David Lucking. Plays Upon the Word: Shakespeare's Drama of
Language. ix+228pp. Collana di Studi e Testi, 22. Lecce:
Millella, 1997. ISBN 88 7048 329 0. Southern Illinois
University-Edwardsville Pendergast, John. "Review of David
Lucking, Plays Upon the Word: Shakespeare's Drama of Language."
Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May, 2000): 10.1-6<URL:
http://purl.oclc.org/emls/06-1/pendrev.htm>. David Lucking's
Plays Upon the Word: Shakespeare's Drama of Language studies the
manner in which "language is an unnamed protagonist" in the six
plays he discusses, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice,
Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Othello, and Coriolanus: "The
common terrain shared by all of the following essays is their
mutual concern with Shakespeare's exploration of the role played
by language in fashioning the reality which human beings
inhabit" (vii). Lucking's focus on Shakespeare's language and
Renaissance linguistic paradigms places his study in the
tradition of such classics as Caroline Spurgeon's Shake