The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

Bacon, Delia Salter, 1811-1859Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
1.4M words
Chapters
144

Tags

English Originals Literary AppreciationDramatic Literature Shakespeare Authorship DebateBaconian TheoryPhilosophical InterpretationLiterary Textual CriticismShakespeare Criticism19th Century Controversy

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Delia Salter BaconAuthor: Bacon, Delia Salter, 1811-1859,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jun 1, 2005

Editor's review

This work is a lengthy nineteenth-century discussion by the American writer Delia Bacon of the philosophical implications of Shakespeare's plays, a controversial yet representative text in the history of Shakespeare scholarship. Its value lies not in offering conclusions accepted by today's academia, but in presenting a distinctive interpretive approach: the author attempts to uncover a systematic philosophy in the plays and to connect it with broader intellectual history. Reading it reveals how nineteenth-century American intellectuals received and reconstructed Shakespeare, and conveys the vocabulary and argumentative style of early Shakespearean debate. Because of its early date, the prose is elaborate and the argumentation expansive, requiring patience. It is better suited as research material for the history of Shakespeare's reception and literary criticism than as an introductory guide. For readers interested in the Bacon-Shakespeare authorship controversy and nineteenth-century intellectual history, this book offers a first-hand sample of argumentation that can be read alongside later scholarship.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Familiarize yourself with the context of nineteenth-century Shakespearean debate before entering the main text for smoother understanding.
  2. You may skip the elaborate examples and first read the thesis statements at the start of each chapter to grasp the overall framework.
  3. Read alongside later works of Shakespearean criticism, noting its methods and limitations.
  4. The English original is demanding; use an annotated edition or a related critical introduction.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
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  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
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FAQ

Is this book suitable as an introduction to Shakespeare? No. This is a nineteenth-century polemical work that presumes some familiarity with Shakespeare's plays and the intellectual debates of its time, and its prose and argumentation are rather elaborate. Readers new to Shakespeare should first read introductory guides to the plays or modern critical primers, then return to this book to understand its problematic and historical position.
What is the core question discussed in the book? The author attempts to demonstrate that Shakespeare's plays contain a systematically expoundable philosophy and to interpret them within a broader intellectual-historical context. This is an interpretive attempt marked by its era; its specific conclusions are not scholarly consensus today, and it should be read as a critical document of a particular historical stage rather than as a definitive answer.
Why is it said to have documentary value? Because it records a specific path by which nineteenth-century American intellectuals received and reconstructed Shakespeare, and reflects the polemical vocabulary of the time concerning authorship and the meaning of the plays. For readers studying the history of Shakespearean criticism and nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural history, such texts provide primary material beyond textbooks, helping to understand where later scholarship's questions came from.

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About the author

Bacon, Delia Salter, 1811-1859 Author · American · 1811–1859

Delia Salter Bacon (1811–1859) was an American writer. She is best known for The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded, in which she set out her theory about the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Her other work, The Bride of Fort Edward, draws on an incident of the American Revolution and has a historical narrative quality. Her writing spans literary inquiry and historical subjects; the former has often been cited, and much debated, because of its bold authorship hypothesis. Public information about the details of her life is limited, and this introduction rests mainly on her two surviving works and the theory she advanced.