Topics

Major Works

Commentary

  • Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth

    - A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth (London: Macmillan, 1904)
    Excerpt: “In these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies of Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of Shakespeare’s place in the history of either English literature or of the drama in general. No… More

  • Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

    - A. C. Bradley, “Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra,” in Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London: MacMillan, 1909), 279–308
    Excerpt: Coleridge’s one page of general criticism on Antony and Cleopatra contains some notable remarks. “Of all Shakespeare’s historical plays,” he writes, “Antony and Cleopatra is by far the most wonderful. There is not one in… More

  • Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy

    - A. C. Bradley, “Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy,” in Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London: MacMillan, 1909), 69-95
    Excerpt: Since Aristotle dealt with tragedy, and, as usual, drew the main features of his subject with those sure and simple strokes which no later hand has rivalled, the only philosopher who has treated it in a manner both original and searching is Hegel. I… More

  • Coriolanus, A Miscellany

    - A. C. Bradley, Coriolanus, A Miscellany (London: Macmillan, 1929)
    Excerpt: Coriolanus is beyond doubt among the latest of Shakespeare’s tragedies; there is some reason for thinking it the last. Like all those that succeeded Hamlet, it is a tragedy of vehement passion; and in none of them are more striking… More

  • The Elizabethan World Picture

    - E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (London: Macmillan, 1942)
    Summary from the Publisher: This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Shakespeare and… More

  • Shakespeare’s History Plays

    - E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1944)
    Summary from the Publisher: This is an appraisal of each history play which shows how Shakespeare drew both on learned sources and popular drama to create something uniquely his own. He examines the myths surrounding the Tudors and Elizabethan beliefs about… More

  • Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear

    - John F. Danby, Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear (London: Faber & Faber, 1948)
    Excerpt: We go to great writers for the truth. Or for whatever reason we go to them in the first place it is for the truth we return to them, again and again. What this truth is, both fort he poetry which we call universal and for the criticism which tries to… More

  • This Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear

    - Robert Heilman, This Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1948)

  • The Meaning of Shakespeare

    - Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951)
    Excerpt: Do not misunderstand me. Shakespeare was a genius and a writer. We are just common readers. I am not suggesting that we are entitled to take any such freedom with his plays as he took with his sources. But I am suggesting that his attitude toward… More

  • Magic in the Web: Language and Action in Othello

    - Robert Heilman, Magic in the Web: Language and Action in Othello (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1956)
    Summary from the Publisher: In his earlier work on King Lear, Mr. Heilman combined a number of critical procedures to form a new and important approach to Shakespearian criticism. His study of Othello displays the maturity of insight and skill in analysis the… More

  • Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare

    - Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), 8 vols
    Summary from the Publisher: Shakespeare’s writing is filled with ideas, images, plots and characters borrowed or interpreted from other dramatists and poets. This work gathers together the sources and traces the relationship of these texts to… More

  • The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

    - Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, 2 vols., illustrated edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1958)
    Summary from the Publisher: This authoritative study by a distinguished scholar presents a brilliant panorama of Italian Renaissance life, explaining how and why the period constituted a cultural revolution. Author Jacob Burckhardt chronicles the transition… More

  • Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy

    - C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)
    Summary from Publisher: In this classic work, acclaimed Shakespeare critic C. L. Barber argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare’s comedies. Brilliantly interweaving… More

  • Shakespeare: Between Socrates and Existentialism

    - Walter Kaufmann, “Shakespeare: Between Socrates and Existentialism,” from Shakespeare to Existentialism (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1960), 1-24
    Summary from the Publisher: Explores such themes as philosophy versus poetry, post-World War II German thought, art, tradition, and truth in a collection of essays.

  • A Short Treatise on the Novel

    - José Ortega y Gasset, “A Short Treatise on the Novel,” Meditations on Quixote, trans. Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961)

  • Brothers and Others

    - W. H. Auden, “Brothers and Others,” in The Dyer’s Hand, 218–37
    Excerpt: In The Merchant of Venice and Othello Shakespeare depicts a very different kind of society. Venice does not produce anything itself, either raw materials or manufactured goods. Its existence depends upon the financial profits which can be made by… More

  • Hegel: On Tragedy

    - Anne and Henry Paolucci, eds., Hegel: On Tragedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1962)
    Summary from the Publisher: First published by Doubleday in 1962, Hegel on Tragedy is once again available. This unique collection of passages drawn from Hegel’s major works contains a wealth of material on modern and ancient drama, tragedy in… More

  • The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy

    - Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)
    Summary from the Publisher: This provocative volume, one of the most important interpretive works on the philosophical thought of the Renaissance, has long been regarded as a classic in its field. Ernst Cassirer here examines the changes brewing in the early… More

  • Shakespeare’s Politics By Allan Bloom

    - Bloom, Allan. Shakespeare’s Politics. With an essay by Harry V. Jaffa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
    From the publisher: 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… More

  • A Natural Perspective: Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance

    - Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective: Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965)
    From a review in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1, 1971: It is unfair to ask a book to be something other than what it sets out to be; it does not seem unfair to ask of a theory that it come down, finally, to cases. Northrop Frye’s wonderfully… More

  • On Christian and Jew: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice

    - Allan Bloom, “On Christian and Jew: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, 13–34
    Excerpt: Venice is a beautiful city, full of color and variety. To this day, it represents the exotic and the exciting to the minds of those who know it – a port with all the freedom that proximity to the sea seems to encourage and with the presence of… More

  • The Morality of the Pagan Hero: Julius Caesar

    - Allan Bloom, “The Morality of the Pagan Hero: Julius Caesar,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, 75–112
    Excerpt: Julius Caesar is the story of a man who became a god. Beyond his merely human achievements — the destruction of the Republic and the establishment of a universal monarchy — he was worshiped as a divinity, as were many of those who… More

  • Cosmopolitan Man and the Political Community: Othello

    - Allan Bloom, “Cosmopolitan Man and the Political Community: Othello,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, 35–74
    Excerpt: In the world of today, the existence of a common humanity has been established, negatively at least, by a common fear of a common extinction. Only rational beings fear thermonuclear annihilation; only rational beings can create such means of… More

  • The Limits of Politics: King Lear, Act I, Scene i

    - Harry V. Jaffa, “The Limits of Politics: King Lear, Act I, Scene i,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, 113–45
    Excerpt: According to that profound student of Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, the most difficult task of statesmanship is that of providing, not for the foundation, but for the perpetuation, of political institutions. If the political institutions are the… More

  • Shakespeare and the Common Understanding

    - Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: Free Press, 1967)
    From a review in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1972: This excellent book combines sound scholarship with a contemporary sensibility so unpretentiously that its originality may not at first be apparent. Professor Rabkin has profited from the… More

  • The Shakespearian City

    - W.H. Auden, “The Shakespearian City,” The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (New York: Vintage, 1968), 171-274
    Excerpt: We do not know what Shakespeare’s personal beliefs were, not his opinion on any subject (though most of us privately think we do). All we can notice is an ambivalence in his feelings towards his characters which is, perhaps, characteristic of… More

  • The Joker in the Pack

    - W. H. Auden, “The Joker in the Pack,” in The Dyer’s Hand, 246–72
    Excerpt: If any consideration of the Tragedy of Othello must primarily be occupied not with its official hero but with its villain. I cannot think of any other play in which only one character performs all personal actions – all the deeds are… More

  • An Approach to Shakespeare

    - Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969)

  • Tragedy and Philosophy

    - Walter Kaufmann, Tragedy and Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969)
    Summary from the Publisher: A critical re-examination of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche on tragedy. Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic… More

  • Macbeth’s Last Words

    - José Benardete, “Macbeth’s Last Words,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 1, no. 1 (1970): 63–75
    Excerpt: Last words, one supposes, have always been felt to be especially poignant. At any rate, “they say the tongues of dying men / Enforce attention.” Although Macbeth is denied a death speech proper, he is given what comes as close as… More

  • Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition

    - Reuben Brower, Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)
    From a review in the Journal of English Germanic Philology (Vol. 72, No. 2, 1973): Professor Brower vigorously pursues the old argument that Shakespeare’s tragedies are in the direct line of the Graeco-Roman heroic tradition: Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and… More

  • Shakespeare’s Pastoral Comedy

    - Thomas McFarland, Shakespeare’s Pastoral Comedy (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1972)
    Summary from the Publisher: Thomas McFarland presents a personal theory of comedy which shows a wide knowledge of comic theory and practice, the origins and nature of the comic vision, the pastoral, the pastoral elegy, and the golden age. He deftly draws… More

  • The Stranger in Shakespeare

    - Leslie Fiedler, The Stranger in Shakespeare (New York: Stein & Day, 1973)
    Summary from the Publisher: In this provocative book, originally published in 1972, Leslie Fiedler turns his critical eye on what he calls the “borderline figure” in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Neither hero nor villain, this figure… More

  • The Jew as Stranger

    - Leslie Fiedler, “The Jew as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 85–136
    Excerpt: If Shakespeare’s first historical tetralogy had ended with Joan’s condemnation, to turn from it to The Merchant of Venice would seem a transition in tone, perhaps, but not in theme. Its last words, however, are not a father’s curse… More

  • The Moor as Stranger

    - Leslie Fiedler, “The Moor as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 139–98
    Excerpt: Othello is one of the oddest of Shakespeare’s plays and, therefore, one of the most difficult to interpret, not only because of its equivocal tone but also because of its anomalous structure, which, in fact, determines and explains that tone.… More

  • The New World Savage as Stranger

    - Leslie Fiedler, “The New World Savage as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 199–253
    Excerpt: If Othello disconcerts by suggesting at its very end a mythological equivalence of Indian and Jew, The Tempest even more disconcertingly begins proposing a similar equivalence of Indian and Africa. Throughout the play, in fact, Shakespeare… More

  • William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life

    - Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975)
    Summary from the Publisher: Covering 400 years of Shakespeare scholarship, Schoenbaum’s now classic William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life received high acclaim from critics and scholars. The New York Review of Books called it “a… More

  • Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire by Paul Cantor

    - Cantor, Paul A. Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
    From the Publisher: This innovative work examines the political and historical settings of Shakespeare’s Roman plays Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, with frequent references to Julius Caesar. The author believes that in these plays Shakespeare not… More

  • The Republican Regime

    - Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), 53-124
    Excerpt: “We are introduced to the Republican regime in Coriolanus in a moment of crisis. Faced with open rebellion against their authority, the city’s rulers must give an account of themselves: I tell you, friends, most charitable care Have the… More

  • The Politics of Empire

    - Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire, 125-208
    Excerpt: “In approaching Antony and Cleopatra many critics assume the play deals with the opposition of the public and private life, that it involves a straightforward confrontation between politics in the abstract and love in the abstract. For this… More

  • Antiquity Forgot: Essays on Shakespeare, Bacon, and Rembrandt

    - Howard White, Antiquity Forgot: Essays on Shakespeare, Bacon, and Rembrandt (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978)
    Summary from the Publisher: It was probably Rousseau who first thought of dreams as ennobling experiences. Anyone who has ever read Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire must be struck by the dreamlike quality of Rousseau’s meditations. This dreamlike quality… More

  • Copp’d Hills Towards Heaven: Shakespeare and the Classical Polity

    - Howard White, Copp’d Hills Towards Heaven: Shakespeare and the Classical Polity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978)
    Excerpt: “There are those, critics and literature professors, in particular, who regard the theater as a branch of literature. When they say so, there are those whose workaday world in is in the theater, who rise in scorn, undiluted with sadness, and… More

  • A New Mimesis: Shakespeare and the Representation of Reality

    - A. D. Nuttall, A New Mimesis: Shakespeare and the Representation of Reality (London: Methuen, 1983)
    Summary from the Publisher: In pursuit of a powerful, common-sense argument about realism, renowned scholar A. D. Nuttall discusses English eighteenth-century and French neo-classical conceptions of realism, and considers Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The… More

  • Julius Caesar

    - Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 185–257
    Excerpt: Regimes are founded, destroyed, or perpetuated during extreme times, time which command almost universal attention. Revolutions are like bonfires; no one can avoid staring at them and, still, no one likes to find himself in their fiery center. The… More

  • Coriolanus

    - Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare, 52–184
    Excerpt: “Sterne says that, if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress.” Coriolanus is a desert without a cypress. Not even the sentimental Sterne could fine something to love in it. There is so little to love in the play. Its chief… More

  • Antony and Cleopatra

    - Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare, 258–77
    Excerpt: In Pompey and throughout the play we see the fading of Roman virtue. It survives, but fitfully, in the intermittent courage of Antony; in his magnaminity it glows but ember-like; and in his sensuality it bows before a new god, both unRoman and… More

  • Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

    - Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)
    Summary from the Publisher: When it was first published, Radical Tragedy was hailed as a groundbreaking reassessment of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. An engaged reading of the past with compelling contemporary significance, Radical… More

  • Hamlet: The Cosmopolitan Prince

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Hamlet: The Cosmopolitan Prince,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 12, no. 1 (1984): 15-29
    Excerpt: Few critics have trouble themselves over the question: Would Prince Hamlet have made a good King of Denmark? Preoccupied with the problem of why Hamlet fails to act for much of the play, critics have understandably been reluctant to speculate about… More

  • Hamlet, or the Slave-Moralist Turned Ascetic Priest

    - Ekbert Fass, “Hamlet, or the Slave-Moralist Turned Ascetic Priest,” in Tragedy and After: Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 111–28

  • Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism

    - Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, eds., Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985)
    Summary from the Publisher: The new wave of cultural materialists in Britain and new historicists in the United States here join forces to depose the sacred icon of the “eternal bard” and argue for a Shakespeare who meditates and exploits… More

  • Shakespeare’s Scepticism

    - Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987)
    Summary from the Publisher: Explores the question of value in Shakespeare’s drama. Bradshaw maintains that Shakespeare was preoccupied with the question throughout his career, and the plays themselves show how opposing visions of nature yield opposing… More

  • Religion and the Limits of Community in The Merchant of Venice

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Religion and the Limits of Community in The Merchant of Venice,” Soundings, 70, nos. 1–2 (1987): 239–58

  • Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energies in Renaissance England

    - Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energies in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)
    From a review in Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1988: Stephen Greenblatt’s latest work, a collection of five essays, continues his exploration into the relationship between society and literature in Renaissance England. He describes his… More

  • Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor

    - John E. Alvis, Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1989)
    Summary from the Publisher: Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, is not simply an in-depth study of Shakespeare’s plays, it is also a comprehensive survey of the perennial issues facing political societies which claim to be committed to both… More

  • The Idea of the Renaissance

    - William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989)
    From a review in the South Atlantic Review, Vol. 55, No. 4, Nov. 1999: This book by W. Kerrigan and G. Braden deals with the question of historical periodization–a question which is once again at the forefront of current academic debates–and… More

  • Honorable Ceremony and Glorious Spectacle: The Career of Henry Monmouth

    - John Alvis, “Honorable Ceremony and Glorious Spectacle: The Career of Henry Monmouth,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 197–250

  • Caesarian Honors, Brutus’ Dilemma, and the Advent of Christianity

    - John Alvis, “Caesarian Honors, Brutus’ Dilemma, and the Advent of Christianity,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 125–63

  • Christian Melancholy and Roman Honor

    - John Alvis, “Christian Melancholy and Roman Honor,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 59–97

  • Coriolanus and Aristotelian Magnanimity

    - John Alvis, “Coriolanus and Aristotelian Magnanimity,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 101–23

  • Antony and Cleopatra: The Religion of Eros and the Limits of Personal Love

    - John Alvis, “Antony and Cleopatra: The Religion of Eros and the Limits of Personal Love,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 165–95

  • Postscript: The Tempest

    - John Alvis, “Postscript: The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 251–61

  • Richard II

    - Allan Bloom, “Richard II,” in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960-1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 83-93
    Excerpt: “Shakespeare not only presents us with the spectacle of a man becoming a god (Julius Caesar) but in Richard II also permits us to witness a god becoming a man. As a consequence of what one might call political logic, Richard was thought to be,… More

  • Othello: The Erring Barbarian Among the Super-subtle Venetians

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Othello: The Erring Barbarian Among the Super-subtle Venetians,” Southwest Review, 75, no. 3 (1990): 296–319

  • A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare

    - René Girard, A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
    Summary from the Publisher: In this ground-breaking work, one of our foremost literary and cultural critics turns to the major figure in English literature, William Shakespeare, and proposes a dramatic new reading of nearly all his plays and poems. The key to… More

  • Julius Caesar

    - David Lowenthal, “Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare and the Good Life, 109–41

  • Love and Friendship

    - Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)
    Summary from the Publisher: Written with the erudition and wit that made The Closing of the American Mind a #1 best-seller, Love and Friendship is a searching examination of the basic human connections at the center of the greatest works of literature and… More

  • Misrepresentations: Shakespeare and the Materialists

    - Graham Bradshaw, Misrepresentations: Shakespeare and the Materialists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)
    Summary from the Publisher: Just at the moment when conflicts between critical “isms” are threatening to turn the study of English literature into a game park for endangered texts, Bradshaw arrives with a work of liberating wit and insight. His… More

  • The End of the Ancient Republic: Essays on Julius Caesar

    - Jan H. Blits, The End of the Ancient Republic: Essays on Julius Caesar (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993)
    From a review by Patrick Coby, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 46, Issue 1: The End of the Ancient Republic  by Jan Blits is a slim volume of four essays on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Although written independently of one another, and in some… More

  • Antony and Cleopatra

    - Allan Bloom, "Antony and Cleopatra," in Love and Friendship, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1993.
    “Shakespeare was the first philosopher of history. He self-consciously tried to understand the minds of men and women of the most diverse times and places, always with the view to how the permanent problems of human nature are addressed and what are the… More

  • Romeo and Juliet

    - Allan Bloom. "Romeo and Juliet" in Love and Friendship. Simon and Schuster. New York, NY, 1993.
    Excerpt: “Romeo and Juliet is always greeted by the young with immediate sympathy, somehow expressing the essence of love, what it ought to be, a permanent possibility, fulfillment of every renascent hope and a thing to be admired. However far away this… More

  • Measure for Measure

    - Allan Bloom, "Measure for Measure," in Love and Friendship, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1993.
    Excerpt: “Measure for Measure is another play that is dominated by a priest’s plot, but, unlike the plot in Romeo and Juliet, this equally contrived solution to a problem works. The happy result makes us laugh. The solution to sexual problems is… More

  • Troilus and Cressida

    - Allan Bloom, "Troilus and Cressida" in Love and Friendship, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1993.
    Excerpt: “Troilus and Cressida, perhaps the bleakest of all Shakespeare’s plays, presents itself as a wildly witty travesty of antiquity’s greatest heroes. Shakespeare’s message seems to be that heroes are not heroes, because they are… More

  • A Winter’s Tale

    - Allan Bloom, "The Winter's Tale" in Love and Friendship, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1993.
    Excerpt: “The Winter’s Tale takes place in Sicily and Bohemia at an uncertain date, and its characters seem to partake in equal measure of the religion and life of old Greece and Rome and of Christianity. It begins with the celebration of a… More

  • Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference

    - John Gillies, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
    From a review by Richard Helgerson, Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 2, Summer, 1996: What connection have Shakespeare’s plays to the “new geography” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? By at least one account, that of J.D.… More

  • Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus

    - Anne Barton, “Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,” in Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 136–60
    Excerpt: In writing Coriolanus, Shakespeare depended primarily upon Plutarch, as he had for Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. Once again, North’s translation provided him with the dramatic skeleton, and even some of the actual words, of his… More

  • Shakespeare’s Political Pageant: Essays in Politics and Literature

    - Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan, eds., Shakespeare’s Political Pageant: Essays in Politics and Literature (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996)
    Summary from the Publisher: 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… More

  • Shakespeare and the Jews

    - James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
    Summary from the Publisher: Going against the grain of the dominant scholarship on the period, which generally ignores the impact of Jewish questions in early modern England, James Shapiro presents how Elizabethans imagined Jews to be utterly different from… More

  • Wisdom and the Law: Thoughts on the Political Philosophy of Measure for Measure

    - Barbara Tovey, “Wisdom and the Law: Thoughts on the Political Philosophy of Measure for Measure,” in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant, eds. Alulis and Sullivan, 261–87
    Excerpt: The opening lines of Measure for Measure and The Tempest are remarkably similar. In both plays a superior summons a subordinate, calling him by name or title and giving him commands. Thus at the very outset of these plays Shakespeare suggests that… More

  • Nature and Convention in King Lear

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Nature and Convention in King Lear,” in Poets, Princes, and Private Citizens: Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics, eds. Joseph M. Knippenberg and Peter Augustine Lawler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 213–33
    Excerpt: At the center of King Lear, the mad king has an extraordinary vision. Staring at the near-naked beggar, Tom o’ Bedlam, in the midst of a raging storm, Lear sees all of humanity reduced to this bare level: Is man no more than this? Consider him… More

  • King Lear: The Tragic Disjunction of Wisdom and Power

    - Paul A. Cantor, “King Lear: The Tragic Disjunction of Wisdom and Power,” in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant, eds. Alulis and Sullivan, 189–209
    Excerpt: Many critics regard King Lear as the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays and also as his most tragic. Indeed, many would claim that it is the most tragic play ever written. And yet, curiously, in most critical accounts of the play, it is difficult… More

  • The Insufficiency of Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order

    - Jan H. Blits, The Insufficiency of Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996)
    Summary from the Publisher: The first scene-by-scene philosophical study of any Shakespeare play, this book demonstrates why Shakespeare’s poetic writings still arouse and sustain serious inquiry and reflection. Using a combination of philosophical… More

  • Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance

    - Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996)
    Summary from the Publisher: In this provocative and wholly absorbing work, Lisa Jardine offers a radical interpretation of the Renaissance, arguing that the creation of culture during that time was inextricably tied to the creation of wealth — that the… More

  • Shakespeare and the Good Life: Ethics and Politics in Dramatic Form

    - David Lowenthal, Shakespeare and the Good Life: Ethics and Politics in Dramatic Form (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997)
    Summary from the Publisher: In this engaging and accessible book, distinguished scholar David Lowenthal demonstrates that each of Shakespeare’s plays examines certain fundamental issues of moral and political life. Lowenthal discusses some of the… More

  • Shylock and the Jewish Question

    - Martin Yaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
    Summary from the Publisher: Much attention has been paid to the place of Shylock in the history of anti-Semitism. Most scholars have agreed with Harold Bloom that Shakespeare’s famous villain is drawn with a “murderous anti-Semitism” and… More

  • Julius Caesar

    - David Lowenthal, “Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare and the Good Life, 109-41.
    A provocative claim that Julius Caesar orchestrated his own assassination.

  • Shakespeare’s Plutarch

    - Mary Ann McGrail, ed., Shakespeare’s Plutarch, Poetica 48 (1997)
    Table of Contents: Special Issue: Shakespeare’s Plutarch edited by Mary Ann McGrail Introduction The Anachronism of Source Criticism: Shakespeare’s Plutarch / Mary Ann McGrail Section I: Plutarch in the Roman Plays The Shaping of Coriolanus:… More

  • Post-Colonial Shakespeares

    - Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin, eds., Post-Colonial Shakespeares (London: Routledge, 1998)
    Summary from the Publisher: Post-Colonial Shakespeares is an exciting step forward in the dialogue between postcolonial studies and Shakespearean criticism. This unique volume features original work by some of the leading critics within the growing field of… More

  • Shakespeare’s Twenty-First Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money

    - Frederick Turner, Shakespeare’s Twenty-First Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
    Summary from the Publisher: “I love you according to my bond,” says Cordelia to her father in King Lear. As the play turns out, Cordelia proves to be an exemplary and loving daughter. A bond is both a legal or financial obligation, and a… More

  • A Companion to Shakespeare

    - David Scott Kastan, ed., A Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999)
    Summary from the Publisher: This Companion to Shakespeare is an indispensable book for students and teachers of Shakespeare, indeed for anyone with an interest in his plays. It offers a remarkably innovative and comprehensive picture of the theatrical,… More

  • Shakespeare as Political Thinker

    - Alvis, John E., and Thomas G. West, eds. Shakespeare as Political Thinker. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2000.
    From the Publisher: The essays contained in this book proceed from the common conviction that Shakespeare’s poetry conveys a wisdom about politics commensurate with his artistry. Well-known thinkers discuss Shakespeare’s understanding of politics,… More

  • Lectures on Shakespeare

    - W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, ed. Arthur Kirsch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)
    Summary from the Publisher: “W. H. Auden, poet and critic, will conduct a course on Shakespeare at the New School for Social Research beginning Wednesday. Mr. Auden has announced that in his course . . . he proposes to read all Shakespeare’s plays… More

  • Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars

    - Sharon O’Dair, Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000)
    Summary from the Publisher: Class, Critics, and Shakespeare is a provocative contribution to “the culture wars.” It engages with an ongoing debate about literary canons, the democratization of literary study, and of higher education in general.… More

  • The Golden Casket: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice

    - Barbara Tovey, "The Golden Casket: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice," in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 261–87
    Excerpt: The teaching that appearance often belies reality figures prominently in many Shakespearean plays. It seems fair to say, however, that there is no play in which that teaching is given such frequent explicit utterance as The Merchant of… More

  • Christian Kings and English Mercuries: Henry V and the Classical Tradition of Manliness

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Christian Kings and English Mercuries: Henry V and the Classical Tradition of Manliness,” in Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield, eds. Mark Blitz and William Kristol (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 74–90

  • Chastity as a Political Principle: An Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure

    - Harry V. Jaffa, “Chastity as a Political Principle: An Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 203–40
    Excerpt: The city of Vienna is in bad shape. It has been misruled, or allowed to go without being ruled, for no less than fourteen years. The nominal ruler is a philosopher. However good philosophic rule may be in theory, in practice it seems to be nearly the… More

  • Macbeth and the Gospelling of Scotland

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Macbeth and the Gospelling of Scotland,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 315–51
    Excerpt: Shakespeare develops the tragedy of Macbeth out of this tension between the heroic warrior’s ethic and the gospel truth. The story of Macbeth gave Shakespeare a chance to portray a world in which Christianity has changed the fabric of… More

  • Prospero’s Republic: The Politics of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Prospero’s Republic: The Politics of Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 241–59
    Excerpt: To talk about the politics of Shakespeare’s The Tempest may seem like a boorish intrusion upon the visionary and dreamlike mood of the play. And yet just as such an intrusion is dramatized within the play, if we consider the way in which… More

  • Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear

    - Leon Craig, Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001)
    Summary from the Publisher: This innovative work argues that Shakespeare was as great a philosopher as he was a poet, and that his greatness as a poet derived even more from his power as a thinker than from his genius for linguistic expression. Accordingly,… More

  • Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays

    - Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001)
    Summary from the Publisher: Provides fresh interpretations of five of Shakespeare’s history plays (King John, Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V), each guided by the often criticized assumption that Shakespeare can teach us something… More

  • Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human Soul

    - Jan H. Blits, Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human Soul (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2001)
    Summary from the Publisher: The human soul is for pre-modern philosophers the cause of both thinking and life. This double aspect of the soul, which makes man a rational animal, expresses itself above all in human action. Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human… More

  • Tyranny in Shakespeare

    - Mary Ann McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2002)
    Summary from the Publisher: Even the most explicitly political contemporary approaches to Shakespeare have been uninterested by his tyrants as such. But for Shakespeare, rather than a historical curiosity or psychological aberration, tyranny is a perpetual… More

  • Shakespeare’s Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics

    - Stephen W. Smith and Travis Cutright, eds., Shakespeare’s Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2002)
    Summary from the Publisher: What were Shakespeare’s final thoughts on history, tragedy, and comedy? Shakespeare’s Last Plays focuses much needed scholarly attention on Shakespeare’s “Late Romances.” The work—a collection of… More

  • Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

    - Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
    Summary from the Publisher: Did Shakespeare and his contemporaries think at all in terms of “race”? Examining the depiction of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in Shakespeare’s plays, Ania Loomba considers how seventeenth-century… More

  • Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Tragicomedy and the Philosophic Hero

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Tragicomedy and the Philosophic Hero,” in Shakespeare’s Last Plays, eds. Smith and Curtright, 1–15
    Excerpt: Throughout his career Johann Goethe proved himself to be a profound student of Shakespeare and nowhere more so than in the opening scene of the second part of Faust. As Faust lies shattered by his tragic experiences in Part One, a group of spirits… More

  • Shakespeare the Thinker

    - A. D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003)
    Summary from the Publisher: A. D. Nuttall’s study of Shakespeare’s intellectual preoccupations is a literary tour de force and comes to crown the distinguished career of a Shakespeare scholar. Certain questions engross Shakespeare from his early plays to… More

  • Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

    - Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (New York: Palgrave, 2003)
    Summary from the Publisher: Turning Turk looks at contact between the English and other cultures in the early modern Mediterranean, and analyzes the representation of that experience on the London stage. Vitkus’s book demonstrates that theEnglish… More

  • Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

    - Lukas Erne, Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
    Summary from the Publisher: Now in a new edition, Lukas Erne’s groundbreaking study argues that Shakespeare, apart from being a playwright who wrote theatrical texts for the stage, was also a literary dramatist who produced reading texts for the page.… More

  • Shakespeare: Hamlet by Paul Cantor

    - Cantor, Paul A. Shakespeare: Hamlet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
    From the Publisher: Paul Cantor presents a clearly structured introduction to Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. After examining Hamlet’s status as tragic hero and central enigma of delayed revenge in light of the play’s Renaissance context,… More

  • Shakespeare and Renaissance Europe

    - Andrew Hadfield and Paul Hammond, eds., Shakespeare and Renaissance Europe (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2005)
    Summary from the Publisher: This collection of essays explores the diverse ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries experienced and imagined Europe. The book charts the aspects of European politics and culture which interested Renaissance travellers,… More

  • Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare

    - John A. Murley and Sean D. Sutton, eds., Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006)
    Summary from the Publisher: Political science is becoming ever more reliant on abstract statistical models and almost divorced from human judgment, hope, and idealism. William Shakespeare offers the political scientist an antidote to this methodological… More

  • Is All the World a Stage? Marriage and a Metaphor in As You Like It

    - Mera J. Flaumenhaft, “Is All the World a Stage? Marriage and a Metaphor in As You Like It,” in Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare, eds. Murley and Sutton, 71–104
    Excerpt: As the action falls still toward the end of act II of As You Like It, a strange fellow names Jaques steps forward to deliver one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare. Announcing that, “All the world’s a stage / and all the men and… More

  • Shakespeare’s Henry V: From the Medieval to the Modern World

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare’s Henry V: From the Medieval to the Modern World,” in Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare, eds. Murley and Sutton, 11–32
    Excerpt: Henry V is one of ten English history plays Shakespeare wrote. Ten out of a total of thirty-seven plays is a substantial portion of Shakespeare’s output, a fact that suggests that he was especially interested in English history and the… More

  • Spirit, Soul, and City: Shakespeare’s Coriolanus

    - Jan H. Blits, Spirit, Soul, and City: Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006)
    Summary from the Publisher: Spirit, Soul, and City offers a new reading of Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s most political play and the last of his great tragedies. Portraying the founding of the Roman republic and the life and soul of its legendary warrior,… More

  • Shakespeare After All

    - Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All (New York: Random House, 2008)
    Summary from the Publisher: In Shakespeare After All Marjorie Garber – professor of English and director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University – gives us a magisterial work of criticism, authoritative and engaging, based on her hugely popular… More

  • The Cause of Thunder: Nature and Justice in King Lear

    - Paul A. Cantor, “The Cause of Thunder: Nature and Justice in King Lear,” in King Lear: New Critical Essays, ed. Jeffrey Kahan (London: Routledge, 2008), 230–52
    Excerpt: As many critics have recognized, the central themes of King Lear are nature and justice, and in exploring their relation, the play investigates the nature of justice and the justice of nature. At the very center of the play, Act 3, scene 4, the king… More

  • Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time Into the Play

    - Carl Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time Into the Play, trans. David Pan and Jennifer R. Rust (New York: Telos, 2009)
    Summary from the Publisher: Though Carl Schmitt is best known for his legal and political theory, his 1956 Hamlet or Hecuba provides an innovative and insightful analysis of Shakespeare’s tragedy in terms of the historical situation of its creation.… More

  • New Heaven, New Earth: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

    - Jan H. Blits, New Heaven, New Earth: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009)
    Summary from the Publisher: Patterned after his previous books on Shakespeare’s plays, Jan H. Blits’s New Heaven, New Earth is a scene-by-scene, line-by-line philosophical study of Antony and Cleopatra. Combining close attention to detail with… More

  • Shakespeare’s Freedom

    - Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare’s Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)
    Summary from the Publisher: Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes—of claims for the absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the young, and the gentle over the baseborn. With… More

  • Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?

    - James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010)
    Summary from the Publisher: For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare’s death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to… More

  • Souls With Longing: Representations of Honor and Love in Shakespeare

    - Bernard J. Dobski and Dustin A. Gish, eds., Souls With Longing: Representations of Honor and Love in Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011)
    Summary from the Publisher: The works of William Shakespeare vividly represent for our admiration and study a pageant of souls with longing in whose wake we ceaselessly follow. Through some of his most memorable characters, Shakespeare illuminates the nature… More

  • The Spectrum of Love: Nature and Convention in As You Like It

    - Paul A. Cantor, “The Spectrum of Love: Nature and Convention in As You Like It,” in Souls With Longing, eds. Dobski and Gish, 53–86
    Excerpt: As You Like It is the prototypical Shakespearean romantic comedy in its structure. The play begins in a world of sterile and deadening convention, with the older generation tyrranizing over the younger. The oppressed characters must flee to a more… More

  • Shakespeare and Politics: What a Sixteenth-Century Playwright Can Teach Us About Twenty-First Century Politics

    - Bruce Altschuler and Michael Genovese, eds., Shakespeare and Politics: What a Sixteenth-Century Playwright Can Teach Us About Twenty-First Century Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2013)
    Summary from the Publisher: William Shakespeare, more than any other author, was able to capture the essence of human nature in all its manifestations. His political plays offer enduring insights into our humanity, our vanity, our noble and baser drives, what… More

  • Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom

    - Timothy W. Burns, Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
    Summary from the Publisher: Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom offers careful interpretations of five Shakespearean plays—Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and The Tempest—with a view to the enduring guidance those plays can… More

  • Shakespeare and the Body Politic

    - Bernard J. Dobski and Dustin A. Gish, eds., Shakespeare and the Body Politic (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013)
    Summary from the Publisher: Metaphors animate Shakespeare’s corpus, and one of the most prominent is the image of the body. Sketched out in the eternal lines of his plays and poetry, and often drawn in exquisite detail, variations on the body metaphor… More

  • Being and Having in Shakespeare

    - Katharine Eisaman Maus, Being and Having in Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
    Summary from the Publisher: What is the relation between who a person is, and what he or she has? A number of Shakespeare’s plays engage with this question, elaborating a “poetics of property” centering on questions of authority and entitlement, of… More

  • Antony and Cleopatra: Empire, Globalization, and the Clash of Civilizations

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Antony and Cleopatra: Empire, Globalization, and the Clash of Civilizations,” in Shakespeare and Politics, eds. Altschuler and Genovese

  • Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of the Ancient World by Paul Cantor

    - Cantor, Paul A. Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of the Ancient World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
    From the publisher: Paul A. Cantor first probed Shakespeare’s Roman plays—Coriolanus, Julius Caeser, and Antony and Cleopatra—in his landmark Shakespeare’s Rome (1976). With Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy, he now argues that these plays form an… More

  • Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicist Vision

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicist Vision,” Academic Questions, Fall 1993, 21-36.
    A critique of an important contemporary political approach to Shakespeare.

  • Playwright of the Globe

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Playwright of the Globe,” Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006/2007, 34-40.
    Excerpt: In June 2006, I was scheduled to fly back from a trip to Sicily via Frankfurt am Main. Having seen the airport many times but not the city itself, I decided to spend a few days there. But as I discovered when I went to book a hotel, there was a… More

  • Against Chivalry: The Achievement of Cervantes and Shakespeare

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Against Chivalry: The Achievement of Cervantes and Shakespeare,” Weekly Standard, May 2, 2016, 24-28—on the relation of Shakespeare’s comedies to his histories
    Excerpt: April 23, 1616 — a date which will live in infamy. At least in literary circles. For on that date both Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare died. To be sure, they did not die on the same day. At the time, Spain had adopted the new Gregorian… More

  • Shakespeare and Politics Special Issue

    - Catherine Zuckert, ed., Review of Politics—Special Issue on Shakespeare and Politics, Fall 2016
    Table of Contents: “Introduction,” by Catherine H. Zuckert “Shakespeare’s Politics,” by Elizabeth Frazer “Ulysses Is Not the Hero of Troilus and Cressida,” by Tim Spiekerman “Philosophy (and Athens) in Decay:… More

  • Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition

    - Gordon Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985)
    About the Author: Gordon Braden is Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His publications also include The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry (1978), The Idea of the Renaissance (1989), and Petrarchan Love and the Continental… More

  • Love in the Western World

    - Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (New York: Pantheon, 1956)
    Summary from the Publisher: In this classic work, often described as “The History of the Rise, Decline, and Fall of the Love Affair,” Denis de Rougemont explores the psychology of love from the legend of Tristan and Isolde to Hollywood. At the… More

  • The Renaissance Philosophy of Man

    - Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr., eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956)
    Summary from the Publisher: Despite our admiration for Renaissance achievement in the arts and sciences, in literature and classical learning, the rich and diversified philosophical thought of the period remains largely unknown. This volume illuminates three… More

  • Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece

    - Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone, 1988)
    Summary from the Publisher: Jean Pierre-Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, published here as a single volume,… More

  • Shakespeare and Republicanism

    - Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
    Summary from the Publisher: Andrew Hadfield reveals for the first time exactly how Shakespeare was influenced by contemporary strands in political thought critical of the English crown. Although he was often seen as a conservative political thinker… More

  • Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self

    - Mark Edmundson, “Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self,” Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 137-84
    Summary from the Publisher: In a culture of the Self that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, we spare little thought for the great ideals—courage, contemplation, and compassion—that once gave life meaning. Here, Mark Edmundson… More

  • The Great Eclipse: Tragic Form as Deconsecration of Sovereignty

    - Franco Moretti, “The Great Eclipse: Tragic Form as Deconsecration of Sovereignty,” Signs Taken For Wonders (London: Verso, 1983), 42-82
    Summary from the Publisher: Shakespearean tragedy and Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and Ulysses, Frankenstein and The Waste Land—all are celebrated “wonders” of modern literature, whether in its mandarin or popular form. However, it is the fact that these… More

  • Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning

    - Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)
    Review Comments: “Rabkin selects The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Macbeth, Coriolanus, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest as the plays on which to build his argument, and he teaches us a great deal… More

  • Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare’s Method

    - Leon Harold Craig, Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare’s Method (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)
    Summary from the Publisher: Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet, has been the subject of more scholarly analysis and criticism than any other work of literature in human history. For all of its generally acknowledged virtues, however, it has also been… More

  • The Philosopher’s English King

    - Leon Harold Craig, The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015)
    Summary from Publisher: This book on Shakespeare’s Henriad studies the tetralogy as a work of political thought. Leon Craig, author of two previous volumes on Shakespeare’s political thought, argues that the four plays present Shakespeare’s… More

  • The Famous Victories of William Shakespeare: The Life of Henry the Fifth

    - Pamela K. Jensen, “The Famous Victories of William Shakespeare: The Life of Henry the Fifth,” in Poets, Princes, and Private Citizens: Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics, eds. Joseph M. Knippenberg and Peter Augustus Lawler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 235-69
    Summary from the Publisher: This collection of original and insightful essays was written by teachers seeking to restore literature as a powerful teaching tool in the undergraduate classroom. This book rejects postmodern theorizing, opting instead to assert… More

  • Rome and the Spirit of Caesar

    - Jan H. Blits, Rome and the Spirit of Caesar: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015)
    Summary from the Publisher: Rome and the Spirit of Caesar, providing a fresh interpretation of Julius Caesar, is a thorough examination of Shakespeare’s presentation of the final throes of republican Rome’s political decay and demise and the rise of… More

  • The Soul of Athens: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

    - Jan H. Blits, The Soul of Athens: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003)
    Summary from the Publisher: The Soul of Athens: Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” studies Shakespeare’s portrayal of the founding of Athens through a close reading of one of the Bard’s most memorable comedies.… More

  • Shakespeare — “For all time”

    - Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare—‘For all time’”, Public Interest, Winter 1993, 34-48
    Excerpt: “The content of the curriculum tends to be the focus of contemporary debates on the humanities in college education, as if our only concern should be exactly which books are being taught on our campuses. Many people, for example, are… More

  • The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare, Language, and Politics

    - Paul A. Cantor, “The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare, Language, and Politics,” St. John’s Review, Summer 1983, 19-24
    Excerpt: “In recent years, several critics, myself included, have been trying to call attention to the importance of politics as a subject in Shakespeare’s plays. This attempt to expand the scope of Shakespeare criticism has met with considerable… More

  • The Rejection of Falstaff

    - Andrew Cecil Bradley, “The Rejection of Falstaff,” Oxford Lectures on Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909), 247-75
    Excerpt: “Of the two persons principally concerned in the rejection of Falstaff, Henry, both as Prince and as King, has received, on the whole, full justice from readers and critics. Falstaff, on the other hand, has been in one respect the most… More

  • Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man

    - Carson Holloway, “Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man,” Review of Politics 69 (2007): 353-74
    Abstract: This paper seeks to illuminate magnanimity by examining Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in light of Aristotle’s account of greatness of soul in the Nicomachean Ethics. I contend that contemplation of Coriolanus’s similarity to… More

  • The Dialectic of Right and Power in Eight of Shakespeare’s Plays

    - Michael McCanles, “The Dialectic of Right and Power in Eight of Shakespeare’s Plays,” Dialectical Criticism and Renaissance Literature (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975), 159-211

  • Aristotle: On Poetics

    - Seth Benardete and Michael Davis, trans., Aristotle: On Poetics (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2002)
    Aristotle’s much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form. The late Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a view to rendering Aristotle’s text into… More

  • The Poetics of Aristotle

    - Stephen Halliwell, The Poetics of Aristotle: translation and commentary (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1987)
    Incorporating the best modern work on the Poetics, Halliwell’s translation is aimed at those who want a reliable version of Aristotle’s ideas along with concise and stimulating guidance. A running commentary explains the structure and detail of… More

  • Aristotle’s Poetics

    - Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986)
    This useful book, an extended study of the Poetics, treats such subjects as Aristotle’s general aesthetic views; mimesis; pity, fear, and katharsis; recognition, reversal, and hamartia; tragic misfortune; the non-tragic genres; and the historical… More

  • Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics

    - Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)
    Aimed at deepening our understanding of the Poetics, this collection places Aristotle’s analysis of tragedy in its larger philosophical context. In these twenty-one essays, philosophers and classicists explore the corpus of Aristotle’s work in… More

Multimedia

  • Paul Cantor on Shakespeare’s Rome

    - Paul Cantor IV, Conversations with Bill Kristol, September 25, 2017.
    Cantor discusses the Roman plays with Bill Kristol on Conversations with Bill Kristol.

  • Shakespeare’s Anatomy of Love: Much Ado about Nothing

    - Paul Cantor, "Shakespeare's Anatomy of Love: Much Ado About Nothing," South Texas College, April 6, 2021.
    Paul Cantor lectures virtually on Much Ado about Nothing at South Texas College, April 6, 2021.

  • Paul Cantor on “Henry V”

    - Paul Cantor, "On Henry V," Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University, November 15, 2020.
    Professor Paul Cantor lectures on the question of politics and religion in Shakespeare’s Henry V.  This talk was hosted by Yeshiva University’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought as part of a Jack Miller Center/Straus Center seminar… More

  • “The Sin Upon My Head”–Henry V and the Hebrew Bible

    - "The sin upon my head”: The Hebrew Bible in Shakespeare’s Henry V, Twice Blest Podcast, Straus Center, Yeshiva University, Released: August 24, 2021.
    Paul Cantor discussed the role of the Hebrew Bible in Shakespeare’s Henry V with Shaina Trapedo of Yeshiva University.