Talking Books Update

Due to changes in publishing brought about by Covid combined with the increasingly common insistence by publishers that they only send eBooks to reviewers, this “Update” is much delayed and down to just two books plus a mention of the new edition of an old book, but I will keep readers informed on current publications by former “Talking Books” guests when their publishers cooperate. Below is a discussion of Shakespeare Survey 74 and an updated edition by Emma Smith, but first a note on the most recent book by Peter Holland.

I missed the Arden hardcover of Shakespeare and Forgetting in 2021, but the 2023 paperback is now here. Holland takes a comprehensive view of forgetting that covers when Shakespeare’s characters forget (Fluellen forgets Falstaff’s name), are accused of forgetting (the Ghost fears Hamlet had forgotten his mission), are advised to forget (as Mowbray and Bolingbroke are by Richard II) or not to forget (Bottom instructs the other actors in the interlude to “be perfect”), forgive by forgetting (the King tells the Countess and Helena that he chooses not to remember Bertram’s bad behavior), fail to forget (Leontes cannot forget his wrongs to his wife), forget to act appropriately (the warning by Hubert to Salisbury), and warn against forgetting for the purposes of rhetoric (Prospero asks Ariel, “dost though forget/from what a torment I did free thee?”). This an incomplete list excerpted from the first two chapters of Holland’s book which studies…