Cambridge Scholars Publishing Shakespeare's Verbal Art

Shakespeare’s Verbal Art is a profoundly important study of the newly rediscovered anagrams that lie hidden below the surface of all Shakespearean texts. It explains the essential role played by these concealed figures in Classical and Renaissance poetry, demonstrating the revelatory function of anagram by reference to the close analysis of a wide range of examples. Special attention is given to Shakespeare’s use of these sub-textual devices to clarify meaning and intention. The focus is first on Shake-speares Sonnets of 1609, and secondly on Hamlet, Othello and Twelfth Night, all of which are found to be composed around the concealed anagrams that render these works self-interpreting. A new kind of language use is revealed, in terms of which pre-Enlightenment text is envisaged as existing in two distinct dimensions – the overt and the covert – both of which must be read if any particular poem or play is to be fully understood. In effect, a wholly new set of Shakespearean texts is made available to the reader, who will find Shakespeare’s Verbal Art an essential guide to the new discoveries. The book will also be indispensable in the fields of Classical and Renaissance literature, linguistics, poetics, rhetoric, and literary history, and in relation to the pre-Enlightenment text in general, and will interest both the specialist and the general reader. About the Author William Bellamy studied at Clare College, Cambridge, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, before taking up a post as Lecturer in English Literature at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He is currently engaged in a programme of research on Shakespeare’s language, for which he is sponsored by Clare College Cambridge. His publications include The Novels of Wells, Bennett and Galsworthy: 1890–1910 (1971), “Wells as Edwardian” in Twentieth Century Views: H G Wells (edited by Bernard Bergonzi, 1976), and “Ben Jonson and the Anagram” in Jonsonian Soundings (edited by Richard S Peterson, 2015), in addition to numerous articles and book reviews. He is presently working on an edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, based in part on the discoveries described in Shakespeare’s Verbal Art.