Drama. Literary Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. READING THE UNSEEN: (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET is about the presence and significance of offstage action in Hamlet, things we hear about in words but do not see performed physically onstage—things like King Hamlet's murder "while [he] was sleeping in [his] orchard," Ophelia's death in "the glassy stream," Hamlet's visit to Ophelia's "closet ... with his doublet all unbraced," Gertrude and Claudius having sex "in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed." In a series of brilliantly original "close readings," Ratcliffe examines how it is that passages such as these make physically absent things verbally "present," how they "show" us things we do not actually see, how they bring us face to face with the "Words, words, words" that are what Hamlet is, he argues, most of all about.

Author City: BOLINAS, CA USA

Stephen Ratcliffe's more than twenty books of poetry include NEW YORK NOTES (1983), DISTANCE (1986), [WHERE LATE THE SWEET] BIRDS SANG (1989), SOUND/(SYSTEM) (2002), PORTRAITS & REPETITION (2002), REAL (2007), CONVERSATION (2011), and CLOUD / RIDGE (2011). He is also the author of three books of literary criticism: Campion: On Song (1981), LISTENING TO READING (2000), and READING THE UNSEEN: (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET (2009). He lives in Bolinas, California, and teaches at Mills College in Oakland.