The Age of Shakespeare

Written by Frank Kermode

Narrated by Paul Hecht

Britain's most esteemed scholar of 16th and 17th century literature, Frank Kermode is also a noted author and professor. In this Modern Library Chronicle, he uses the context of the Elizabethan Era to link each of Shakespeare's plays to their probable years of creation. By portraying the bard's England in terms of its society, economy, and arts, Kermode provides an invaluable guide to understanding Shakespeare's works. "Academics and common readers alike have much to learn from Kermode's illuminating and delectable study."-Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 14, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440797675

Frank Kermode

Sir John Frank Kermode was born in November 1919. He was a British literary critic best known for his work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing. Kermode was born on the Isle of Man, and was educated at Douglas High School and Liverpool University. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, for six years in total, much of it in Iceland. He began his academic career as a lecturer at Durham University in 1947. He later taught at Reading University, then the University of Bristol. He was named Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London from 1967 to 1974. In 1974, Kermode took the position of King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University, resigning in 1982. He then moved to Columbia University, where he was Julian Clarence Levi Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. In 1975-76 he held the Norton Lectureship at Harvard University. He was knighted in 1991. Kermode died in Cambridge on 17 August 2010.

Reviews for The Age of Shakespeare

[jasonlf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent short book on Shakespeare and his world by noted critic Frank Kermode (who died earlier this week). It provides background on Shakespeare's life, the theater in Shakespeare's time, and a brief overview of many of his plays -- fit into the context of his artistic development and external circumstances. As could be expected from the author of a book called "Shakespeare's language," it is strong on the language in the plays, how it varies from character to character, the difficulty of differentiating voices in the Roman plays, and the varieties of verse that Shakespeare employed.

[kant1066 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've found the Modern Library Chronicles books to be somewhat of a mixed bag, as another reviewer aptly put it. Hans Kung's "The Catholic Church: A Short History" and Stephen Kotkin's "Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment," which I've recently also reviewed, were very good, and full of information for people of all backgrounds. Frank Kermode's "Age of Shakespeare," however, I found to be written for an audience who has little to no knowledge of late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century English culture and politics. It may be the case that the varying quality can be attributed to the word limits imposed on the authors (all hover around 200 pages excluding ancillary notes or bibliographies). Many good introductory sources require a book anywhere between two and three times this long, especially when times were as complicated as Shakespeare's were. This could have been a better book had it been on just the history of Elizabethan and Jacobean England itself, but as I want to share below, Kermode chose to make much of the book about Shakespeare's life and work instead, and I think the book suffers for it.None of this is to say that Kermode doesn't manage to distill some really good information in a very small number of pages. The early chapters do a superb job of emphasizing the various changes from Catholicism to Anglicanism (under Henry VIII), back to Catholicism (under Mary I), and then back to Protestantism (under Elizabeth I), and particularly how those changes manifested themselves in many plays of the time, most of which never seemed far-removed from inherently political concerns.Kermode is honest, admitting that most of what we know of Shakespeare's early life is purely from speculation. Did he come to London seeking the patronage of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton? Did the Jesuit (and later, martyr) Edmund Campion discreetly pass Catholic literature on to William and his father John when William was young? The possibilities are interesting to think about, but again are ultimately conjecture. He also traces the incredible rise in the place of the playwright as a subtopic in several of the book's chapters, from the liminality of the unsavory vagabond during Elizabeth's reign to the reverence and honor many had gained by the time of the early part of James I's reign. Some of the best information is the background provided about the Rose, Globe, and Blackfriars theatres - their construction, the various people that were responsible for writing and producing the plays, the kinds of audiences that frequented each theatre, et cetera.The chapters that suffer the most are the longest, which happen to be the ones which cover Shakespeare's plays. It seems like Kermode is racing as fast as he possibly can to write at least half a page or so on every play, which he manages to do; he spends a few pages on a couple of them. However, as I mentioned above, none of what he says sticks with the reader. Instead, we get randomly introduced tidbits, interesting though they are. He tells us that in "Titus Andronicus," Shakespeare carefully interrelates the ideas of humor and social taboo; that the influence of Terence and Plautus is easily discerned in "The Comedy of Errors"; and that Bottom echoes, if not directly copies Saint Paul's "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him" (I Corinthians 2:9) in Midsummer Night's Dream (IV.i.204-214). There is no rhyme or reason as to why he includes what he does. Many books need not be as long as they are. This one should have been much longer.The first half of the book is worth the introduction to the England of the time, but I would say the second half can easily be skipped. There are simply too many other good supplements to Shakespeare's plays out including Mark Van Doren's "Shakespeare," Auden's lectures, Northrop Frye, or if you're feeling particularly reactionary, Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human."