The Best Shakespeare Intro: Another Nominee

Patrick Kurp says the best introductory guide to Shakespeare is the set of lectures by W. H. Auden (link). It’s hazardous to challenge Patrick on a matter of literary judgment, but I will dare to revise him by adding just one word: Auden is the second best introduction to Shakespeare. The first is the volume by Mark Van Doren--with the unadorned monicker Shakespeare, recently republished as an NYRB Classic (link).

I first read Van Doren’s intro about 52 years ago in the Kettering Library at Antioch College. I guess I thought it was CliffNotes (although we didn’t have CliffNotes); anyway, I was looking for knowledge on the cheap. I read it again in the new edition a few months ago and I’m still astonished at what a treasure I had stumbled on, all unknowing. Things I thought I “just knew” about Shakespeare—or worse, things I thought I had figured out for myself: here they all were set forth with a kind of grace and elegance that can only speak for itself. And I never suspected. Talk about pearls before swine.

I don’t have a copy of Van Doren at hand—I gave my last to a deserving (I hope) high school senior. Happily, I did just stumble on a second copy of Dan Wakefield’s warm-hearted memoir, New York in the 50s, where he recalls, inter alia, his encounter with Van Doren at Columbia.

When I saw Van Doren in class…for the first time, his hair was gray and I had no idea of his age (fifty-eight) which was anyway irrelevant for he didn’t seem old but ageless, like the visage of one of the presidents on Mount Rushmore. His face had that craggy granite look of being hewn or chiseled by hard-won experience and knowledge, but it wasn’t grim or set in a stare of stony, locked-away wisdom. His eyes gave off a love of his work (which included the students seated before him) and the world, and he had a playful and wry sense of humor.

--Dan Wakefield, New York in the 50s 25 (1992)

I never laid eyes on Van Doren (although I guess I remember him vaguely as a TV personality of his time)—but I think it's a good description of his style: “hewn or chiseled by hard-won experience and knowledge but [not] grim or set in a stare..” Next time I lay my hands on a copy, I’ll cite some examples.

I cheated in quoting Patrick. What he really said was that Auden’s was the best and most entertaining introduction. Thus qualified, he’s probably onto something. Auden’s introduction is excellent in its own right, and it is indeed entertaining, as only Auden can be. Van Doren is subtler, less obtrusive. But in this case, much as I enjoyed Auden, I have a feeling that entertainment value may be a bit of a problem: there is a lot of invaluable Shakespeare here, but maybe just a tad too much Auden.

But it’s a small matter. The real point is that either one of them is light years ahead of any product of more recent vintage (I name no names). To match either Auden or Van Doren, you really have to go back to Johnson or Coleridge. But I’ll still end by citing just one more encomium for Van Doren. The writer says:

Professor Van Doren enlightens us, not because he has any special knowledge or private advantages, but because his love of Shakespeare has been greater than our own.

That’s quoted from the Van Doren NYRB web page. The writer is, of course, W.H. Auden.