Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought

Leading literary scholars and historians examine Shakespeare's engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.

This volume is the first historically informed collection of essays focussing on Shakespeare's engagement with the political thinking of his time. Covering the full range of Shakespeare's work, a distinguished team of contributors provides a coherent and challenging portrait of Shakespeare's engagement with the questions of early modern political thought.This is the first collaborative volume to place Shakespeare's works within the landscape of early modern political thought. Until recently, literary scholars have not generally treated Shakespeare as a participant in the political thought of his time, unlike his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. At the same time, historians of political thought have rarely turned their attention to major works of poetry and drama. A distinguished international and interdisciplinary team of contributors examines the full range of Shakespeare's writings in order to challenge conventional interpretations of plays central to the canon, such as Hamlet; open up novel perspectives on works rarely considered to be political, such as the Sonnets; and focus on those that have been largely neglected, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor. The result is a coherent and challenging portrait of Shakespeare's distinctive engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.