Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-dtkg6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-04T15:10:28.164Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘Look on her, look’: The Apotheosis of Cordelia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2007

Peter Holland
Affiliation:
Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Get access

Summary

The ‘after-life’ of any Shakespeare play is lived through a variety of media – stage performance, critical analysis, translation and adapatation – but it is at least arguable that such life and popular accessibility as ‘Shakespeare’ continues to enjoy owes much to his preservation in the educational system. Bowdlerized, moralized, weighed down with notes or expanded into ‘tales’, still the Shakespeare they met in school has been for many people the only one they know, and deserves at least a footnote in the story. A special place should also be reserved for those editors and adapters by whom ‘the attention of young females, both in schools and families’ was ‘carefully directed to the study of our English Classics’ at a time when the classical languages still ruled boys’ education, since without their efforts, and those of the women’s reading groups and literary societies, Shakespeare might have ceased to have any ‘after-life’ outside a small coterie of intellectuals. Particular interest therefore attaches to their appropriation of King Lear, a play which presented a unique problem to young women in the nineteenth century.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare Survey
An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production
, pp. 106 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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
×