1443500 1693 Shakespeare. Thomas Rymer. A Short View of Tragedy.

 

RYMER, Thomas. A Short View of Tragedy With Some Reflections on Shakespear [sic], and other Practitioners for the Stage. London: Richard Baldwin, 1693. Octavo, contemporary full brown speckled sheep rebacked, raised bands, brown morocco spine label.  First edition of this notorious 'condemnation of English literature' that contains a blistering attack on Shakespeare’s Othello, this fundamental if controversial work authored by Thomas Rymer, also famed for introducing the phrase 'poetic licence.'   "Thomas Rymer’s Short View of Tragedy (1693) is one of the most infamous texts in the history of English literary criticism" a reputation triggered by this volume’s notorious attack on Shakespeare (Cannan, Review of English Studies). Here Rymer famously calls Othello "a Bloody Farce," whose only moral is "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to their Linnen" (147, 89). Yet despite Rymer’s notoriety, his Short View continues to stand as one of  "the fundamental critical texts which established neo-Aristotelian theories of art in England"  No critic in England had ever equaled Rymer in the rigor of his opinions or in his determination to follow the argument wherever it led 'even if it led to the complete condemnation of English literature.' Ultimately, however, many agree that Rymer’s chief flaw stems from not recognizing that 'Shakespeare, like Sophocles, had prepared his business well.' The genius of Shakespeare’s Othello is that is 'raises questions which Rymer found ‘unthinkable.’ They are, however, questions which have to be face and which must be answered as men go about their business in this century' (Alexander, Cambridge Shakespeare Library, 405-413). With rear advertisement leaf; same mispagination as in Pforzheimer. Pforzheimer 844. Wing R-2429. Lowndes, 2161. Trace of faint marginalia to title page. Text fresh with only lightest toning to edges, slight edge-wear, rubbing to contemporary sheep. A fine copy of this crucial literary work.