John Dover Wilson (1881-1969) was a renowned scholar of Renaissance drama, particularly known for his work on Shakespeare. Originally published in 1932, this book, in accordance with its subtitle, takes the form of an interpretative 'adventure' through Shakespeare's life. In the absence of biographical detail, Wilson provides us with a personal perspective that is nevertheless rigorously faithful to the known facts regarding the life, the plays and the surrounding historical context. More broadly, the text is also concerned with the question of how a poetic or creative talent is manifested and nurtured. This concise and highly readable volume will be invaluable for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare, literary criticism, or the history of English literature.

John Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet is a classic of Shakespeare criticism. First published in 1935, it is still being read today throughout the English-speaking world and has been widely translated. Hamlet has excited more curiosity and aroused more debate than any other play ever written. Is Hamlet really mad? Does he really see his father’s ghost, or is it an illusion? Is the ghost good or bad? What does it all mean? Dover Wilson brings out the significance of each part of the complex action, against the background. His analysis of the play emphasises Shakespeare’s dramatic art and shows how the play must be seen and heard to be understood. This is a readable, entertaining and scholarly book.

First published in 1923, this book consists of a series of papers written by Pollard, W. W. Greg, E. Maunde Thompson, J. Dover Wilson, and R. W. Chambers, all advocates of the then newly-established New Bibliography. The book was assembled with the intention of strengthening the argument that three pages of Sir Thomas More in the Harleian Manuscript at the British Museum were written in Shakespeare's own hand. The well-established scholars examine the case from several different angles, considering the handwriting in comparison to the known versions of Shakespeare's signature, the bibliographical links between these three pages and the 'good' quartos, and the content of the pages in relation to political ideas expressed elsewhere in Shakespeare. The volume also includes plates of Shakespeare's signatures, analysis of individual letter shapes and parts of the manuscript, and a special transcript of the pages in question.

Dr Dover Wilson examines Falstaff's role in the two parts of Henry IV and his relationship to the Prince. Like most other Shakespearean scholars he had accepted. Bradley's portrait as shown in The Rejection of Falstaff, until (as he writes) he 'began checking it with yet another protrait - that which I found in the pages of Shakespeare himself. As the result of much recent work on the two parts of Henry IV, a new Falstaff stands before me, as fascinating as Bradley's, certainly quite as human, but different; and beside him stands a still more unexpected Prince Hal. The discovery throws all my previous ideas out of focus.' As the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement wrote, Falstaff 'is no hero, as the romantics have tried to make him out, nor is he merely a typical and traditional stage-butt. But he is Falstaff riding for a fall; and when he takes his toss he is up again in still unconquerable effrontery and humour ... The Prince as we watch him through Dr Dover Wilson's eyes growing in grace, first in chivalry and then in justice, we do more than observe the making of a hero-king. We get to know a very lovable, faulty, generous, noble-minded young man; and a character in the play whose scenes are so far from being mere padding between Falstaff's that the whole is seen as a masterpiece of construction.'

Manifesting the special intelligence of a literary critic of original gifts, Culture and Anarchy is still a living classic. It is addressed to the flexible and the disinterested, to those who are not committed to the findings of their particular discipline, and it assumes in its reader a critical intelligence that will begin its work with the reader himself. Arnold employs a delicate and stringent irony in an examination of the society of his time: a rapidly expanding industrial society, just beginning to accustom itself to the changes in its institutions that the pace of its own development called for. Coming virtually at the end of the decade (1868) and immediately prior to W. E. Forster's Education Act, Culture and Anarchy phrases with a particular cogency the problems that find their centre in the questions: what kind of life do we think individuals in mass societies should be assisted to lead? How may we best ensure that the quality of their living is not impoverished? Arnold applies himself to the detail of his time: to the case of Mr Smith 'who feared he would come to poverty and be eternally lost', to the Reform agitation, to the commercial values that working people were encouraged to respect, and to the limitations of even the best Rationalist intelligence. The degree of local reference is therefore high, but John Dover Wilson's introduction and notes to this edition supply valuable assistance to a reader fresh to the period.

Based on a course of lectures given at King's College, London, this book presents the views of national authorities on such aspects of English education as public elementary schools, boys' schools, girls' schools, day continuation schools, the training of teachers, university education, adult education, educational training in the army, and the educational scheme of the air force. Originally published in 1929. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This is a new release of the original 1929 edition.

1929. Contents: Introduction, the ghost scenes in Hamlet in the light of Elizabethan spiritualism; a note on the text; list of corrections; Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght; Appendix, the Catholic position in the ghost controversy of the 16th century, with special reference to Pierre Le Loyers IIII Livres des Spectres (1586).

1929. Contents: Introduction, the ghost scenes in Hamlet in the light of Elizabethan spiritualism; a note on the text; list of corrections; Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght; Appendix, the Catholic position in the ghost controversy of the 16th century, with special reference to Pierre Le Loyers IIII Livres des Spectres (1586).

1929. Contents: Introduction, the ghost scenes in Hamlet in the light of Elizabethan spiritualism; a note on the text; list of corrections; Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght; Appendix, the Catholic position in the ghost controversy of the 16th century, with special reference to Pierre Le Loyers IIII Livres des Spectres (1586).

Contents: Introduction, the ghost scenes in Hamlet in the light of Elizabethan spiritualism; a note on the text; list of corrections; Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght; Appendix, the Catholic position in the ghost controversy of the 16th century, with special reference to Pierre Le Loyers IIII Livres des Spectres (1586).