliance of Shakespeare, April 23, 2007

By	Kay Kirkpatrick (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In this delightful book, Shakespeare the Thinker, A. D. Nuttall seeks to defend the great playwright against those who view him as just a product of his time (a view that is a strong form of Historicism). I'm a huge fan of Stephen Greenblatt, who wrote the terrific biography Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, so I was glad that Nuttall did not disagree with the nuanced New Historicism of Greenblatt and Pierre Bourdieu. Rather he agrees with them that Shakespeare interacted or "negotiated" with his milieu in a complex way, and that the "causation [was] a two-way street." Nuttall goes even further, asserting that "although knowledge of the historical genesis can on occasion illuminate a given work, the greater part of the artistic achievement of our best playwright is _internally_ generated" and that "[i]t is the product, not of his time, but of his own, unresting, creative intelligence."

Shakespeare the Thinker takes the form of a well-integrated commentary on the plays--almost too well integrated, as it is hard to find discussion of a particular play just by thumbing through the book. Several plays are discussed in each chapter, which the skimpy table of contents doesn't mention (my only real gripe with the book). In a way, this is good, because much is gained by reading the book, or at least a chapter, straight through. For instance, Romeo and Juliet is followed by A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Nuttall examines some common themes and how interpretation depends on which play one believes was written first.

Nuttall's new book probably won't replace Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare After All, but will complement it. His synthesis provides a nice counterpoint to her fine-grained analysis; and his (sometimes elliptical) engagement with other critical works, to her careful culling of observations from such works.

Nuttall's writing is enjoyable, sprinkled with insightful references to modern pop culture--for example, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Wife Swap, Goodfellas, and Star Trek! He takes delight in language (and not just Shakespeare's), like when he's describing Katherina's response to Petruchio in the sun-moon exchange: "Turning his non-committal `say' into `know' exposes the lunacy of all this moonshine with solar clarity."

What shines through, most of all, is Nuttall's admiration of Shakespeare's intellect, encapsulated in his "law": "Whatever you think of, Shakespeare will have thought of first." Fellow admirers and students of the playwright will enjoy this excellent book.

Here is an expanded table of contents:
Ch. 1. To the Death of Marlowe
p. 25: Henry VI, parts 1-3
45: Richard III
56: The Comedy of Errors
63: Two Gentlemen of Verona
70: The Taming of the Shrew
Comparison of Shakespeare and Marlowe.

2. Learning Not to Run
87: Love's Labour's Lost (preceded by brief discussion of Titus Andronicus)
99: Romeo and Juliet
119: A Midsummer Night's Dream

3. The Major Histories
133: Richard II
150: Henry IV, parts 1 and 2; Henry V

4. Stoics and Sceptics
171: Julius Caesar
192: Hamlet
205: Troilus and Cressida

5. Strong Women, Weaker Men
221: Much Ado about Nothing
226: As You Like It
239: Twelfth Night
247: All's Well That Ends Well

6. The Moralist
255: The Merchant of Venice
262: Measure for Measure

7. How Character May Be Formed
277: Othello
284: Macbeth
290: Coriolanus

8. Shrinking and Growing
300: King Lear
312: Timon of Athens
321: Antony and Cleopatra

9. The Last Plays
333: Pericles and Cymbeline
345: The Winter's Tale
360: The Tempest

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lifetime of thinkng about Shakespeare summarized here, July 2, 2007

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Nuttall who recently passed away was considered by his colleagues one of the great Shakespeare scholars of our time. I have read at least two reviews praising this book in the highest terms possible.
Thus to my own surprise and slight disappointment I did not find myself enjoying the book as much as I had hoped.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The title suggests that we are going to understand far more deeply, and in something like a systematic way that which Shakespeare thought on the major issues of life.
This is not exactly what happens. Nuttall continually stresses Shakespeare's extraordinary intelligence but he never really develops lines of thought in a rich and complicated way. What he does is 'read the plays' often by seeing how they grow out of each other. He also in doing this includes a lot of extraneous information often supplying short - summaries of concepts which in many cases it might be assumed the reader of his book would have a knowledge of.
The writing itself somehow does not flow, and feels to me ' broken up' shifting attention needlessly in a less than coherent way.
But the writing does contain an enormous knowledge about Shakespeare. It too reveals an encylopediac knowledge of scholarly disputes which often to the general reader seem less than interesting.
Nuttall does make a strong case for his own conception of Shakespeare as an enormously intelligent thinker, who uses a variety of literary techniques to hide himself and his own position on the question at hand. Shakespeare's long- noted multi- sidedeness, his ability to think sympathetically into and out of the positions of diverse and contradictory characters is also amply illustrated. Nuttall has a wonderful feeling for the most remarkable passages in Shakespeare, and in fact for me the most enjoyable part of the work was confronting and reading again, for instance , what Nuttall considers the greatest speech in all Literature, Antony's funeral oration for Ceasar in 'Julius Caaesar' or Gaunt's sad lament on the decline of the England he has known.
I believe that there is much to learn for all lovers of Shakespeare in this work.
But the kind of new depth in understanding which came with reading the great critics like Coleridge and A.C. Bradley I , perhaps mistakenly, did not find in this work.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Companion, July 26, 2007

By	William Kowinski (Arcata, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What makes this book especially valuable to me is that A.D. Nuttall brought not only a lifetime of reading and discussion of the plays, but a lifetime of seeing them performed.

This book has already proven to be an excellent companion when considering a specific play (using the Index helped), especially before and after seeing a new production. The contexts and meanings of the histories so remote in time and place are especially useful.

Nuttall writes with fearless precision that honors the best academic standards, yet in an almost conversational style. He writes about nearly all the plays, and his approach is variously appropriate to that particular play as well as its relationship to the others, to its "type," to Shakespeare's times and what we know about him. He does not shrink from the issues which certain plays raise for 21st century audiences: the role of women within marriage in "The Taming of the Shrew", for example. Other commentators may suggest that Kate's submission is meant ironically, but Nuttall does not take that easy escape.

I'm not a Shakespeare scholar, and I don't agree with all of Nuttall's interpretations, but that's the joy of Shakespeare--the dialogue with the plays can be endless. For reference and for reading, I will be returning to "Shakespeare the Thinker."