Aspects of Shakespeare
HE life of Shakespeare the man can be written on the back of a postcard; but looking at the serried ranks of Shakespeariana on the library shelves, one realises that the inexhaustible work of Shakespeare the poet is a very dif-
ferent matter. At first sight it might seem foolhardy to attempt anything like a summation of it in a 35-minute radio feature; yet Maria Dronke’s illustrated, talk on Shakespeare (from 1YC) turned out to be just as informative as the two earlier programmes in the series Aspects of Drama. It touched on Shakespeare scholarship old and new, on characters and language; the structure of the "wooden O," the nature of the audience, and the development of the plays. It was something of an achievement to say so much that was relevant in so short a space, and still find time for substantial illustrations. These were judiciously chosen, and gave pride of place to Antony and Cleopatra-tightly, I think, for even if this is not the greatest of the plays (a title that can be endlessly disputed) it is certainly, in its autumnal glory, the most resplendent. By bringing together various aspects of Cleopatra, these extracts showed again Shakespeare’s astonishing power of making his characters exactly true to what we expect of them.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530911.2.21.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 739, 11 September 1953, Page 10
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216Aspects of Shakespeare New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 739, 11 September 1953, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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