Shakespeare's Last Plays

(Hardback)

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Shakespeares Last Plays was the first of E. M. W. Tilyards influential works on Shakespeare. In it, Dr Tilyard argues that the last plays Cymbeline, The Winters Tale and The Tempest develop patterns found in the earlier works. He shows how Shakespeare intertwines reconciliation (the final phase of the tragedies) with an awareness of possible worlds (where the natural and supernatural have equal status), and concludes that The Tempest, by subordinating his tragic pattern, is his greatest achievement.

Author Bio

E.M.W Tillyard (sometime Master of Jesus College, Cambridge) is renowed for his many works on Shakespeare and Milton. He is credited with having put forward the theory that Elizabethan literature is not representative of a brief period of humanism between two outbreaks of protestantism, but rather representative of a theological bond in England that allowed for a continuation of the Medieval view of World Order.