Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> SHAKESPEARE AND OVID.-Amongst the direct sources of Shakes peare’s works after North’s Plutarch and Holinshed probably the most important was Ovid. The Fasti the Heroides and the Metamorphoses were just such works as would be most likely to impress a young mind; and Shakespeare’s early ambition seems to have been to be the English Ovid whilst accident made him a dramatist. Thus in his Lucrece and his Venus and Adonis he directly challenges comparison. His themes are of the same romantic and imaginative stuff; his method the same rich and picturesque description; and the motto upon the title of the Venus and Adonis shows that he took the attempt seriously. In this respect he judged truly of his powers although he enormously underestimated them. Other dramatists have pourtrayed the doings and the fate of men so as to move our souls; but no other has taken us into fairy land and made imps and fays live before us as Shakespeare has done. Ben Jonson and Middleton have done something for demons and witches; Goethe has realized a devil; but with Shakespeare alone the world of faery seems to be real and reasonable as flesh and blood.