When first published this book quickly established itself as the standard survey of Shakespeare's imagery considered as an integral part of the development of Shakespeare's dramatic art.
First published in 1952. This volume explores the function of verse in drama and the developing way in which Shakespeare controlled the rhetorical and decorative elements of speech for the dramatic purpose.
The only substantial text of a series of lectures on Shakespeare by S T Coleridge is that provided by J P Collier's Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. This edition is based on hitherto unpublished transcripts of these lectures.
Twenty-seven soliloquies are examined in this work, illustrating how the spectator or reader is led to the soliloquy and how the drama is continued afterwards.
The opening chapter traces the history of the term 'problem plays' as applied to Shakespeare and defines it more clearly and precisely than has been done in the past.
By selective study of certain of the comedies, tragedies and sonnets, Philip Edwards views Shakespeare's work as a whole and explains why his art developed as it did.