CONTENTS
I. This Blessed Plot, This Earth, This Realm, This England
The Measure of Shakespeare ♦ English Literature and the Latin Tradition ♦ The Mind of the Middle Ages v. the Renaissance ♦ The Origins of Elizabethan Drama ♦ The Renaissance Drama of Blood and Gold ♦ This Sceptered Isle ♦ Shakespeare’s London ♦ Renaissance and Restoration ♦ Enter Shakespeare
The Difference Between Comedy and Tragedy ♦ The Moral Basis for Tragedy ♦ The True Hamlet ♦ Hamlet and the Psycho-analyst ♦ The Orthodoxy of Hamlet ♦ The Grave-digger ♦ A Convincing Ghost ♦ Hamlet and the Danes ♦ The Englishness of Hamlet ♦ Hamlet’s Education ♦ The Murderer as Maniac ♦ Ophelia’s Madness ♦ The Macbeths ♦ The Moral Mystery in Tragedy ♦ Free Will and the Drama ♦ Out, Damned Spot! ♦ Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog ♦ The Tragedy of King Lear ♦ Madness in Lear ♦ The Two Lears ♦ Hope in the Face of Sorrow ♦ The Meaning of Mark Antony ♦ Richard II ♦ Richard III and Nietzsche
The Other Difference Between Comedy and Tragedy ♦ The Comedy of Love ♦ Shakespeare and the Legal Lady ♦ The Pound of Flesh ♦ The Character of Shylock ♦ The Merchant’s Place ♦ The Heroines of Shakespeare ♦ Heroic Heroines ♦ Beatrice ♦ The Repetition of Rosalind ♦ A Midsummer Night’s Dream ♦ The Man with the Ass’s Head ♦ A Hundred Heads ♦ Buffoonery ♦ Love’s Labour’s Lost ♦ Falstaff ♦ Falstaff Was Real
Everything is Dramatic ♦ The Fun of the Drama ♦ The Silver Goblets ♦ On Stage Costume ♦ Shakespeare in Modern Dress ♦ Shakespeare in Modern Dress (Again) ♦ On Eyebrows ♦ Modern Drama and Old Conventions ♦ The Ideal Detective Story ♦ On Shakespeare’s Method of Opening His Plays ♦ The Merits of Shakespeare’s Plots ♦ Good Stories Spoilt by Great Authors
What’s in a Name? ♦ The Speech That Shakespeare Spoke ♦ The Sound of Shakespeare ♦ Poetical ♦ The Yellow Sands ♦ Poor Old Shakespeare ♦ Picturesque ♦ The Artistic Temperament ♦ Creative Vagueness ♦ Fragments ♦ Incidental Discords ♦ An Outpouring of Ideas ♦ Multitudinous and Tragic ♦ The Incongruity of Reality ♦ Words of Strong Poetry ♦ The Heroic Couplet ♦ Progress in Poetry ♦ Improving on Shakespeare’s Language ♦ Bowdlerism ♦ Plain-spoken ♦ Scorn ♦ Hating ♦ Ranting ♦ The Best Parts ♦ The Worst Parts ♦ Stairs of Sand ♦ The Soliloquy ♦ An Argument Between Two Truths ♦ Brutus ♦ The Political Play ♦ The Problem Play ♦ The Real Problem Play ♦ The Historical Plays ♦ The English Hero ♦ Henry V ♦ On the Tudors ♦ Shakespeare and St. George ♦ Shakespeare and Bunyan ♦ Winter Tales ♦ The Twelve Days of Christmas ♦ For All Ages ♦ For All the Continents ♦ Shakespeare and the Land ♦ Equality ♦ Why is Shakespeare Popular? ♦ Author and Man ♦ Ordinary and Extraordinary ♦ The Embodiment of Humanity ♦ Typical Moralist ♦ The Flaw in the Deed ♦ The Flaw in the Deed (Again) ♦ Is Shakespeare an Allegory? ♦ The Phoenix and the Turtle ♦ Shakespeare and the Germans ♦ Shakespeare and the Dark Lady ♦ On The Shakespeare Ball By One Who Was Not There
The Great Shawkspear Mystery ♦ Sorry, I’m Shaw ♦ On the Alleged Pessimism of Shakespeare ♦ The Realities of Romantic Drama ♦ The Poet and the Puritan ♦ Shakespeare and Shaw
VII. Was Shakespeare Catholic?
Shakespeare Was a Christian ♦ Shakespeare and Milton ♦ Shakespeare and Milton (Again) ♦ Purgatory ♦ The Ancient Religious Unity ♦ The Medieval Religion ♦ Recognizable as a Catholic ♦ Utterly Unmistakable
Quite Himself ♦ The Cryptogram Again ♦ The Secret Rose ♦ More Gammon of Bacon ♦ Sensationalism and a Cipher ♦ Sensationalism and a Cipher (Again) ♦ A Shakespeare Portrait ♦ Shakespeareans vs. Baconians ♦ Shakespeare’s Breakfast ♦ Shakespeare and the Dark Lady (Again) ♦ Why Indeed? ♦ Lord Southampton? The Earl of Leicester? Sir Walter Raleigh? ♦ Shakespeare Is Shakespeare ♦ Shakespeare Has Written Us