This section of the bibliography deals only with the 17 plays covered in the two lecture series. The books listed in sections 1) and 2) of this bibliography contain valuable chapters and essays on these individual plays and others. For fuller bibliographical information on several of the books below, see listings in sections 1) and 2) of this bibliography. For a much fuller play-by-play bibliography of political analyses of Shakespeare, see Perspectives on Politics in Shakespeare, eds. Murley and Sutton, 243–60.
Antony and Cleopatra
John Alvis, “Antony and Cleopatra: The Religion of Eros and the Limits of Personal Love,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 165–95
Jan H. Blits, New Heaven, New Earth: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009)
Allan Bloom, “Antony and Cleopatra,” Love and Friendship, 297-325
A. C. Bradley, “Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra,” in Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London: MacMillan, 1909), 279–308
Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of the Ancient World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)
Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 125–208
Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare, 258–77
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—an attempt to relate the treatment of love to the treatment of politics in one of Shakespeare’s comedies
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
Coriolanus
John Alvis, “Coriolanus and Aristotelian Magnanimity,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 101–23
Anne Barton, “Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,” in Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 136–60
Jan H. Blits, Spirit, Soul, and City: Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006)
A. C. Bradley, Coriolanus, A Miscellany (London: Macmillan, 1929)
Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Rome, 53–124
Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy
Carson Holloway, “Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Aristotle’s Great-Souled Man,” Review of Politics 69 (2007): 353-74
Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare, 52–184
Hamlet
John Alvis, “Christian Melancholy and Roman Honor,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 59–97
Jan H. Blits, Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human Soul (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2001)
Paul A. Cantor, “Hamlet: The Cosmopolitan Prince,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 12, no. 1 (1984): 15–29
Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare: Hamlet (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Leon Harold Craig, Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare’s Method (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)
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—a Nietzschean reading of Hamlet
Carl Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time Into the Play, trans. David Pan and Jennifer R. Rust (New York: Telos, 2009)—a major twentieth-century political thinker analyzes the relation of Hamlet to the politics of Shakespeare’s day
History Plays (Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two, Henry V)
John Alvis, “Honorable Ceremony and Glorious Spectacle: The Career of Henry Monmouth,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 197–250
Allan Bloom, “Richard II,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 59-70
Allan Bloom, “Hal and Falstaff, Montaigne and La Boétie,” Love and Friendship, 401-28
Andrew Cecil Bradley, “The Rejection of Falstaff,” Oxford Lectures on Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909), 247-75
Paul A. Cantor, “The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare, Language, and Politics,” St. John’s Review, Summer 1983, 19-24—on Henry V and the politics of language
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
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
Leon Harold Craig, The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015)
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
Tim Spiekerman, Shakespeare’s Political Realism: The English History Plays (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001)
Vickie Sullivan, “Princes to Act: Henry V as the Machiavellian Prince of Appearance,” in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant, eds. Alulis and Sullivan, 125-52
Julius Caesar
John Alvis, “Caesarian Honors, Brutus’ Dilemma, and the Advent of Christianity,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 125–63
Jan H. Blits, The End of the Ancient Republic: Essays on Julius Caesar (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993)
Jan H. Blits, Rome and the Spirit of Caesar: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015)
Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy
Allan Bloom, “The Morality of the Pagan Hero: Julius Caesar,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, eds. Bloom and Jaffa, 75–112
David Lowenthal, “Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare and the Good Life, 109–41—a provocative claim that Julius Caesar orchestrated his own assassination
Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 185–257
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
Paul A. Cantor, “King Lear: The Tragic Disjunction of Wisdom and Power,” in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant, eds. Alulis and Sullivan, 189–209
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
John F. Danby, Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear (London: Faber & Faber, 1948)
Robert Heilman, This Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1948)
Harry V. Jaffa, “The Limits of Politics: King Lear, Act I, Scene i,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, eds. Bloom and Jaffa, 113–45—a pioneering attempt to explain Lear’s original plan for the division of the kingdom
Macbeth
José Benardete, “Macbeth’s Last Words,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 1, no. 1 (1970): 63–75
Jan H. Blits, The Insufficiency of Virtue: Macbeth and the Natural Order (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996)
Paul A. Cantor, “Macbeth and the Gospelling of Scotland,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 315–1
The Merchant of Venice
W. H. Auden, “Brothers and Others,” in The Dyer’s Hand, 218–37
Allan Bloom, “On Christian and Jew: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, eds. Bloom and Jaffa, 13–34
Paul A. Cantor, “Religion and the Limits of Community in The Merchant of Venice,” Soundings, 70, nos. 1-2 (1987): 239–58
Leslie Fiedler, “The Jew as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 85–136
Barbara Tovey, “The Golden Casket: An Interpretation of The Merchant of Venice,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 261–87
Martin Yaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Jan H. Blits, The Soul of Athens: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003)
David Lowenthal, “The Portrait of Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare and the Good Life, 259-71
Howard White, “The Foundation of the Polity,” Copp’d Hills Towards Heaven, 43-64
Othello
W. H. Auden, “The Joker in the Pack,” in The Dyer’s Hand, 246–72
Allan Bloom, “Cosmopolitan Man and the Political Community: Othello,” in Shakespeare’s Politics, eds. Bloom and Jaffa, 35–74
Paul A. Cantor, “Othello: The Erring Barbarian Among the Super-subtle Venetians,” Southwest Review, 75, no. 3 (1990): 296–319
Leslie Fiedler, “The Moor as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 139–98
Robert Heilman, Magic in the Web: Language and Action in Othello (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1956)
Pamela K. Jensen, “‘This is Venice’: Politics in Shakespeare’s Othello,” in Shakespeare’s Political Pageant, eds. Alulis and Sullivan, 155-87
Romeo and Juliet
Allan Bloom, “Romeo and Juliet,” Love and Friendship, 273-96
Pamela K. Jensen, “Love, Honor, and Community in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare and the Body Politic, eds. Dobski and Gish, 95-116
David Lowenthal, “Love, Sex, and Shakespeare’s Intention in Romeo and Juliet,” in Souls with Longing, eds. Dobski and Gish, 169-84
The Tempest
John Alvis, “Postscript: The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, 251–61
Paul A. Cantor, “Prospero’s Republic: The Politics of Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, eds. Alvis and West, 241–59
Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Tragicomedy and the Philosophic Hero,” in Shakespeare’s Last Plays, eds. Smith and Curtright, 1–15
Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare—‘For all time’”, Public Interest, Winter 1993, 34-48
Leslie Fiedler, “The New World Savage as Stranger,” in The Stranger in Shakespeare, 199–253
Twelfth Night
C. L. Barber, “Testing Courtesy and Humanity in Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, 240-61
