Wrinkled Deep in Time

Rather than pursuing a single-minded but limited agenda, the purpose of this book is to inform readers with the richness of Shakespeare's drama, including a cornucopia of amusing, poignant, inspiring, and sad observations about what it means for all of us to grow older. -- James P. Bednarz, author of Shakespeare and the Poets' War The many readers who justly admired and learned from Maurice Charney's previous book, All of Shakespeare, will find this volume a worthy successor on an important and underinvestigated subject. One comes away from Wrinkled Deep in Time with one's understanding quietly transformed. -- Michael Goldman, Princeton University Wrinkled Deep in Time is a readable, sensitive, and often moving account of Shakespeare's treatment of aging. The reader has the pleasure of listening to the voice of a master teacher speaking about works he knows well and loves. -- David Scott Kastan, Yale University Maurice Charney illuminates every Shakespearean topic to which he turns his attention. In this study, he deals with Shakespeare's varied portrayals of old age and the aging process, tracing the many losses and the few, though precious, gains that Shakespeare associated with getting old. The key is Charney's acute sensitivity to language and the shadings of meaning in Shakespeare's rich vocabulary. Proposing typologies that clarify the full range of what it meant, for Shakespeare, to grow old, Charney confirms the playwright's deep wisdom about the range of human experience. -- Harry Keyishian, Fairleigh Dickinson University

Shakespeare was acutely aware of our intimate struggles with aging. His dramatic characters either prosper or suffer according to their relationship with maturity, and his sonnets eloquently explore time's ravaging effects. "Wrinkled deep in time" is how the queen describes herself in Antony and Cleopatra, and at the end of King Lear, there is a tragic sense that both the king and Gloucester have acquired a wisdom they otherwise lacked at the beginning of the play. Even Juliet matures considerably before she drinks Friar Lawrence's potion, and Macbeth and his wife prematurely grow old from their murderous schemes. Drawing on historical documents and the dramatist's own complex depictions, Maurice Charney conducts an original investigation into patterns of aging in Shakespeare, exploring the fulfillment or distress of Shakespeare's characters in combination with their mental and physical decline. Comparing the characterizations of elderly kings and queens, older lovers, patriarchal men, matriarchal women, and the senex--the stereotypical old man of Roman comedy--with the history of life expectancy in Shakespeare's England, Charney uncovers similarities and differences between our contemporary attitudes toward aging and aging as it was understood more than four hundred years ago. From this dynamic examination, a new perspective on Shakespeare emerges, one that celebrates and deepens our knowledge of his subtler themes and characters.