Lectures on Shakespeare

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by W. H. Auden,

Edited by Arthur Kirsch

Princeton University Press

Due/Published November 2002, 488 pages, paper

ISBN 0691102821

New in paper (F02)

"W. H. Auden, poet and critic, will conduct a course on Shakespeare at the New School for Social Research beginning Wednesday. Mr. Auden has announced that in his course . . . he proposes to read all Shakespeare's plays in chronological order." The New York Times reported this item on September 27, 1946, giving notice of a rare opportunity to hear one of the century's great poets comment on one of the greatest poets of all time. Published here for the first time, these lectures now make Auden's thoughts on Shakespeare available widely.

Painstakingly reconstructed by Arthur Kirsch from the notes of students who attended, primarily Alan Ansen, who became Auden's secretary and friend, the lectures afford remarkable insights into Shakespeare's plays as well as the sonnets.

A remarkable lecturer, Auden could inspire his listeners to great feats of recall and dictation. Consequently, the poet's unique voice, often down to the precise details of his phrasing, speaks clearly and eloquently throughout this volume. In these lectures, we hear Auden alluding to authors from Homer, Dante, and St. Augustine to Kierkegaard, Ibsen, and T. S. Eliot, drawing upon the full range of European literature and opera, and referring to the day's newspapers and magazines, movies and cartoons. The result is an extended instance of the "live conversation" that Auden believed criticism to be. Notably a conversation between Auden's capacious thought and the work of Shakespeare, these lectures are also a prelude to many ideas developed in Auden's later prose--a prose in which, one critic has remarked, "all the artists of the past are alive and talking among themselves."

 Reflecting the twentieth-century poet's lifelong engagement with the crowning masterpieces of English literature, these lectures add immeasurably to both our understanding of Auden and our appreciation of Shakespeare.

Review

For over a year Auden lectured on nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets in a series that was a smash with students and represents one of the most interesting commentaries on the playwright’s work. Moreover, it is also a fascinating introduction to the major themes of Auden's thought. Like Shakespeare himself, as Auden would have it, the lectures refuse to take themselves too seriously and display creativity, playfulness and wit. However, this does not come at the expense of scholarly rigor or imagination. As Arthur Kirsch notes, Auden resisted a dogmatic or overly moralistic emphasis in his comments on Shakespeare. Auden focuses on Shakespeare’s treatment of characters through the perspective of “Christian Psychology,” looking at the role of sin and redemption in the plays with his own, somewhat skeptical, understanding of Freud. There is a great openness to Auden’s commentaries that recognizes the moral failings of the characters but retains, much like Shakespeare did, a sympathy for them. Auden also brings in a wide variety of other thinkers into his discussions, including Kierkegaard (in particular), T.S. Eliot, St. Augustine, Homer and others.

Stephen Greenblatt writes, “Auden’s lectures on Shakespeare are a marvelous blend of steady, patient intelligence and stunning insight -- spiritied, free-thinking, resourceful, unintimidated, liberated from the air of treacly piety, and very, very intelligent.”