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  1. Home
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  3. Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought
  • Cited by 19
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
2009
Online ISBN:
9780511635328
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511635328
Subjects:
Literature, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Information

Book description

This is the first collaborative volume to place Shakespeare's works within the landscape of early modern political thought. Until recently, literary scholars have not generally treated Shakespeare as a participant in the political thought of his time, unlike his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. At the same time, historians of political thought have rarely turned their attention to major works of poetry and drama. A distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors examines the full range of Shakespeare's writings in order to challenge conventional interpretations of plays central to the canon, such as Hamlet; open up novel perspectives on works rarely considered to be political, such as the Sonnets; and focus on those that have been largely neglected, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor. The result is a coherent and challenging portrait of Shakespeare's distinctive engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.

Awards

Winner of the Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2009

Reviews

Review of the hardback:'… one of the most important new studies of Shakespeare to have appeared this century. It takes the discussion of Shakespeare and early modern political thought to a hitherto unseen level of sophistication. For the first time, we are offered a serious and sustained reading of Shakespeare in the light of the 'Cambridge school' of work on the language of political theory … contributors come from diverse perspectives … and yet they create a strikingly unified image of a Shakespeare who is at once a deep political thinker, a consummate master of rhetoric and a wily refusenik when it comes to orthodox positions … deserves a prominent place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Shakespeare - more than that, of anyone interested in the interplay between literature and the history of political thought.'

Jonathan Bate - University of Warwick

Review of the hardback:'… [this] book represents a new synthesis of method and approach, and the definitive starting point for any future exploration of the 'political' Shakespeare.'

Ian Donaldson - University of Melbourne

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