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The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts$
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The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts

Mark Thornton Burnett and Adrian Streete

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780748635238

Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: March 2012

DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635238.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM EDINBURGH SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.edinburgh.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Edinburgh University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in ESO for personal use.date: 28 March 2020

Shakespeare and Poetry

Shakespeare and Poetry

Chapter:
(p.37) 2 Shakespeare and Poetry
Source:
The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts
Author(s):

Peter Holbrook

Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635238.003.0003

This chapter argues that the various typologies of poetry in Shakespeare are often, surprisingly, treated satirically: poetry is linked to fantasy, to dubious claims and to an alienation from ‘reality’. Shakespeare's significance for poetry may amount to an intuition that there are more important things in life than the right words in the right order. Moreover, it reviews some of the ways in which Shakespeare is understood in the critical tradition in order to make it clear why Thom Gunn, of all modern poets, has one of the strongest claims to Shakespeare's inheritance. Gunn's conscious engagement with Shakespearean writing is evident in the pattern of allusions across his oeuvre. His poetry derives its considerable wit and power from the combination of control and openness — ‘Rule’ and ‘Energy’ — that is also found in Shakespeare. Additionally, his fusion of energy with order is the true Shakespearean inheritance.

Keywords:   poetry, Shakespeare, Thom Gunn, Rule, Energy, Shakespearean inheritance

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