Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 764

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
Macaulay's marginalia in his copy of Hamlet, by the scene with the strolling player's declamation about Pyrrhus: "the only thing deserving of much admiration in the speech is the manner in which it is raised above the ordinary diction which surrounds it. It is poetry within poetry, - a play within a play. It was therefore proper to make its language bear the same relation to the language, in which Hamlet and Horatio talk, which the language of Hamlet and Horatio bears to the common style of conversation among gentlemen. This is a sufficient defence of the style, which is undoubtedly in itself far too turgid for dramatic, or even for lyric, composition."
Century: 1800-1849, 1850-1899
Date: Between 1800 and 1859
Country: n/a
Time: n/a
Place: n/a
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Thomas Babington Macaulay
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 25 Oct 1800
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Historian and Critic
Religion: Church of England
Country of origin: England
Country of experience: n/a
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: William Shakespeare
Title: Hamlet
Genre: Drama
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 764  
Source - Print  
  Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
  Editor: George Otto Trevelyan
  Title: The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay
  Place of Publication: Oxford
  Date of Publication: 1978
  Vol: 2
  Page: 412-3
  Additional comments: In chapter on Macaulay's marginal notes

Citation: Thomas Babington Macaulay, George Otto Trevelyan (ed.), The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (Oxford, 1978), 2, p. 412-3, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=764, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)