[Downloadable at https://independent.academia.edu/JohnOMeara5 ]
[Also available at a university library near you.]
***Re-prints, with significant revisions, O’Meara’s FIRST TRILOGY: Otherworldly Hamlet, Othello’s Sacrifice, and Prospero’s Powers—with the addition of Shakespeare’s Muse, and an Introduction.
“… rigorous … highly pertinent … the present book, especially the final chapter, “Prospero’s Powers: Shakespeare’s Last Phase,” is the culmination of a long journey [in O’Meara’s study of Shakespeare’s work]. The kind of philosophy underlying The Tempest has its present day equivalence in Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, “that process of living further into the ‘wisdom’ of man” (p.88) which appears to have close links with the Rosicrucian Enlightenment … ” {R.W. Desai, The Critical Endeavour, Vol. XXIV, January 2018}
“the reader will find something provocative in this book … [Shakespeare’s] tragedy … is that since his time we have not been instructed by his pains.” {Jonathan Locke Hart Renaissance and Reformation,Volume 41, Number 4, Fall 2018}
***
“excellent Shakespearean explorations … The idea of Lutheran depravity without Lutheran grace or Lutheran-Calvinist justification is very strong and original …” {Anthony Gash, Drama Head, The University of East Anglia, 2008}
“No other study on Hamlet has yet to consider the way in which the play in its four major aspects of Sorrow, Sexuality, Revenge, and Death, consistently reflects the otherworldly direction of Hamlet's thought and experience …” {Corona Sharp, English Studies in Canada,Volume 19, Number 4, December 1993}
“O’Meara offers a thesis of evolution in which Shakespeare’s concern with the ego and libido ... is freed by the use of imagination and, in later stages, by inspiration and intuition …” {Arthur F. Kinney, English Language Notes, September, 1998}
from a letter by John O’Meara to Gary Geddes
“There remains the need, in a form beyond what we normally think, to continue to "remember" Shakespeare as our chief mentor in tragic experience—such the direction I am taking with this book. The transformation in consciousness we are talking about in the case of Shakespeare (as borne out in the transition from his mature tragedies to his later romances) goes far deeper than anything in the rest of literature, can be said to be of a ‘final’ nature and goes the deepest it possibly can, considering his appearance at an early, prophetic stage of the historical evolutionary process in question—such would be the point of view taken on his achievement based on the revelations Steiner made about that evolutionary process in our time. I'm assuming you understood that Remembering in fact reprints pieces that were formerly published separately: the Hamlet piece in 1991, the Othello piece in 1996, Prospero's Powers in 2006 and Shakespeare's Muse in 2007, the last two having appeared in an early form in previous copy (with a limited distribution) respectively in 2002 and 2000. There is that additional dimension to the "remembering" that is taking place in my book. With this book I am myself remembering by turning back to those pieces and re-publishing them. There is a sonnet by Shakespeare quoted at the far end of the book (did you notice?) in which I take up Shakespeare's point of view with his lover as my own in relation to Shakespeare, offering my excuses for forgetting Shakespeare, as I had for a few years, until I came back to him and gave him once again center stage, with this book…”
117
Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And giv’n to time your own dear purchased right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my willfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise accumulate.
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate,
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.