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SHAKESPEARE

Name: SHAKESPEARE
Author: Dennis Kay
ISBN: 0-688-12024-5

HIS LIFE, WORK, AND ERA

by Dennis Kay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 20, 1992

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Kay (English/Oxford) calls his chronicle of Shakespeare's life, work, and times a ``modest'' presentation for the ``curious''—which apparently excuses him from scholarly rigor as well as from considering recent Shakespearean research and theories. ``Every age,'' Kay begins, ``creates the Shakespeare, or Shakespeares it needs.'' The Shakespeare he displays—assembled from public records of christenings, weddings, deaths, real-estate transactions, and law cases—is a businessman, a crafty materialist who occasionally wrote plays. True, there is little primary information extant about the Elizabethan playwright: no letters, diaries, journals, or even accurate portraits. But having abandoned the ``academic Shakespeare industry,'' Kay offers little to replace it. He provides some useful but commonplace information—about the fortunes of various acting companies and the influence of King James I on literary life—and plot summaries. But the ``lost'' years, 1579-92, from school to Shakespeare's dramatic success (the ``implied parallel'' with the same period in Christ's life ``hardly needs to be dwelt on too closely''), are simply dismissed, like all the other mysteries that comprise the Shakespeare myth. The sonnets, Kay contends, had nothing to do with Shakespeare's amorous life: They were written for a patron in an assumed voice. Nor is there any concern here about how an itinerant actor with little education could have translated the lives of Plutarch into the Roman plays, the complexities of court life into the histories, and the subtleties of human feeling into the romances. While it's legitimate to reject the ``off-putting apparatus of scholarly references,'' there has to be some reasonable substitute: originality, style, perception, depth—none of which surfaces here.

Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1992

ISBN: 0-688-12024-5

Page Count: 363

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.