Shakespeare’s Humanism

Renaissance humanists believed that if you want to build a just society you must begin with the facts of human nature. This book argues that the idea of a universal human nature was as important to Shakespeare as it was to every other Renaissance writer. In doing so it questions the central principle of postmodern Shakespeare criticism. Postmodernists insist that the notion of a defining human essence was alien to Shakespeare and his contemporaries; as radical anti-essentialists, the Elizabethans were, in effect, postmodernists before their time. In challenging this claim, Shakespeare’s Humanism shows that for Shakespeare, as for every other humanist writer in this period, the key to all wise action was ‘the knowledge of our selves and our human condition.’

• Re-emphasizes the central importance of human nature in Renaissance humanist thought • Challenges postmodern Shakespeare criticism which views Renaissance culture through the lens of modern behaviour • Includes analysis of a number of key Shakespeare plays as well as works by Shakespeare’s contemporaries

Introduction; 1. Shakespeare and English humanism; 2. Gender; 3. Value pluralism; 4. Social justice; 5. Men, women and civilisation; 6. Love and death; 7. History; 8. Genius; 9. Anti-humanism.