Public And Private Man In Shakespeare

The potential duality of human character and its capacity for dissembling was a source of fascination to the Elizabethan dramatists. Where many of them used the Machiavellian picture to draw one fair-faced scheming villain after another, Shakespeare absorbed more deeply the problem of the tensions between the public and private face of man. Originally published in 1983, this book examines the ways in which this psychological insight is developed and modified as a source of dramatic power throughout Shakespeare’s career. In the great sequence of history plays he examines the conflicting tensions of kingship and humanity, and the destructive potential of this dilemma is exploited to the full in the ‘problem plays’. In the last plays power and virtue seem altogether divorced: Prospero can retire to an old age at peace only at the abdication of all his power. This theme is central to the art of many dramatists, but in the context of Renaissance political philosophy it takes on an added resonance for Shakespeare.

All over the world, the statues of Mary are miraculously crying. In the meantime, a journalist in Washington D.C. is diverted away from her own personal demons when she takes it upon herself to question why the Vatican is not declaring these occurrences as miracles after witnessing the unexplainable phenomena herself. The journalist suspects her nightly barage of haunting nightmares about the violent murders of countless women from five thousand year old priestesses to women accused of being witches in the seventeenth century may have something to do with the answer, as she investigates the biggest story of her life. Women all over the world in the 21st century are feeling "the awakening" as the discovery of ancient artifacts are disproving the beliefs set forth by patriarchal religions for thousands of years. When the journalist receives a visitation from a beautiful Goddess who at first appears to be the Virgin Mary, she suddenly realizes that an ancient religious and political cover up has grossly distorted some very important historical truths. As the journalist investigates and begins to publicly write about what she has uncovered, death threats and terror follow next as powerful members of the world's patriarchal religions and the age old male-run organizations that support them fight viciously to keep one of the world's oldest and most deceptive societal form of control against women hidden from the world. But as intimidation and threats increase, so too do the miracles and visitations from the real Sleeping Goddess, as she awakens once again, to bless and protect the world while igniting the hearts and souls of oppressed women everywhere.

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.

This 14-volume set contains titles originally published between 1926 and 1992. An eclectic mix, this collection examines Shakespeare’s work from a number of different perspectives, looking at history, language, performance and more it includes references to many of his plays as well as his sonnets.

Conflict is at the heart of much of Shakespeare’s drama. Frequently there is an overt setting of violence, as in Macbeth, but, more significantly there is often ‘interior’ conflict. Many of Shakespeare’s most striking and important characters – Hamlet and Othello are good examples – are at war with themselves. Originally published in 1987, S. C. Boorman makes this ‘warfare of our nature’ the central theme of his stimulating approach to Shakespeare. He points to the moral context within which Shakespeare wrote, in part comprising earlier notions of human nature, in part the new tentative perceptions of his own age. Boorman shows Shakespeare’s great skill in developing the traditional ideas of proper conduct to show the tensions these ideas produce in real life. In consequence, Shakespeare’s characters are not the clear-cut figures of earlier drama, rehearsing the set speeches of their moral types – they are so often complex and doubting, deeply disturbed by their discordant natures. The great merit of this fine book is that it displays the ways in which Shakespeare conjured up living beings of flesh and blood, making his plays as full of dramatic power and appeal for modern audiences as for those of his own day. In short, this book presents a human approach to Shakespeare, one which stresses that truth of mankind’s inner conflict which links virtually all his plays.

The enigmatic psyche of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark has raised myriad critical opinions, which see him as an indecisive hero, a lunatic, misogynist and a philosopher who failed as a son, lover and prince, leading a life of incest shadowed by inferiority complex and paranoia. The result is the son becoming the bane of his family. The book takes a fresh look at Hamlet, the hero, from a novel angle in the light of the philosophy of the Bhagavadgita, and projects him as a hero who fights many a battle in his mind against his own gunas until he gets refined as a Trigunatita. A glance at Hamlet criticism provides a kaleidoscopic view of the extensive critical readings on Hamlet ever since the text was published. This work captivates converging and diverging elements of the two masterpieces. In Hamlet and Arjuna: Birds of a Feather, Dr. Salia Rex analyses the psyche and actions of Hamlet, the tragic hero of William Shakespeare, and Arjuna, the mythological hero of Veda Vyasa, to unearth their converging elements and quintessential uniqueness as heroes.

The concept of the just war poses one of the most important ethical questions to date. Can war ever be justified and, if so, how? When is a cause of war proportional to its costs and who must be held responsible? The monograph Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare demonstrates that the necessary moral evaluation of these questions is not restricted to the philosophical moral and political discourse. This analysis of Shakespeare's plays, which focuses on the histories, tragedies and Roman plays in chronological order, brings to light that the drama includes an elaborate and complex debate of the ethical issues of warfare. The plays that feature in this analysis range from Henry VI to Coriolanus and they are analysed according to the three Aquinian principles of legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. Also extending the principles of analysis to more modern notions of responsibility, proportionality and the jus in bello-presupposition, this monograph shows that just war theory constitutes a dominant theoretical approach to war in the Shakespearean canon.

Shakespeare’s Big Men examines five Shakespearean tragedies – Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus – through the lens of generative anthropology and the insights of its founder, Eric Gans. Generative anthropology’s theory of the origins of human society explains the social function of tragedy: to defer our resentment against the “big men” who dominate society by letting us first identify with the tragic protagonist and his resentment, then allowing us to repudiate the protagonist’s resentful rage and achieve theatrical catharsis. Drawing on this hypothesis, Richard van Oort offers inspired readings of Shakespeare’s plays and their representations of desire, resentment, guilt, and evil. His analysis revives the universal spirit in Shakespearean criticism, illustrating how the plays can serve as a way to understand the ethical dilemma of resentment and discover within ourselves the nature of the human experience.