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Indlæser... Shakespeare's Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects (udgave 2013)af Neil MacGregor
Work InformationShakespeare's Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects af Neil MacGregor
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Amazing! This is definitely my type of non-fiction. It's about Shakespeare, it paints a picture of Elizabethan and Jacobean life, and it is a quick, fun read. Through these objects MacGregor gives Shakespeare's plays a humanity that they sometimes lose because they are so symbolic. We start to remember that these plays were written by a real man who expressed the public's fears about the succession of the throne, pride on the triumphs of their queen, curiosity about the new scientific discoveries and new inventions, suspicions about but also acceptance of foreigners. Shakespeare may have written plays so transcendent they have lasted for 400 years and will easily last more, but he also navigated a world affected by plague and violence, assassination plots and war. MacGregor takes Shakespeare, the idea, and transforms him into Shakespeare, the man. ( ) A very light piece of social history centred on Shakespeare. The objects themselves are interesting, but the reader with any serious interest in the background of the plays would do better to look at James Shapiro's books on 1599 and 1608, and at Charles Nicholl's book on The Lodger Shakespeare; for background on the shift from Catholic to Protestant England, any of several books by Eamon Duffy; and similarly for the scientific and intellectual world of the Elizabethans. (To be fair, these are cited in the bibliography.) It reads very much like what it is -- a transcript of a series of radio shows done into prose by the author. It is nevertheless accessible and has the virtue of being in a position to interest the casual reader in following up on matters of interest. Shakespeare's restless world. An unexpected history in twenty objects does not offer much new knowledge of Shakespeare's time, but does present many known facts in a very fresh, new way. Not only does the archaeological evidence present a very compelling picture, the images created about Shakespeare's time, particularly his audience are very vivid and completely convincing. Naturally, we can all imagine the audience at the Globe Theatre as a lively company, eating and drinking while watching a play, but the find of a luxury fork to eat sweet meats forces the mental image much stronger. Likewise, we know from Shakespeare's own words that "All the world's a stage", but that his audience took this literally and would carry renaissance Italian-style swords and daggers, emerges from archaelogical finds of such items. Using 20 objects, Neil MacGregor illuminates the world of Shakespeare, giving body to mere ideas, and supporting evidence to theories about life and the theatre during Shakespeare's lifetime. Highly recommended!
... MacGregor is at his least convincing, though, when in his last chapter he tries to account for the long-term, worldwide popularity of Shakespeare's plays, a phenomenon that has had little if anything to do with what happened to be in the shops and on the quaysides while they were being written. In the end, for all its virtues as illustrated social history, Shakespeare's Restless World is an unsuccessful attempt to encumber Shakespeare's plays with a beguiling clutter of the historical bric-a-brac that they long ago left far behind. These things look very much at home in MacGregor's British Museum. But they would be much more to the point as sources of insight about Shakespeare if instead of expressing his restless creativity as a poetic dramatist he had gone into the more tangible and easily explained world of the antiques business. ...
In this brilliant work of historical reconstruction Neil MacGregor and his team at the British Museum, working together in a landmark collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, bring us twenty objects that capture the essence of Shakespeare's universe and the Tudor era of Elizabeth I. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)822.33Literature English & Old English literatures English drama Elizabethan 1558-1625 Shakespeare, William 1564–1616LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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