Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Shakespeare, Dramatic Poetry and Value : Routledge Studies in Shakespeare - MacDonald P. Jackson

Shakespeare, Dramatic Poetry and Value

By: MacDonald P. Jackson

Paperback | 21 May 2026 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $83.99

$77.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $19.44 with

 or 

Ships in 3 to 5 business days

This book redirects attention to a truth largely ignored by recent criticism—that Shakespeare's excellence as a playwright is inextricable from his excellence as a poet. It explores the diverse means by which Shakespeare's poetry enriches his drama, illustrating how particular words in a particular order render his dialogue distinctive and create supreme literary and dramatic value. By examining many passages, long and short and from a variety of Shakespeare's plays—comedies, histories, tragedies, later plays—the author aids understanding of the poetic effects that make Shakespeare preeminent. His analyses, alert to textual variants and cruxes, are illuminated by comparisons: Shakespeare's early verse is compared with his later verse and samples of Shakespearean dialogue are compared with versions in later adaptations, in modernizations, and inferior quarto texts, as well as with contributions by his co-authors to collaborative plays. The contrasts throw into relief the surpassing vitality and expressiveness of Shakespeare's own language. Since the rhythmic vitality of Shakespeare's verse is essential to how and what it communicates, an appendix on the principles of iambic pentameter is included to support those aspects of the analyses that refer to acoustic subtleties.

More in History & Criticism of Literature

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein : A Fiction - Deborah Levy

RRP $42.99

$34.99

19%
OFF
Delusions : Of Grandeur, of Romance, of Progress - Cazzie David

RRP $50.00

$38.75

22%
OFF
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
Pride and Prejudice : Oxford World's Classics - Jane Austen

RRP $14.95

$10.75

28%
OFF
Monsters in the Archives : My Year of Fear with Stephen King - Caroline Bicks
Make Believe : On Telling Stories to Children - Mac Barnett

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
Create Dangerously : Penguin Modern - Albert Camus
Hamlet : Cambridge School Shakespeare - Richard Andrews
The Woman In White : Collins Classics - Wilkie Collins

RRP $9.99

$8.75

12%
OFF
The Iliad - Homer

Paperback

RRP $32.95

$26.99

18%
OFF
The Apothecary Diaries 07 (Light Novel) : Apothecary Diaries - Natsu Hyuuga
Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life - Anna Funder

RRP $26.99

$20.75

23%
OFF
The Apothecary Diaries 05 (Light Novel) : Apothecary Diaries - Natsu Hyuuga
On the Road : Penguin Modern Classics - Jack Kerouac

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud

RRP $39.99

$26.75

33%
OFF
I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History, Vol. 4 - Akari Hoshi
The Nicomachean Ethics : Penguin Classics - Aristotle

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF