Berryman's Shakespeare

Essays, Letters, and Other Writings

John Berryman; Edited by John Haffenden; With a Preface by Robert Giroux

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Edited by John Haffenden
With a Preface by Robert Giroux

John Berryman, one of America's most talented modern poets, was winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 77 Dream Songs and the National Book Award for His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. He gained a reputation as an innovator whose bold literary adventures were tempered by exacting discipline. Berryman was also an active, prolific, and perceptive critic whose own experience as a major poet served to his advantage.

Berryman was a protégé of Mark Van Doren, the great Shakespearean scholar, and the Bard's work remained one of his most abiding passions--he would devote a lifetime to writing about it. His voluminous writings on the subject have now been collected and edited by John Haffenden.

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Berryman's Shakespeare
PART ONEShakespeare's Early ComedyTHE DRAMATIST'S GRANDFATHER was probably a Richard Shakespeare, who farmed in a small way at Snitterfield in Warwickshire, renting from the wealthy Robert Arden of Wilmcote, the other grandfather. The surname had long been common in the Midland counties, since one William Shakespeare [Sakspere] of Gloucester was hanged for robbery in 1248.1 Richard had at least two sons: John, who moved four miles to the market town of Stratford-on-Avon about 1551, and Henry, who remained at Snitterfield farming and died there poverty-stricken

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Reviews

Praise for Berryman's Shakespeare

"Berryman had . . . an extraordinary and complicated relationship with [Shakespeare, that] manifests itself [in] John Haffenden's splendidly researched and edited collection of Berryman's lectures and essays. . . Berryman on Shakespeare registers [also] as Berryman on Berryman."--Anne Barton, The New York Review of Books

"Berryman...as this book demonstrates, was the greatest Shakespearean of twentieth-century American poets." --James Wood, The New Republic

"[A] wonderful book . . . Always interesting on Shakespeare's life, Berryman is often astonishing on Shakespeare's words. Writing not merely as critic but as poet, he catches effects the rest of us might miss."--Stuart Sherman, Chicago Tribune
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About the Author

John Berryman; Edited by John Haffenden; With a Preface by Robert Giroux

John Haffenden is professor of English literature at the University of Sheffield. His publications include The Life of John Berryman; Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation; as well as a study of poet and critic William Empson. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

John Berryman
John Haffenden

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Berryman's Shakespeare
Essays, Letters, and Other Writings
John Berryman; Edited by John Haffenden; With a Preface by Robert Giroux

e-Book Agency

e-Book Agency
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
December 2000
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781466808119
ISBN10: 146680811X
416 pages
$6.99
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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