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Article: Shakespeare Among the Moderns.(Review)
- Article from:
- Shakespeare Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Associated University Presses. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Shakespeare Among the Moderns. By Richard Halpern. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997.
The impasse at which most criticism finds itself today is by now a familiar one. Whatever one's theoretical assumptions and political objectives may be, there seems to be no way to avoid choosing between two equally unsatisfactory procedures when tackling a text from the past. On one hand lies the option of some form of historicism, which seeks to anchor the meaning of the work in a reconstruction of the world that once cradled it, but which thereby runs the risk of rendering it irrelevant to the preoccupations of the present. On the other lies the option of ...