The Cherry Orchard: Catastrophe and Comedy, Vol. 131 Book

This book is an awesome analysis of Shakespeare's language and his rhetorical techniques. It is different from many other Shakespeare books that focus on an individual play at a time. It approaches the plays from the standpoint of the techniques involved, which are very many indeed.

The author presents a host of ways to consider Shakespeare's use of language in the construction of the plays. One gets a much deeper sense for word usage in the plays, encompassing puns that would not have been evident to modern readers, but also the use and affect of things like verse as opposed to prose, or the use of hendiadys and other rhetorical devices. Attention is also paid to things like line construction techniques, where phrasing parallels within the text are presented. Similarly, the author shows how the lines can contain performance cues for the actors (this was a difficult section for me).

The close of the book looks at themes that recur in the plays, including Shakespeare's (very evident) pleasure in using doubles and disguises, but explores other subjects as well, such as what it means to 'constitute' a character like Hamlet or Cressida. The characters have immense depth.

The book is often somewhat of a challenge to keep up with, but it is worth it.