The Sweet Silvery Sayings of Shakespeare on the Softer Sex

This anthology of Shakespeare passages about women, published in 1877, reveals Victorian middle-class reading tastes.

William Shakespeare (Author)

9781108001298, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 July 2009

344 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.44 kg

The anonymous 'Old Soldier' who compiled this anthology of passages from Shakespeare, published in 1877, states in the preface that he was inspired to make his selection by a passage in The Gentle Life: Essays in Aid of the Formation of Character, by the now largely forgotten Victorian essayist James Hain Friswell: 'If a man wanted to make a sugar-sweet book ... let him go through the plays of the great national Poet, and make an extract of those passages wherein he has exalted woman.' In thirty-three sections (four plays are omitted), extensive quotations present examples of 'exalted woman' and give an insight into the taste of the educated middle class in the mid-Victorian period.

1. King Richard III
2. Romeo and Juliet
3. Julius Caesar
4. Troilus and Cressida
5. Antony and Cleopatra
6. Hamlet
7. Cymbeline
8. The Comedy of Errors
9. King Lear
10. King John
11. Coriolanus
12. King Henry VIII
13. First Part of King Henry IV
14. Second Part of King Henry IV
15. First Part of King Henry VI
16. Third Part of King Henry VI
17. King Richard II
18. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
19. Titus Andronicus
20. The Tempest
21. Two Gentlemen of Verona
22. Measure for Measure
23. Twelfth Night
24. The Merry Wives of Windsor
25. Much Ado About Nothing
26. A Midsummer Night's Dream
27. Love's Labour's Lost
28. The Merchant of Venice
29. Othello
30. As You Like It
31. All's Well that Ends Well
32. The Taming of the Shrew
33. The Winter's Tale
Notes.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]