"Cymbeline" was one of Shakespeare's more popular plays during the eighteenth century, though critics including Samuel Johnson took issue with its complex plot: William Hazlitt and John Keats, however, numbered it among their favourite plays. By the early twentieth century, the play had lost favour. Lytton Strachey found it "difficult to resist the conclusion that [Shakespeare] was getting bored himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams." Harley Granville-Barker had similar views, saying that the play shows that Shakespeare was becoming a "wearied artist".
Criticism and interpretation
Cymbeline
Cymbeline | Criticism and interpretation
Lytton Strachey found it "difficult to resist the conclusion that was getting bored himself. Lytton Strachey found it "difficult to resist the conclusion that was getting bored himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams." Lytton Strachey found it "difficult to resist the conclusion that [Shakespeare] was getting bored himself. It  was one of Shakespeare's more popular plays during the eighteenth century, though critics including Samuel Johnson took issue with its complex plot.
who directed the first friday the 13th movie
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Sean S. Cunningham
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where was he born?
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New York City
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how did he start his career?
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Cunningham's first jobs after graduating from Stanford included managing theater companies such as New York's Lincoln Center as well as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
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where did this latter mentioned festival originate?
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Ashland, Oregon.
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who are some directors associated with this festival?
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Angus L. Bowmer, Jerry Turner and Henry Woronicz.
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who is the first mentioned director?
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He was the founder of the theatre mentioned.
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where is he from?
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Bellingham, Washington.
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what are some of his works?
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"Love's Labor's Lost" and "Cymbeline".
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how is the latter work criticised and interpreted?
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"Cymbeline" was one of Shakespeare's more popular plays during the eighteenth century, though critics including Samuel Johnson took issue with its complex plot: William Hazlitt and John Keats, however, numbered it among their favourite plays. By the early twentieth century, the play had lost favour. Lytton Strachey found it "difficult to resist the conclusion that [Shakespeare] was getting bored himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams." Harley Granville-Barker had similar views, saying that the play shows that Shakespeare was becoming a "wearied artist".
Cymbeline | Criticism and interpretation
Paradoxically Shaw offered his own alternative ending as challenge to producers to restore Shakespeare's original, which had been crudely cut in many productions. The act is written in blank verse, but C.B. Young notes that there is "a violent change of tone from the fairy-tale and romantic atmosphere of the original acts to the Shavian wit with a touch of cynicism, of the end." Bernard F. Dukore says that "Shaw's refinishing of "Cymbeline"'s last act reveals such features of Shavian comedy as his typical treatment of exposition; his focus, not on the resolution of a situation, but on the response of the characters to that resolution; and broad comedy with a realistic base."
Cymbeline Refinished | Critical views
After altering the ending, Shaw changed his mind about the bulk of the play, but remained convinced that the last act was a disaster, writing in 1946 that it was "one of the finest of Shakespeare's later plays" but "goes to pieces in the final act".
Cymbeline Refinished | Creation
(Here Hazlitt incorporates material from his essay "Shakespear's Female Characters", published in the "Examiner" on 28 July 1816.)
Characters of Shakespear's Plays | "Cymbeline"
The play was written "as a lark" after the committee of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre were looking for a way to market a staging of "Cymbeline" as part of a plan to fund a memorial to Shakespeare. The ending of "Cymbeline" had been ridiculed in the nineteenth century, but the play was just beginning to be reconsidered as an "experimental romance". Shaw was consciously engaging in a long tradition of rewriting Shakespeare for modern values and tastes. Shaw had expressed the standard Victorian view of the play in 1896 when he wrote that it was "stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order".
Cymbeline Refinished | Creation
Cymbeline , also known as The Tragedie of Cymbeline or Cymbeline, King of Britain, is a play by William Shakespeare set in Ancient Britain () and based on legends that formed part of the Matter of Britain concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobeline. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify "Cymbeline" as a romance or even a comedy. Like "Othello" and "The Winter's Tale", it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While the precise date of composition remains unknown, the play was certainly produced as early as 1611.
Cymbeline | Introduction
Cymbeline Refinished (1937) is a play-fragment by George Bernard Shaw in which he writes a new final act to Shakespeare's play "Cymbeline". The drama follows from Shaw's longstanding need to reimagine Shakespeare's work, epitomised by his play "Caesar and Cleopatra" and his late squib "Shakes versus Shav".
Cymbeline Refinished | Introduction
Eccles was a dramatic critic, and published editions of several of Shakespeare's plays, in which he transposed scenes that appeared to him to be wrongly placed. These plays were "Cymbeline", 1793; "King Lear", 1793; and "Merchant of Venice", 1805. They contained notes and illustrations, with critical and historical essays.
Ambrose Eccles | Works
As one of his favourites, Hazlitt places "Cymbeline" first in his discussions of Shakespeare's plays, according it extensive treatment. This includes his personal impressions of individual characters—as the book's title would lead us to expect—but also the kind of broader consideration for which he would not be credited for at least a century and a half. The play's "greatest charm is the character of Imogen", writes Hazlitt. He observes how, in justifying her actions, "she relies little on her personal charms" or a prudish "affected antipathy to vice" but rather "on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy." Shakespeare's presentation is full and rounded.
Characters of Shakespear's Plays | "Cymbeline"
"The Observer" judged that Gilbert had lost none of his merits, and that "wit abounds" and "is as spontaneous as ever: not forced or vulgarised, and his rhymes are always faultless." Some critics thought it a weakness that the work contained references to the earlier Gilbert and Sullivan operas, for example in the re-use of the character Captain Corcoran, and communications between King Paramount and the Mikado of Japan. "The Pall Mall Gazette" observed, "It is always a melancholy business when a writer is driven to imitate himself. "Utopia (limited)" is a mirthless travesty of the work with which his name is most generally associated.
Utopia, Limited | Reception and aftermath
Similarities between Cymbeline and historical accounts of the Roman Emperor Augustus have prompted critics to interpret the play as Shakespeare voicing support for the political motions of James I, who considered himself the "British Augustus." His political manoeuvres to unite Scotland with England and Wales as an empire mirror Augustus' "Pax Romana." The play reinforces the Jacobean idea that Britain is the successor to the civilised virtue of ancient Rome, portraying the parochialism and isolationism of Cloten and the Queen as villainous. Other critics have resisted the idea that "Cymbeline" endorses James I's ideas about national identity, pointing to several characters' conflicted constructions of their geographic identities.
Cymbeline | British identity
Some details of this alteration survived in productions at least until the middle of the century. William Hawkins revised the play again in 1759. His was among the last of the heavy revisions designed to bring the play in line with classical unities. He cut the Queen, reduced the action to two places (the court and a forest in Wales). The dirge "With fairest flowers..." was set to music by Thomas Arne. Nearer the end of the century, Henry Brooke wrote an adaptation which was apparently never staged. His version eliminates the brothers altogether as part of a notable enhancement of Posthumus' role in the play.
Cymbeline | Adaptations
His besieged novels which beleaguered his reputation, both "Eustace Chisholm & the Works" and "Narrow Rooms", had outraged the critics. They were merely restating in a modern context the psychology of Dionysus set forth in the accepted and acceptable play "The Bacchae" by Euripides. The outer texture of his work is realistic while the deeper and more elusive interior reveals a mythic, almost archetypal trail. Its great age is apparent; its history is clearly rooted in the classics and in the Old Testament. Thus his work can be very American but it is also universal.
James Purdy | Literary criticism with views on obstacles to wider acceptance
The play was adapted by Thomas d'Urfey as "The Injured Princess, or, the Fatal Wager"; this version was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, presumably by the united King's Company and Duke's Company, in 1682. The play changes some names and details, and adds a subplot, typical of the Restoration, in which a virtuous waiting-woman escapes the traps laid by Cloten. D'Urfey also changes Pisanio's character so that he at once believes in Imogen's (Eugenia, in D'Urfey's play) guilt. For his part, D'Urfey's Posthumus is ready to accept that his wife might have been untrue, as she is young and beautiful.
Cymbeline | Adaptations
Prior to operatic adaptations only incidental music was composed. The first operatic adaption seems to be composed by Edmond Missa in 1894, under the title "Dinah"; American composer Christopher Berg composed another one, of which scenes were performed in 2009.
Cymbeline | Stage adaptions
In March, poet Charles Churchill's "Rosciad" was published at his own expense, after several publishers refused it. The reckless and amusing satire described with disconcerting accuracy the faults of various actors on the London stage, and the poem immediately became popular, both for its personal character, vigour and raciness. No leading London actor, with the exception of David Garrick, had escaped censure, and in the "Apology" Garrick was clearly threatened. The actor deflected criticism by showing every possible civility to Churchill, who became a terror to the stage. Actor Thomas Davies, in a letter to Garrick, wrote that he blundered in the part of Cymbeline owing "to my accidentally seeing Mr.
1761 in poetry | Charles Churchill terrorises the London stage
The condescending racial nature of the musical's libretto would be unacceptable today, and so the work is unlikely to be revived.
The Cingalee | Critical reception
The plot of Cymbeline originally written and recorded by William Shakespeare is a play organized by the South Sudan Theatre Company.
Cymbeline (South Sudan Theatre Company) | Introduction
At least one critic has suggested that this work is "a cross between George Washington Cable's "The Grandissimes" (1880) and Anthony Hope's "Prisoner of Zenda" (1894)".
The Dance at Chevalier's | Literary significance and criticism
According to Kehler, significant 19th-century criticism began in 1808 with August Wilhelm Schlegel. Schlegel perceived unity in the multiple plot lines. He noted that the donkey's head is not a random transformation, but reflects Bottom's true nature. He identified the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe as a burlesque of the Athenian lovers. In 1817, William Hazlitt found the play to be better as a written work than a staged production. He found the work to be "a delightful fiction" but when staged, it is reduced to a dull pantomime. He concluded that poetry and the stage do not fit together.
A Midsummer Night's Dream | 19th century
On review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 31%, based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. On Metacritic, which uses a weighted score, the film has a rating of 54 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Cymbeline (film) | Reception
Among Scott's biographers, John Buchan thought it “prentice work, full of dubious echoes and conventional artifice”, S. Fowler Wright found the ballad unsatisfactory because the original story has too little variety of incident, and Edgar Johnson thought the poem too slow, its language sometimes over-luscious, and the intended horror of its climax unachieved. Recently the critic Terence Hoagwood complained that the poem is less vivid than “The Eve”, and its morality (like that of “Christabel” and “La Belle Dame sans Merci”) is misogynistic.
Glenfinlas (poem) | Criticism
Indeed a writer who could produce so much beauty in so little time, must possess powers that are capable of raising him to a distinguished place among the English poets." In the "British Critic", an anonymous reviewer argued in 1795 that "The sentiments ... in many instances are naturally, though boldly conceived, and expressed in language, which gives us reason to think the Author might, after some probation, become no unsuccessful wooer of the tragic muse."
The Fall of Robespierre | Critical response
Despite his nationalism Thomas could be hard on his fellow countrymen. Often his works read more as a criticism of Welshness than a celebration. He said there is a "lack of love for human beings" in his poetry. Other critics have been less harsh. Al Alvarez said, "He was wonderful, very pure, very bitter, but the bitterness was beautifully and very sparely rendered. He was completely authoritative, a very, very fine poet, completely off on his own, out of the loop but a real individual. It's not about being a major or minor poet. It's about getting a work absolutely right by your own standards and he did that wonderfully well."
R. S. Thomas | Works
"The New York Times" thought the score much livelier than that of "La petite mariée", and the story and characters more original. "The Pall Mall Gazette" took a different view of the originality of the plot, finding echoes not only of "Cymbeline", but of "Fra Diavolo", "Linda di Chamounix", and "Le Réveillon", the play on which "Die Fledermaus" was based.
La Marjolaine | Critical reception
And this is the gravest reproach one can make to a writer of opéra-bouffe music – plenty should be the matter with it." The critic of "The Theatre" disagreed with the positive assessments, calling the libretto "the worst that Mr. Gilbert ever wrote – worse even than "The Mountebanks", which was bad enough."
His Excellency (opera) | Critical reception
Clive Wilmer has written, further, that, "The anthologising of short purple passages, removed from their intended contexts [... is] something which Ruskin himself detested and which has bedevilled his reputation from the start." Nevertheless, some aspects of Ruskin's theory and criticism require further consideration.
John Ruskin | Theory and criticism
As Donald Greene claims, "its charm comes from youthful exuberance and violence with which the witty invective comes tumbling out" in lines like: Here malice, rapine, accident conspire, And now a rabble rages, now a fire; Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey; Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a female atheist talks you dead.
Samuel Johnson's literary criticism | Poetry
The satirical comment that one of the badly-acted worthies in the play "will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this" implies a reference to the tapestries. Lefranc also expanded on the similarities between Lloyd's poem about the worthies and the pageant in the play.
Derbyite theory of Shakespeare authorship | "Love's Labour's Lost"
It is recognized as being close to the original Shakespeare, although there are several differences. Changes included the shortening of Imogen's burial scene and the entire fifth act, including the removal of Posthumus' dream. Garrick's text was first performed in November of that year, starring Garrick himself as Posthumus. Several scholars have indicated that Garrick's Posthumus was much liked. Valerie Wayne notes that Garrick's changes made the play more nationalistic, representing a trend in perception of "Cymbeline" during that period. Garrick's version of "Cymbeline" would prove popular; it was staged a number of times over the next few decades. In the late eighteenth century, Cymbeline was performed in Jamaica.
Cymbeline | Performance history
In general, the critics felt that the play reflected Gilbert's 1860s style more than his more mature playwriting. The closing line, "Let us pray", added by Gilbert late in the play's construction, was widely believed to ruin the final scene and cause hilarity where drama was needed. Gilbert soon cut the line, but it was too late, and the play folded. Clement Scott's harsh review (especially of Neilson) led to the termination of Gilbert's relationship with Scott and threats of legal action. According to Barrington's 1908 memoir, the critics also felt that no woman would go to the lengths that the heroine does in the play to save her husband's father.
Brantinghame Hall | Criticism
Unlike other Shakespearean agents of onstage gender fluidity – Portia, Rosalind, Viola and Julia – Imogen is not afforded empowerment upon her transformation into Fidele. Instead, Imogen's power is inherited from her father and based upon the prospect of reproduction.
Cymbeline | Gender and sexuality
Critics have generally not been kind to Montagu's work, calling it "tedious," "worthless," and "unintelligible." (Even Montagu's contemporary Sir John Suckling, a fellow follower of the Queen, ridiculed it; in one of Suckling's poems, Apollo asks Montagu if he understands his own work.) Alfred Harbage, in his seminal study "Cavalier Drama," considered Montagu's masque typical of most of what is wrong with Cavalier drama. (Critics of Harbage have noted that he blamed Montagu for the faults in plays that were written and performed prior to "The Shepherd's Paradise".) Despite its faults, Montagu's work did inspire a brief re-invigoration of the pastoral form in later Caroline drama.
The Shepherd's Paradise | Critical responses
'Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him: 'Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied: 'Caesar did never wrong but with just cause;' and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." "Timber" or "Discoveries" John Milton, 1632: "On Shakespeare" was Milton's first published poem & appeared (anonymously) in the 2nd folio of plays by Shakespeare (1632) as "An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W.SHAKESPEARE".
Timeline of Shakespeare criticism | 17th century
The 'Song' from Act II, Scene 3 "(Hark, hark! the lark)" was set to music by Franz Schubert in 1826. Perhaps the most famous verses in the play come from the funeral song of Act IV, Scene 2, which begins: The first two lines are quoted by Virginia Woolf in "Mrs. Dalloway" by the two main characters Clarissa and Septimus Smith. The lines, which turn Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to the trauma of the First World War, are at once an elegiac dirge and a profoundly dignified declaration of endurance. The song provides a major organisational motif for the novel. The final couplet also appears in the Anton Myrer novel, "The Last Convertible".
Cymbeline | Cultural references
George Speaight believed that the play was "an amusing but coarse burlesque of the old-fashioned heroic drama". Thomas Clearly characterised the play as "A lukewarm burlesque of Ambrose Phillips' "Distressed Mother"". Robert Hume believe that "The travesty is genuinely brilliant in both conception and details, and there is much to relish here if one is not automatically disgusted by a play whose characters are a madam, her porter, her whores, and their customers." The Battestins declare that "Funny as it was [...] "The Covent-Garden Tragedy" was too ribald for the tastes of an audience accustomed to the genteel comedies of Cibber, or, nearer the mark, the more refined merriment of Gay's 'Newgate Pastoral'."
The Covent-Garden Tragedy | Critical response
The first recorded production of "Cymbeline", as noted by Simon Forman, was in April 1611. It was first published in the "First Folio" in 1623. When "Cymbeline" was actually written cannot be precisely dated. The Yale edition suggests a collaborator had a hand in the authorship, and some scenes (e.g., Act III scene 7 and Act V scene 2) may strike the reader as particularly un-Shakespearean when compared with others. The play shares notable similarities in language, situation, and plot with Beaumont and Fletcher's tragicomedy "Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding" (). Both plays concern themselves with a princess who, after disobeying her father in order to marry a lowly lover, is wrongly accused of infidelity and thus ordered to be murdered, before escaping and having her faithfulness proven.
Cymbeline | Date and text
Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. Those that have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947, "Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the English disputes about Dylan Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling obscure writer who can be enjoyed without understanding." Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading "Eighteen Poems", "The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow with one small book as Swinburne had with "Poems and Ballads"." Philip Larkin in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that "no one can 'stick words into us like pins'...
Dylan Thomas | Critical reception
I was wondering whether he was awake all the time." Many of the critics complained that the libretto was derivative, primarily of "She Stoops to Conquer." Bernard Shaw, seeing the piece well into its long run, wrote of his pity for the cast: "Here are several young persons doomed to spend the flower of their years in mechanically repeating the silliest libretto in modern theatrical literature, set to music which, pretty as it is, must pall somewhat on the seven hundred and eighty-eighth performance... I did not wait for the third act. My companion had all but fallen into the pit from sleep and heaviness of spirit combined...
Dorothy (opera) | Critical reception
Dorothea Kehler has attempted to trace the criticism of the work through the centuries. The earliest such piece of criticism that she found was a 1662 entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys. He found the play to be "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life". He did, however, admit that it had "some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure". The next critic known to comment on the play was John Dryden, writing in 1677. He was preoccupied with the question of whether fairies should be depicted in theatrical plays, since they did not exist.
A Midsummer Night's Dream | 17th century
After the 1611 performance mentioned by Simon Forman, there is no record of production until 1634, when the play was revived at court for Charles I and Henrietta Maria. The Caroline production was noted as being "well likte by the kinge." In 1728 John Rich staged the play with his company at Lincoln's Inn Fields, with emphasis placed on the spectacle of the production rather than the text of the play. Theophilus Cibber revived Shakespeare's text in 1744 with a performance at the Haymarket. There is evidence that Cibber put on another performance in 1746, and another in 1758. In 1761, David Garrick edited a new version of the text.
Cymbeline | Performance history
He deprecated criticism by showing every possible civility to Churchill, who became a terror to the actors. Thomas Davies wrote to Garrick attributing his blundering in the part of Cymbeline "to my accidentally seeing Mr Churchill in the pit, it rendering me confused and unmindful of my business." Churchill's satire made him many enemies, and brought reprisals. In "Night, an Epistle to Robert Lloyd" (1761), he answered the attacks made on him, offering by way of defense the argument that any faults were better than hypocrisy. His scandalous conduct brought down the censure of the dean of Westminster, and in 1763 the protests of his parishioners led him to resign his offices, and he was free to wear his blue coat with metal buttons and much gold lace without remonstrance from the dean.
Charles Churchill (satirist) | Career as Satirist
Oliver's sculptures are admired for their tactile nature, their aesthetics, and the technical skills demonstrated in their production. Particular works have been singled out for praise. A writer reviewing "Vine" in the Sydney Hilton admired how it "curls like a fairy tale beanstalk up towards the ceiling as though empowered by the sunlight streaming in from a large open space adjacent". Journalist Catherine Keenan's 2005 description of how the towering sculpture demonstrated both aesthetic and production values are typical of comments about Oliver's work:
Bronwyn Oliver | Themes and critical reception
Hughes, according to Adam Gopnik, was drawn to work that was rough-hewn, "craft attempted with passion." Hughes's critical prose, vivid in both praise and indignation, has been compared to that of George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift and William Shakespeare. "His prose", according to a colleague, "was lithe, muscular and fast as a bunch of fives. He was incapable of writing the jargon of the art world, and consequently was treated by its mandarins with fear and loathing." In different moods he could write that "Schnabel’s work is to painting what Stallone’s is to acting: a lurching display of oily pectorals," as well as conclude that Antoine Watteau "was a connoisseur of the unplucked string, the immobility before the dance, the moment that falls between departure and nostalgia."
Robert Hughes (critic) | Assessment
"The Pall Mall Gazette" thought the libretto so good that it "places Mr Gilbert so very far in advance of any living English librettist." The paper's critic was more emphatic about the score than his "Times" colleague, saying, "Mr Cellier's portion of the work is disappointing," adding that the composer never rose in this piece "to within measurable distance of his predecessor. ... If we judge the late Alfred Cellier's score by a somewhat high standard it is all Sir Arthur Sullivan's fault." "The Era" also noted Gilbert's reuse of old ideas, but asked, "who would wish Mr Gilbert to adopt a new style?" The paper thought equally well of the score, rating it as highly as Cellier's best-known piece, "Dorothy".
The Mountebanks | Critical reception
While the feeling persists that there is something there which is profoundly important, the challenge to elucidate it proves irresistible." However, Lilian Furst, in 1969, countered Yarlott to argue that, "T. S. Eliot's objection to the exaggerated repute of the surrealist "Kubla Khan" is not unjustified. Moreover, the customary criticism of Coleridge as a cerebral poet would seem to be borne out by those poems such as "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison" or "The Pains of Sleep", which tend more towards a direct statement than an imaginative presentation of personal dilemma." During the 1940s and 1950s, critics focused on the technique of the poem and how it relates to the meaning.
Kubla Khan | Modern criticism
In summarising their responses, Edward Owen Marsh included such quotes as "a slimy, decadent, demoralised and singularly repulsive exhibit," "the ugliest and most nauseating play I have ever seen," "an evening which is one long wallow of unedifying lechery," "with all the aid of Anouilh's masterly but evilly misdirected sense of theatre, sentiment is turned to gruesome obscenity" and "as distasteful and offensive a play as ever saw a stage."
Ardèle ou la Marguerite | British productions
Eliot wrote that due to their fixation on Hamlet rather than the play as a whole, the type of criticism that Coleridge and Goethe produced is "the most misleading kind possible". Eliot follows this by praising J.M. Robertson and Elmer Edgar Stoll for publishing critiques that focus on the larger scope of the play. He argues that a creative work cannot be interpreted, only criticized according to a standard or in comparison to another work. The function of interpretation in this argument is to make the reader aware of relevant historical information that they are not assumed to know. Eliot credits Robertson in particular for his historical interpretation of "Hamlet".
Hamlet and His Problems | Content
The work continuously goes after the literature of the east coast and seems to attack the works of revered, past authors and artists. The critics of Garland's work were just as harsh. Many critics demeaned Garland's writing abilities and claimed his ideas were ridiculous, as he seems to state that simply writing of local color would produce works far greater than those of the established greats of the east coast. Despite William Dean Howells' encouraging words and support of Garland's essays, Garland became increasingly offended by his critics and eventually ceased to acknowledge and listen to the reviews.
Crumbling Idols | Critical reception
Many attempts were made to draw him out, until a lady ventured to ask Are you musical, Mr. Barrie?' The answer came gloomily: 'No, I’m not. I can never tell one tune from another. I dislike music.' After a moment’s pause, in the same subdued tone: 'I was musical critic on The _____ for several years.
Rosaline Masson | Literary associations
He was known to admire the works of Giacomo Puccini, Marcel Proust and Geoffrey Hill.
Eric Griffiths (critic) | Works
In his poem on Shakespeare, Jonson mentions "Marlowe's mighty line", a phrase critics have accepted as just, as they have also Jonson's claim that Shakespeare surpassed it. But while Shakespeare is commonly seen to have captured a far greater range of emotions than his contemporary, Marlowe retains a significant place as the first genius of blank verse in English drama.
Tamburlaine | Critical reception
The subplot of Belarius and the lost princes was inspired by the story of Bomelio, an exiled nobleman in "The Rare Triumphs" who is later revealed to be the protagonist's father.
Cymbeline | Sources
Ill-health had plagued him throughout his life, and in 1886 he became seriously ill. His edition of "Cymbeline" had just come out when he died on 26 September 1886.
Clement Mansfield Ingleby | Death
In this way the "tzolk'in" and "haab'" are continuously cross-patterned with each other in an ongoing matrix, but fully synchronize only once in 52 years.
José Argüelles | Criticism
John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960s when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, that the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place. Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970s and has become "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism", his work failing to fit standard narratives and thus being ignored rather than studied.
Dylan Thomas | Critical reception
The note then points out that Wordsworth's 1793 collection of poems was received by critics harshly, and that this criticism allowed the poet to come to Coleridge's attention: "A gentleman near Bristol makes it an invariable rule to purchase every work that is violently abused by the Reviewers: and with a very few exceptions I never saw a more judicious selection of recent Compositions, both in prose and verse."
Lines Written at Shurton Bars | Themes
The aesthete Gilbert Gunn insists that's so full of tired clichės "as old and stale as a fried fish shop on a winter morning" that it must be by Harley Granville-Barker. Another critic, Vaughan, is convinced that only Arthur Pinero could have written it, since it betrays "the author's offensive habit of saying silly things that have no real sense in them when you come to examine them". Flawner Bannal, a critic from a tabloid, thinks it was written by Bernard Shaw, as the paradoxical statements about the English by the French character are a dead giveaway. Vaughan dismisses this because the characters are too believable: "That proves it's not by Shaw, because all Shaw's characters are himself: mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw." One critic, Trotter, realises the truth.
Fanny's First Play | Plot
"An Essay on Criticism" was famously and fiercely attacked by John Dennis, who is mentioned mockingly in the work. Consequently, Dennis also appears in Pope's later satire, "The Dunciad". Thomas Rymer, and Jonathan Swift were among other critics: Rymer, who had the strongest critique said, "till of late years England was as free from critics as it is from wolves...they who are least acquainted with the game are aptest to bark at everything that comes in their way."; Swift's statement concentrated on critics who were damned "as barbarous as a judge who should take up a resolution to hang all men that came before him upon trial." Part II of "An Essay on Criticism" includes a famous couplet: This is in reference to the spring in the Pierian Mountains in Macedonia, sacred to the Muses.
An Essay on Criticism | Critical reception
The earliest known critic of the play was diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life." Poet John Dryden wrote 10 years later in praise of the play and its comic character Mercutio: "Shakespear show'd the best of his skill in his "Mercutio", and he said himself, that he was forc'd to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed by him." Criticism of the play in the 18th century was less sparse but no less divided. Publisher Nicholas Rowe was the first critic to ponder the theme of the play, which he saw as the just punishment of the two feuding families.
Romeo and Juliet | Critical history
An anonymous review in the November 1794 "Critical Review" argued that the subject matter would have been appropriate for a tragedy but the events happened too soon to allow for it to be dealt with in an appropriate manner. The reviewer also commented on the haste of the work and that it "must, therefore, not be supposed to smell very strongly of the lamp. However, the review does praise aspects of the poem, as the author writes, "By these free remarks, we mean not to under-rate Mr. Coleridge's historical drama. It affords ample testimony, that the writer is a genuine votary of the Muse, and several parts of it will afford much pleasure to those who can relish the beauties of poetry.
The Fall of Robespierre | Critical response
Lucas's impatience with the "obscurantism" and coterie-appeal of much modern poetry made him in the interwar years one of the foremost opponents of the new schools. "As for 'profundity'," he wrote, "it is not uncommonly found also in dry wells; which may likewise contain little but obscurity and rubbish." He opposed also what he saw as the narrow dogmatism of the New Critics, those "tight-lipped Calvins of art", as he called them, of "Criterion" and "Scrutiny". Discussions of I. A. Richards's criticism appear in his essay 'English Literature' in the volume "University Studies: Cambridge 1933" and in Chapter 4 of his "Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal" (1936), and of Eliot's in the 1929 essay 'Modern Criticism', reprinted in his "Studies French and English" (1934).
F. L. Lucas | Controversy
Why the poem is alone sufficient to redeem the character of the age we live in from the imputation of degenerating in Poetry [...] The subject is well chosen. It opens well [...] On the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton." (A few days later, though, in a June 13, 1796 letter to Coleridge, after reading his opinion of the work, Lamb tempered his praise: "Perhaps I had estimated Southey's merits too much by number, weight, and measure.") Coleridge, in a 31 December 1796 letter to John Thelwall, admitted, "I entirely accord with your opinion of Southey's "Joan" [...] the poem tho' it frequently reach the "sentimental", does not display, the "poetical", "Sublime".
Joan of Arc (poem) | Critical reception
Caffrey, in his introduction to "Recovecos/Crevices", praised the book: "In his rhythmic verse the script artist strikes a chord that reverberates throughout us, transforming the mechanistic words into vibrant song and our stasis into action. Today’s brain science has discovered what the psalmists, poets and ancient musicians could only know by intuition: that music, melody or verse stimulate us to movement and emotion. We become unstuck. Our losing streak ends. Whether in grief or joy, our prayers become that green and fruitful oasis."
Gilbert Luis R. Centina III | Literary works and criticisms
Critical opinion was not kind to "Agathocle". La Harpe described it as ‘a most imperfect sketch’ with lifeless and colourless characters which the author might have been able to work up into a full play if he had tackled the subject earlier before his strength failed him. The Kehl edition of Voltaire's works also emphasised that the work was little more than an outline, of value mainly because it showed how Voltaire worked up a dramatic idea into a final performance text.
Agathocle | Contemporary reception
In the late 1890s he published a pamphlet setting forth the scope and negative character of "the Higher Criticism," which drew from William Gladstone an acknowledgment of its value. He devoted much time to the study of the Great and Little Massora in Buxtorf's "Rabbinical Bible". He was a diligent student of Hebrew, and took an interest in the controversies raised by the Higher criticism. While he was a member of the Baptist denomination, he wrote several pieces in prose and verse for "Zion's Trumpet", and in 1845 he was a chief contributor to the "Colchester Christian Magazine", if not editor of it.
Cyprian Thomas Rust | Works
According to Allen, his play "The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois" is in fact a sustained criticism of "Hamlet". Oxford wrote "Troilus and Cressida" in response, an attack on Chapman's translations of Homer, in which Chapman is caricatured as Thersites.
Percy Allen (writer) | Oxfordian works
Critics have faulted Beddoes as a dramatist. According to Arthur Symons, "of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation." His plots are convoluted, and such was his obsession with the questions posed by death that his characters lack individuation; they all struggle with the same ideas that vexed Beddoes. But his poetry is "full of thought and richness of diction", in the words of John William Cousin, who praised Beddoes' short pieces such as "If thou wilt ease thine heart" (from "Death's Jest-Book", Act II) and "If there were dreams to sell" ("Dream-Pedlary") as "masterpieces of intense feeling exquisitely expressed".
Thomas Lovell Beddoes | Evaluation
For most of his life Francklin wrote for the press and for the stage. Two of his plays were successful through good acting. He brought out in 1757 a periodical paper of his own composition entitled "The Centinel", and he was one of the contributors to Tobias Smollett's "Critical Review". Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds were among his friends, and through their influence he became chaplain to the Royal Academy on its foundation, and on Oliver Goldsmith's death in 1774 succeeded to the professorship of ancient history. With other literary men he was unpopular. One of his victims in the "Critical Review" was Arthur Murphy, who solaced his feelings of indignation in "A Poetical Epistle to Samuel Johnson, A.M." Charles Churchill, in the "Rosciad", sneeringly says that 'he sicken'd at all triumphs but his own.' Francklin's most solid works consisted of translations and tragedies.
Thomas Francklin | Work
It is a criticism of Moore that he "wrote too much and catered too deliberately to his audiences". In his lyrics there is a bathos that speaks both to a love of recitation and to an abiding sense of tragedy that is perhaps lost on the modern reader. Oft, in the stilly night, Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood’s years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm’d and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken!... When I remember all The friends, so link’d together, I’ve seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed!...
Thomas Moore | Death
As with any contributor to the Western Canon, Racine has been subjected to many generations of literary criticism. His works have evoked in audiences and critics a wide range of responses, ranging from reverence to revulsion. In his book "Racine: A Study," Philip Butler of the University of Wisconsin broke the main criticisms of Racine down by century to best portray the almost constantly shifting perception of the playwright and his works.
Jean Racine | Criticism
In spite of these arguments, most editions of the play have continued to use the name Imogen, and it has been suggested that "Imogen" may be intended to evoke the figure of "Innogen" but that the slight change in name is deliberate, as there are other characters in the play whose names appear to be slight variants of historical or pseudo-historical figures. However the prophecy interpretation at the end appears to support an -m- based name, rather than -nn- based one. Milford Haven is not known to have been used during the period (early 1st century AD) in which "Cymbeline" is set, and it is not known why Shakespeare used it in the play.
Cymbeline | Date and text
Readers and playgoers have often found him an unsympathetic character, as his caustic pride is strangely, almost delicately balanced at times by a reluctance to be praised by his compatriots and an unwillingness to exploit and slander for political gain. His dislike of being praised might be seen as an expression of his pride; all he cares about is his own self-image, whereas acceptance of praise might imply that his value is affected by others' opinion of him. The play is less frequently produced than the other tragedies of the later period, and is not so universally regarded as great.
Coriolanus | Analysis and criticism
S. Eliot suggested an explanation for the play's unpopularity and neglect:His verse has none of the dramatic qualities; it is correct, but correctness in such isolation becomes itself a fault. The play would be more readable to-day, if he had written it in rhyme; the whole would be more easily declaimed, and the good things more easily remembered; it would lose none of its excellence of structure, thought, vocabulary and figures of speech. What would be mellifluous in rhyme, is merely monotonous without it. F.R. Leavis argued that Boswell's criticisms of the play – "that [Johnson] has no sense of the theatre, and worse, cannot present or conceive his themes dramatically" – were "obvious", and that "Irene" was a failure because Johnson's best poetry (such as "The Vanity of Human Wishes") was "a poetry of statement, exposition and reflection: nothing could be remoter from the Shakespearean use of language [...] than the Johnsonian." Like Eliot, Leavis suggested that the play might have been better if Johnson had not been determined to write it in blank verse:He is clearly determined that "his" verse shall not be changed into the 'periods of a declaimer', and that it shall not be said that the audience cannot easily perceive 'where the lines end or begin' (see his remarks on blank-verse in the "Life of Milton").
Irene (play) | Critical response
The play consists of actors and different settings as it focuses on a war ravaged people and seeks to reinvent the course of the nation for a better development through arts and literature.
Cymbeline (South Sudan Theatre Company) | Overview
Christine Barbaux was an "effective and unaffectedly childlike" "en travesti" Yniold, and there was no cause for complaint either about Nadine Denize's Geneviève. The only soloist who was significantly disappointing was Ruggero Raimondi. It was not his fault that his Arkel sounded too much like Pascal Thomas's physician in their scene at Mélisande's death bed, but he should have defined the King's character more clearly, and he should have been more conscientious in observing Debussy's meticulously crafted speech rhythms (a sin of which some of his colleagues were guilty too, although not to the same extent). Conducting a "uniquely subtle score" in which "understatement [was] customary", Herbert von Karajan presented an interpretation that was "decidedly unorthodox" to the point of blatantly defying some of the dynamics that Debussy had stipulated.
Pelléas et Mélisande (Herbert von Karajan recording) | Critical reception
Squires wrote: "The synergy of Allen Tate's poetry, fiction, and essays has had the aim of applying pressure—think of the embossed, bitterly stressed lines, his textured metaphors—until it brings up before our eyes a blanched parody of the human figure, which is our evil, the world's evil, so that we begin to long for God. That has seemed to him a worthwhile task to perform for modern man threatened by such fatal narcissism, such autotelic pride that he is in danger of disappearing into a glassy fantasy of his own concoction. We shall need his help for a long time to come.”
James Radcliffe Squires | Literary criticism
Critic William Caldwell Roscoe, answering William Hazlitt's question of why Crabbe hadn't in fact written prose rather than verse said "have you ever read Crabbe's prose? Look at his letters, especially the later ones, look at the correct but lifeless expression of his dedications and prefaces – then look at his verse, and you will see how much he has exceeded 'the minimum requirement of good poetry'." The critic F. L. Lucas summed up Crabbe's qualities: "naïve, yet shrewd; straightforward, yet sardonic; blunt, yet tender; quiet, yet passionate; realistic, yet romantic." Crabbe, who is seen as a complicated poet, has been and often still is dismissed as too narrow in his interests and in his way of responding to them in his poetry.
George Crabbe | Criticism
To compare him to other Renaissance playwrights at all, even for the purpose of finding him superior, began to seem irreverent. Shakespeare was rather to be studied without any involvement of the critical faculty, to be addressed or apostrophised—almost prayed to—by his worshippers, as in Thomas De Quincey's classic essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in "Macbeth"" (1823): "O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties...".
Reputation of William Shakespeare | Shakespeare in criticism
I am not motivated to make the effort to carefully read what they are writing, because I am very unclear about what is to be gained by doing so. If anyone could spell out straightforwardly what I might be able to understand by thinking of the world in the language of timelessness, I’d be very happy to re-orient my attitude and take these works seriously.
Julian Barbour | Criticism of Barbour's ideas
Walkley began his literary career as a reviewer of books in weekly and monthly periodicals. He turned to theatrical reviewing, inspired by the work of his friend the theatre critic William Archer. He contributed general articles to a weekly review, "The Speaker" during the 1880 and 1890s, and when the London evening newspaper "The Star" was founded in January 1888 he was appointed its theatre critic. One of his colleagues was Bernard Shaw who wrote music criticism under the pen name "Corno di Bassetto". On one occasion Walkley filled in for Shaw and signed himself "Bono di Corsetto", an early instance of a certain frivolous side to his writing – something that made many readers underestimate his fundamental seriousness.
Arthur Bingham Walkley | Writer and critic
Many scholars find much unfinished about this play including unexplained plot developments, characters who appear unexplained and say little, prose sections that a polished version would have in verse (although close analysis would show this to be almost exclusively in the lines of Apemantus, and probably an intentional character trait), and the two epitaphs, one of which doubtless would have been cancelled in the final version. However, similar duplications appear in "Julius Caesar" and "Love's Labour's Lost" and are generally thought to be examples of two versions being printed when only one was ultimately used in production, which could easily be the case here.
Timon of Athens | Analysis and criticism
Many works of Jonathan Swift were criticized including his book "Gulliver's Travels", which one critic described as "the detestable story of the Yahoos".
Literary criticism | Enlightenment criticism
But for all its author's circumspection, the poem soon became a critical (and political) target. The ambitious natural history lessons in "Les Trois Règnes de la Nature" (1808) also left English reviewers sceptical. The "Monthly Review" found it lacking in organisation, invention, and sometimes even sense. The "Edinburgh Review" dismissed the poet as "a hackneyed mechanist of verses" and found in his 'Three Kingdoms of Nature' only "a curious medley of plagiarisms" in a work reminiscent of nothing so much as the popularised science in Erasmus Darwin’s "The Loves of the Plants". The reviewer there had found everything that Delille had published since 1800 unsatisfactory.
Jacques Delille | Later works
Machado de Assis, 1896: "One day, when there is no more British Empire or North-American Republic, there will be Shakespeare; when we stop speaking English, we will speak Shakespeare." Charles Lamb, 1811: "We talk of Shakespeare's admirable observation of life, when we should feel, that not from a petty inquisition into those cheap and every-day characters which surrounded him, as they surround us, but from his own mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson's, the very 'sphere of humanity' he fetched those images of virtue and of knowledge, of which every one of us recognizing a part, think we comprehend in our natures the whole; and often mistake the powers which he positively creates in us, for nothing more than indigenous faculties of our own minds, which only waited the application of corresponding virtues in him to return a full and clear echo of the same." "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare" Thomas de Quincey, 1823: "O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert—but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!" "On the Knocking at the Gate in "Macbeth"".
Timeline of Shakespeare criticism | 19th century
He also criticises Alonso's use of the word "mature". He points out the essential inconsistency in saying that the poet was young and then expecting maturity in his early work. He then states that for him the key factor is not whether a poem is mature or not but whether it has artistic merit. He goes on to say that, even after the passage of time, he still prefers some of his earlier poems to certain poems written later. The major complaint he raises is that this critique is just a lazy repetition of the initial critical reaction in 1927.
Luis Cernuda | Dámaso Alonso
Oliver Taplin in his critique of the play mentions that the predominantly Greek audience gave the play a mixed review because they may have been "defeated by the characteristic verbal and dialectal virtuosity" of Harrison. He goes on to write that the play may have also been too complex thus not following Harrison's "admirable maxim" that: "the play should be self-sufficiently accessible, without requiring any homework or footnotes". Lorna Hardwick mentions that in his play Harrison speaks about the power of art in "redeeming destruction":
The Labourers of Herakles | Reception and analysis
The severity, if any, is lost in the general fidelity of the delineations." Lowell's friends objected to the intense criticism of Fuller, specifically William Wetmore Story and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Edgar Allan Poe reviewed the work in the "Southern Literary Messenger" and called it "'loose'—ill-conceived and feebly executed, as well in detail as in general... we confess some surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a performance". His final judgment was that the work was not successful: "no failure was ever more complete or more pitiable". Ultimately, "A Fable for Critics" earned Lowell notoriety as a poet, once his name was revealed, though he did not significantly profit from its publication.
A Fable for Critics | Critical response
Though the play is consistently one of Shakespeare's most frequently performed comedies, scholars have long disputed over its merits. George Bernard Shaw complained that "As You Like It" is lacking in the high artistry of which Shakespeare was capable. Shaw liked to think that Shakespeare wrote the play as a mere crowdpleaser, and signalled his own middling opinion of the work by calling it "As You Like It"—as if the playwright did not agree. Tolstoy objected to the immorality of the characters and Touchstone's constant clowning. Other critics have found great literary value in the work. Harold Bloom has written that Rosalind is among Shakespeare's greatest and most fully realised female characters.
As You Like It | Analysis and criticism
So strong are these evidences, and so directly put, that it is impossible to dissociate them from a personal application." A reviewer in "The Age" was less than impressed: "It is to be feared that even the most ardent of Mr. Lawson's admirers will look upon this book of verse as a disappointment. It represents the results of bis five years' work since he returned from England in 1900 — years that for various reasons must be considered the blackest of his life — and the unevenness of that work is almost painful to contemplate now that we have it in bulk.
When I Was King and Other Verses | Critical reception
Southey intended "Madoc" to rival the works of Homer, and Coleridge believed that the poem would be better than the "Aeneid". However, "Madoc" received mixed reviews from critics; while one critic believed it was comparable to John Milton's "Paradise Lost", another felt that it was unreadable. In letter written by William Wordsworth on 3 June 1805, he claimed that he was "highly pleased with it; it abounds in beautiful pictures and descriptions happily introduced, and there is an animation diffused through the whole story though it cannot perhaps be said that any of the characters interest you much, except perhaps young Llewllyn whose situation is highly interesting, and he appears to me the best conceived and sustained character in the piece [...] The Poem fails in the highest gifts of the poet's mind Imagination in the true sense of the word, and knowledge of human Nature and the human heart.
Madoc (poem) | Reception
“If criticism is to be more than an academic diversion, a critic should not be content to play about inside a man’s work as though it was a glass bowl suspended in a vacuum. A man’s work expresses his character and each should be used to illumine the other.”
Hugh Kingsmill | Quotations
Syme & Scott Douglas's responses added. 1] "I dont think the Above will do Unless it get a sound harrowing." 2) "Nanie is an Excellent song Indeed Capital -- but the last stanza is shameful. It must be published." Scott Douglass comments "W.R. is an ignorant critic." 3) "Your fathers & Mr Muirs is Worth Publishing of the forgoing Epitaphs but I think you had better supress the rest." Symes comments "This is the labour of an inexperienced raw moralist." 4) "this fragment well deserves a place in your Coliction." 5) "this Would Look not amiss in my Opinion." 6) "to serious." 7) "I Will not Dispence with this it is so Excellent, change the name of Tibbie to some other if it will not do." Syme comments "orthographic judge" 8) "This will not do." 9) "I dont Like the Above but Perhaps I am wrong." 10) "Maily must appear." 11) "the Above is exceeding pretty." 12) "The Lordly Cassils pride" is a line you must alter.
Robert Burns's Commonplace Book 1783-1785 | The comments made by W.R
An article in late 19th-century "The University Magazine and Free Review" attributed the failure of Coleridge's early poetry to his education. Boyer did teach the students literature and emphasised simplicity within poetry as Coleridge's account of Boyer's correcting of "Dura Navis". However, "It was still the day of mechanical scansion and didactic appreciation" and the education "did not then include Spenser; and not from Boyer would a pupil learn the magic of Milton's and Shakespere's rhythms." A few years later, Walter De la Mare said he believed that the "best line" in the poem "would have been ruined had Coleridge taken" the advice of his schoolmaster.
Dura Navis | Critical response
Several critics have compared them to The xx, The Sundays and The Turtles, however their style is difficult to define.
Arthur Beatrice | Musical style
Pinafore", parodying the conspirators' choruses in Verdi's "Il trovatore" and "Rigoletto". The mock-jingoistic "He Is an Englishman" in "H.M.S. Pinafore" and choral passages in "The Zoo" satirise patriotic British tunes such as Arne's "Rule, Britannia!". The chorus "With Catlike Tread" from "The Pirates" parodies Verdi's "Anvil Chorus" from "Il trovatore".
Arthur Sullivan | Musical quotations and parodies
We see her beauty as observed by others (as by the villain Iachimo), but more often we see her from the inside, and are touched when, after endless nights of crying herself awake over the loss of Posthumus, she is outraged to learn (as she is falsely informed) that Some Jay of Italy [...] hath betrayed him. And we witness a moment in the development of her character, as her resolve to disguise herself to seek out Posthumus grows firmer. "Of all Shakespear's women she is perhaps the most tender and most artless." Hazlitt broadens the scope of these reflections into a consideration of "Shakespear's heroines" in general, writing, "No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespear".
Characters of Shakespear's Plays | "Cymbeline"
The critics praised the players but thought little of the play. Ivor Brown in "The Manchester Guardian" commented that to call it an Aldwych "farce" was a misnomer, and there was a consensus that the piece was too slow and too weak. "The Illustrated London News" observed, "The Aldwych authors have taught us to expect a laugh in every line, but Mr. H. F. Maltby, probably ill at ease in adapting this play from the French, was not his usual witty self." Brown thought that the weakness of the story "seems to inhibit the natural vitality of the Aldwych team."
Fifty-Fifty (play) | Critical reception
Dowden's first book, "Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art" (1875), resulted from a revision of a course of lectures, and made him widely known as a critic: translations appeared in German and Russian; his "Poems" (1876) went into a second edition. His "Shakespeare Primer" (1877) was translated into Italian and German. In 1878 the Royal Irish Academy awarded him the Cunningham gold medal "for his literary writings, especially in the field of Shakespearian criticism." Later works by him in this field included an edition of "The Sonnets of William Shakespeare" (1881), "Passionate Pilgrim" (1883), "Introduction to Shakespeare" (1893), "Hamlet" (1899), "Romeo and Juliet" (1900), "Cymbeline" (1903), and an article entitled "Shakespeare as a Man of Science" (in the "National Review", July 1902), which criticized T.
Edward Dowden | Biography
Though lyrical, they are logically off and quite cliché, being the overused themes of seasonal change, sunset, and burn. In fact, the only notably original line is the one concerning leaves, stating that "when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang, upon those boughs". Logic would require that few should proceed none; in fact, if the boughs were bare, no leaves would hang. Bernhard argues that Shakespeare did this on purpose, evoking sympathy from the reader as they "wish to nurse and cherish what little is left", taking him through the logic of pathos – ruefulness, to resignation, to sympathy.
Sonnet 73 | Interpretation and criticism