This book begins and ends with the question of total impact. The intervening chapters are an attempt to do justice to Shakespeare by analysing ten of the maturer plays in view of the ultimate effect of each, concentrating on what is immediately obvious from the texts, letting the poet speak as far as possible for himself, and taking care not to attribute to him a XXth, XIXth, XVIIIth or even XVIIth century outlook. To say that he was born 400 years ago is an understatement. So extremely transitional was the century in which he was brought up and formed that it could almost be expanded into two as regards change of outlook; and Shakespeare, highly conservative in almost every respect, belongs despite his actual dates to the first of these two rather than the second, that is, to a prolongation of the XVth century rather than to an anticipation of the XVIIth.

MARTIN LINGS
London, 1966

Preface [.doc]
Chapter I - The Intellectuality of Sacred Art [.doc]*
Chapter II - Shakespeare's Outlook* [.doc]*
Chapter III - Henry IV
Chapter IV - Hamlet
Chapter V - Othello
Chapter VI - Measure for Measure
Chapter VII - Macbeth [.doc]
Chapter VIII - King Lear [.doc]
Chapter IX - Antony and Cleopatra
Chapter X - Cymbeline
Chapter XI - The Winter's Tale
Chapter XII - The Tempest
Chapter XIII - Notes on Performance and Production
Chapter XIV - The Audience

 * this is uploaded, but it still needs some work done to clean it up.