SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 783, 23 July 1954, Page 13

SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE

SHAKESPEARE SURVEY 7, an annual survey of Shakespearian study and production, edited by Allardyce Nicoll; Cambridge University Press, English price 18/-. ] AST year this admirable annual survey began to have its first bad reviews in academic journals: it was suggested that the International Notes on Shakespeare productions in different countries were like a parish magazine, and that some of the foreign contributions fell short of scholarly standards. Professor Nicoll may have taken a hint; (continued on next page)

BOOKS

-- (continued from previous page) this year his only major "continental" contribution is "Shakespeare’s Italy," backed by the unchallengable authority and scholarship of Mario Praz. The International Notes remain; for all their inevitable scrappiness, it is only here that the literary or dramatic student may read of Henry VIII at Nairobi, of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Kuala Lumpur or Ankara, of a Love’s Labour Lost in New York, with the Princess of France arriving in bloomers in a model-T Ford. For the more serious contributors, the central theme of this volume is rather loosely denfied as "Shakespeare’s style": criticism of the subject is firmly traversed by M. C. Bradbrook, Gladys Willcock has an article on Elizabethan English, A. C. Partridge a study of Shakespeare’s orthography, and George Rylands a note on dramatic speech. J. Dover Wilson provides a first instalment of a popular account of "The New Way with Shakespeare’s Texts"; there are theatrical contributions by C. J. Sisson, J. W. Saunders and W. A. Armstrong; and the usual valuable accounts of recent productions and Shakespeare scholarship. Though nothing here is really outstanding, the Survey certainly continues to justify its annual appear-

ance.

J.

B.