Shakespearean Criticism : Prominent Critics and Their Publications- a Historical Survey

 "It does not follow...that the right to criticize Shakespeare involves the power of writing better plays. And in fact...I do not profess to write better plays."

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Irish playwright

Three Plays for Puritans

Who are called Shakespearean critics?

Ever since the bard of Avon wrote classics, we the readers or spectators are fascinated by understanding him, discovering him and knowing him anew. From that ignorant spectators at pits to the polished smart watcher at OTT, everybody has been a critic. Even though "Shakespearean critics" are academic term, in every reader of Shakespeare  there is a critic. Restricting our discussion on  academic term, it can be said that Shakespearean critics are scholars, writers, or individuals who study, analyze, interpret, and critique the works of William Shakespeare. They are recognized experts in Shakespearean literature, language, culture, and history. They may be professors, literary critics, playwrights, poets, or other professionals who specialize in the study of Shakespeare's works.

Shakespearean critics analyze the themes, characters, plot, language, and literary techniques used by Shakespeare in his plays and sonnets. They also consider the historical and cultural context in which the works were written and performed. They use their knowledge and insights to provide interpretations, criticism, and evaluations of Shakespeare's works, as well as to contribute to the ongoing scholarship and discourse on his legacy. Some notable Shakespearean critics include Harold Bloom, A.C. Bradley, John Dryden,  Samuel Johnson, and T.S. Eliot, among others. The following list can be read in reference.

Key Literary criticism of William Shakespeare
Age	Critics & Critiques
Elizabethan Period	Francis Meres John Weever
17th Century	Ben Jonson John Dryden’s  “Of Dramatick Poesie” (1668)
18th Century	Alexander Pope   edited Shakespeare in 1725,    Samuel Johnson   edited Shakespeare’s works (1765),  "Preface to Shakespeare"
Romantic critics	Samuel Taylor Coleridge  Goethe  Maurice Morgann’s An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff (1777), Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey   David Garrick
20th Century Onwards	Edward Dowden's Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (1875) A.C. Bradley’s  Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) Historical criticism Elmer Edgar Stoll’s  Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (1933) Ann Jennalie Cook, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare’s London, 1576–1642 [1981]) New Criticism F.R. Leavis, L.C. Knights, Derek Traversi, Robert Heilman, New interpretive approaches Ernest Jones , Northrop Frye, Jan Kott, Stephen Greenblatt, Stephen Orgel, Richard Helgerson Mikhail Bakhtin, Jonathan Dollimore, Alan Sinfield, John Drakakis,  Terry Eagleton. Feminist  Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lynda Boose, Lisa Jardine, Gail Paster, Jean Howard, Karen Newman, Carol Neely, Peter Erickson, Madelon Sprengnether Deconstruction Ferdinand de Saussure,  Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartmann,  J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, Patricia Parker’s Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context (1996), Virginia Woolf , George Eliot, T. S. Eliot

Prominent Shakespearean Critics and Their Publications: Historical Survey 

Here is a brief historical survey of some prominent Shakespearean critics and their significant publications:

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): Johnson was an English writer, critic, and lexicographer who published "Preface to Shakespeare" in 1765. In this work, Johnson argues for Shakespeare's greatness as a writer and defends him against critics who dismissed his work as lacking in form and structure. Dr Johnson commented that "nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature." As a result, he commended Shakespeare for creating universal characters “who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion.”

A.C. Bradley (1851-1935): Bradley , who wrote in the early 1900s, was an English literary scholar and critic who wrote extensively on Shakespeare. His most notable work, "Shakespearean Tragedy" (1904), explores the conventions and themes of Shakespeare's tragedies, including "Hamlet," "Othello," "King Lear," and "Macbeth." In "Shakespearean Tragedy", he saw tragic hero was defined by the "tragic defect," the underlying weakness in the hero that pulls him down. His collapse becomes his own doing, and he is no longer the hapless victim of fate, as in classical tragedy.

Harold Bloom (1930-2019): Bloom was an American literary critic and professor who wrote over forty books on literature and literary criticism, including several on Shakespeare. His most significant work on Shakespeare is "The Anxiety of Influence" (1973), in which he argues that writers are influenced by earlier writers but must overcome this influence to create original works. Harold Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" is the culmination of his lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. Preeminent literary critic-and ultimate authority on the western literary tradition, Harold Bloom walks us through a full reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, eloquently interpreting each work with unequalled warmth, humour and insight. At the same time, Bloom advances one of Shakespearean scholarship's most audacious claims: Shakespeare not only developed the English language, but also human nature as we know it today.

Jan Kott (1914-2001): Kott was a Polish literary critic and professor who wrote "Szkice o Szekspirze"(1961) or  "Shakespeare Our Contemporary" (1964), in which he argues that Shakespeare's plays are still relevant and resonant in the modern world. Kott's work is notable for its focus on the political and social dimensions of Shakespeare's plays. Kott's "Shakespeare Our Contemporary" had a significant effect on theatre. Despite the fact that we live in an era of tremendous Shakespearean research, represented by persons such as James Shapiro, Jonathan Bate, and Stephen Greenblatt, we can't think of anyone now who has the same effect on production as Kott.

Stephen Greenblatt (1943- ): Greenblatt is an American literary scholar and professor who has written extensively on Shakespeare and early modern literature. Popularly referred to as "American Shakespearean," in addition to serving as general editor and contributing author to "The Norton Anthology of English Literature", he is the general editor of "The Norton Shakespeare" (2015). One of the pioneers of new historicism, Greenblatt has authored and edited several works on the subject as well as works on Shakespeare, the Renaissance, and the study of culture. His most significant work on Shakespeare is "Will in the World" (2004), a biography that explores Shakespeare's life and times and seeks to understand how his experiences influenced his writing.

Marjorie Garber (1944- ): Garber is an American literary critic and professor who has written extensively on Shakespeare and Renaissance literature. The nonfiction book "Shakespeare's Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality" was authored by Marjorie Garber. Shakespeare's traditionally dominant role in the literary tradition is decentralised by this. Instead, the book explores the text's pervasiveness and influence on post-modern England and America, as well as how Shakespeare's works influenced several significant thinkers of the 20th century. Shakespeare, or Shakespeare's ghost, is said to symbolically haunt us in this fashion. Her most notable work on Shakespeare is "Shakespeare After All" (2004), consisting of thirty-eight essays that encompass all thirty-eight of Shakespeare's plays, in which she provides a comprehensive overview of Shakespeare's works and their critical interpretations.

James Shapiro (1955- ): Shapiro is an American literary scholar and professor who has written several books on Shakespeare, including "1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" (2005) and "The Year of Lear" (2015). His other works include "Rival playwrights : Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare",  "Shakespeare and the Jews"  (1996 ), "Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution until Now"( 2014), "Shakespeare in a Divided America" ( 2020). In a nutshell  his work focuses on the historical context of Shakespeare's plays and the social and cultural forces that shaped them.

These are just a few examples of the many influential Shakespearean critics and their works. There are many more scholars and critics who have contributed to the ongoing scholarship and discourse on Shakespeare's legacy.

Ardhendu De 

Reference:

1. Billington, M. (2012, February 21). K is for Jan Kott | Michael Billington’s A to Z of modern drama. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/feb/21/jan-kott-a-z-of-modern-drama

2. William Shakespeare - Chronology of Shakespeare’s plays. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Shakespeare

3. Stephen Greenblatt - Wikipedia. (2018, May 1). Stephen Greenblatt - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Greenblatt

4. Harold Bloom - Wikipedia. (2019, October 1). Harold Bloom - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom

5. James S. Shapiro - Wikipedia. (2014, January 18). James S. Shapiro - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Shapiro

6. Shapiro, J. (2020, March 10). Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future. Penguin Press.