The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1431 Tuesday, 28 May 2002
From: Peter Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Saturday, 25 May 2002 10:38:51 +1000 (EST)
Subject: 13.1411 Re: Aristotle's Poetics Read By Shakespeare?
Comment: RE: SHK 13.1411 Re: Aristotle's Poetics Read By Shakespeare?
> If we knew whether he read Poetics, we could know whether he broke those
> rules out of ignorance or out of revolution. Curiously enough,
> Shakespeare's two plays that closely follow unity of time, action, and
> place are at the beginning of his career and at the end - Comedy of
> Errors and The Tempest. An early attempt and a later return to that
> structure? An accident? Questions which may never be answered.
>
> Brian Willis
Whether he read Aristotle or not (and it seems <prima facie> unlikely),
he would almost certainly have heard of the neo-Aristotelian unities (a
much more clear-cut matter) from Ben Jonson. I have always felt that
part of the point of <The Tempest>, with its interminable exposition
during which Miranda keeps nodding off, is that it is Shakespeare
