Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought

Cambridge University Press, 9/10/2009
EAN 9780521768085, ISBN10: 052176808X

Hardcover, 302 pages, 22.9 x 15.7 x 2.3 cm
Language: English

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.

Introduction David Armitage, Conal Condren and Andrew Fitzmaurice
Part I. Contexts
1. Shakespeare's properties David Armitage
2. The active and contemplative lives in Shakespeare's plays Cathy Curtis
3. Shakespeare and the ethics of authority Stephen Greenblatt
4. Shakespeare and the politics of superstition Susan James
Part II. The Court
5. Counsel, succession and the politics of Shakespeare's Sonnets Cathy Shrank
6. Educating Hamlet and Prince Hal Aysha Pollnitz
7. The corruption of Hamlet Andrew Fitzmaurice
8. Unfolding 'the properties of government'
the case of Measure for Measure and the history of political thought Conal Condren
9. Shakespeare and the politics of co-authorship
Henry VIII Jennifer Richards
Part III. The Commonwealth
10. Putting the city into Shakespeare's city comedy Phil Withington
11. Talking to the animals
persuasion, counsel and their discontents in Julius Caesar David Colclough
12. Political rhetoric and citizenship in Coriolanus Markku Peltonen
13. Shakespeare and the best state of a commonwealth Eric Nelson
Afterword
Shakespeare and humanist culture Quentin Skinner.

'This volume is 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 that is associated above all with Quentin Skinner, who provides a magisterial afterword. What is remarkable about the collection is the way in which its contributors come from diverse perspectives - here we have distinguished philosophers and historians of ideas as well as the distinctive voice of Stephen Greenblatt - 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. With great originality, the contributors show that even a work as apparently slight as The Merry Wives of Windsor has a powerful political dimension. This is a book that 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