250. (Jean Racine)

I write as a novice, an initiate into Racine’s imaginative world, and I enter with just enough French to feel … More

231. (Erich Auerbach)

Not only can be it said that art happens in history, but that history happens within each work of art. … More

As You Like It perplexes for many reasons, not least of which is a disproportionate structure, whose warps and excrescences … More

The experiences of time, from its swelling (the remove from the court in As You Like It) and contracting time (Richard II; … More

Many of Shakespeare’s plays involve a recurring movement or transformation, which I will describe in terms that are broadly metaphysical … More

When anyone remembers Charles Williams these days, it is probably for one of two reasons. Either they know of Williams … More

A second in a series of what seem a “redundant discoveries of obvious value,” this post can claim nothing novel about Shakespeare’s … More

Among Eliot’s staunchest and nimblest readers, Christopher Ricks was unrelenting in his 1978 attack on Eliot’s late essay, “What … More

They are almost “conversation” poems, but they offer too many explanations, the sorts of explanations of who the speaker is, … More

The crisis for Richard II, and the crisis of Richard II, comes in Act 3, Scene 2: landing from Ireland, … More