Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival

Abstract

W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. This is a rich and complex book. Ostensibly it is an enormous footnote on a phrase in Hamlet, and the close, etymologically-informed examination of the language of that play inevitably produces aperçus, but it achieves much more than that. It casts light on other plays (I was especially struck by the comments on Troilus and Cressida) and on Shakespeare’s use of language more generally. I’ll also treasure the image of Hamlet as Harpo Marx (156), a comparison whose presence is an indication of the fact that although the argument is learned and detailed, it is never dull.