Language Families, Drama - Literary Criticism, English Literature

A Shakespearian Grammar

Name: A Shakespearian Grammar
Author: Edwin Abbott
ISBN: 9781145733336

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

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Overview

The finest and fullest guide to the peculiarities of Elizabethan syntax, grammar, and prosody, this volume addresses every idiomatic usage found in Shakespeare's works (with additional references to the works of Jonson, Bacon, and others). Its informative introduction, which compares Shakespearian and modern usage, is followed by sections on Shakespearian grammar (classified according to parts of speech) and prosody (focusing on pronunciation). The book concludes with an examination of the uses of metaphor and simile and a selection of notes and questions suitable for classroom use. Each of more than 500 classifications is illustrated with quotes from, plays and sonnets. All quotations are fully indexed, and for some plays -- As You Like It, King Lear, Coriolanus, Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Henry V, Richard II and III, The Merchant of Venice. The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night -- there are so many quotes that this book could be used as commentary on the plays. (Twenty-four other plays are covered less fully.) The definitive work on Shakespeare's language for students and teachers, this one-of-a-kind reference will also prove an indispensable guide for actors and directors of Shakespearian plays and all other serious readers of English Renaissance literature.

Synopsis

Abbott's (1838-1926) work was originally published by Macmillan and Company, London, in 1870, and subsequently revised twice. It was intended to "furnish students of Shakespeare and Bacon with a short systematic account of some points of difference between Elizabethan syntax and our own." The Dover edition, first published in 1966 and now again in 2003, is an unabridged republication of the third edition of Abbott's text, and will serve as a reference for students and teachers, actors and directors of Shakespearian plays, and other serious readers of English Renaissance literature. The book includes an index to the quotations from Shakespeare's plays and a "verbal" index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR