Perspectives On Politics In Shakespeare

Shows us that Shakespeare's poetic imagination displays the essence of politics and inspires reflection on the fundamental questions of statesmanship and political leadership. This book explores themes such as classical republicanism and liberty, the rule of law and morality, the nature and limits of statesmanship, and the character of democracy.

Taking the classical view that the political shapes man's consciousness, Allan Bloom considers Shakespeare as a profoundly political Renaissance dramatist. He aims to recover Shakespeare's ideas and beliefs and to make his work once again a recognized source for the serious study of moral and political problems. In essays looking at Julius Caesar, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, Bloom shows how Shakespeare presents a picture of man that does not assume privileged access for only literary criticism. With this claim, he argues that political philosophy offers a comprehensive framework within which the problems of the Shakespearean heroes can be viewed. In short, he argues that Shakespeare was an eminently political author. Also included is an essay by Harry V. Jaffa on the limits of politics in King Lear. "A very good book indeed . . . one which can be recommended to all who are interested in Shakespeare." —G. P. V. Akrigg "This series of essays reminded me of the scope and depth of Shakespeare's original vision. One is left with the impression that Shakespeare really had figured out the answers to some important questions many of us no longer even know to ask."-Peter A. Thiel, CEO, PayPal, Wall Street Journal Allan Bloom was the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor on the Committee on Social Thought and the co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago. Harry V. Jaffa is professor emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School.

"Brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable."—Philip Roth World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright’s insight into bad (and often mad) rulers. Examining the psyche—and psychoses—of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, and Coriolanus, Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the disasters visited upon the societies over which these characters rule. Tyrant shows that Shakespeare’s work remains vitally relevant today, not least in its probing of the unquenchable, narcissistic appetites of demagogues and the self-destructive willingness of collaborators who indulge them.

This book develops an original approach to theories of political power and seeks to show the particular value of examining these issues through the frame of Shakespeare's plays.

This important collection of essays from Shakespeare Survey, the first published in 1975, shows a full range of writing on Shakespeare and politics with shifts of focus as diverse as biography, text and contexts, language and film, and from perspectives that are literary, historical, religious, theoretical and cultural. A new introductory article by John J. Joughin provides a commentary on the essays, relates them to other work in the field and gives an over-view of the subject. The comprehensive collection is a stimulating and provocative introduction to a subject that is complex but never dull.

Literary works, through their very personal means of characterization, reveal the direct effect of politics on individuals in a way a political treatise cannot. The distinguished contributors to this volume share the belief that Shakespeare is the author who most effectively sets forth the multifarious pageant of politics. Shakespeare's rich canon presents monarchy and republic, tyrant and king, thinker and soldier, and Christian and pagan. The twelve essays in Shakespeare's Political Pageant discuss a broad range of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry from the perspective of the political theorist. This innovative book demonstrates the immense value of seeing Shakespeare's plays in the context of political philosophy. It will be an important source for students and scholars of both political science and literature.

Leading literary scholars and historians examine Shakespeare's engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.

This book argues that Shakespeare was permanently preoccupied with the brutality, corruption, and ultimate groundlessness of the political order of his state, and that the impact of original Tudor censorship, supplemented by the relatively depoliticizing aesthetic traditions of later centuries, have together obscured the consistent subversiveness of his work. Traditionally, Shakespeare’s political attitudes have been construed either as primarily conservative, or as essays in richly imaginative ambiguation, irreducible to settled viewpoints. Fitter contends that government censorship forced superficial acquiescence upon Shakespeare in establishment ideologies — monarchic, aristocratic and patriarchal — that were enunciated through rhetorical set pieces, but that Shakespeare the dramatist learned from Shakespeare the actor a variety of creative methods for sabotaging those perspectives in performance in the public theatres. Using historical contextualizations and recuperation of original performance values, the book argues that Shakespeare emerged as a radical writer not in middle age with King Lear and Coriolanus — plays whose radicalism is becoming widely recognized — but from his outset, with Henry VI and Taming of the Shrew. Recognizing Shakespeare’s allusiveness to 1590s controversies and dissident thought, and recovering the subtextual politics of Shakespeare’s distinctive stagecraft reveals populist, at times even radical meaning and a substantially new, and astonishingly interventionist, Shakespeare.