Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T14:23:18.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Motivation in Shakespeare’s Choice of Materials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2007

Get access

Summary

The field of study which I propose for consideration has to do with Shakespeare’s plots in two aspects, the general and the detailed. When he utters the familiar lines in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name,

he gives a perfect description of the most fundamental operation of the human mind. As the possessor of one of the greatest minds on record, he is at the same time describing his own transcendent skill.

There is usually to be discovered in Shakespeare's plays a form or pattern, sometimes easily identified, sometimes not; sometimes apparently consciously developed, sometimes seemingly almost accidental. These are "the forms of things unknown". The power of determining forms, that is, of regarding as irrelevant all attending circumstances except a certain conceptual form that controls the complex of events, is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind, and in the recognition of significant form in any configuration presented to experience Shakespeare excelled.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare Survey , pp. 26 - 34
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1951

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×