Shakespeare and Politics

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.

• Wide-ranging and ever-popular subject • Tackled from diverse set of perspectives: historical, linguistic, cultural, literary • Newly commissioned introduction and 15 previously published essays, reprinted from Shakespeare Survey

1. Shakespeare and politics: an introduction John J. Joughin; 2. Shakespeare and politics Blair Worden; 3. Henry VIII and the deconstruction of history Peter L. Rudnytsky; 4. Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Anne Barton; 5. Richard II and the realities of power S. Schoenbaum; 6 Plutarch, insurrection, and dearth in Coriolanus David George; 7. Some versions of coup d’etat, rebellion and revolution Pierre Sahel; 8. Language, politics, and poverty in Shakespearian drama William C. Carroll; 9. ‘Demystifying the mystery of state’: King Lear and the world turned upside down Margot Heinemann; 10. Venetian culture and the politics of Othello Mark Matheson; 11. The Bard and Ireland: Shakespeare’s Protestantism as politics in disguise Paul Franssen; 12. Henry V as working-house of ideology Gunter Walch; 13. ‘Fashion it thus’: Julius Caesar and the politics of theatrical representation John Drakakis; 14. Take me to your Leda Terence Hawkes; 15. Macbeth on film: politics E. Pearlman; 16. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet: everything’s nice in America? Barbara Hodgdon.