Shakespeare's Possible Worlds

Simon Palfrey offers a new way of understanding Shakespeare's playworlds, with piercingly original readings of language, scenes, and characters.

Simon Palfrey offers a new way of understanding Shakespeare's playworlds. Going right to the heart of early modern popular drama, both how it works and why it matters, this book's piercing close readings discover the multiplying life in Shakespeare's language, scenes, and characters as never before.New methods are needed to do justice to Shakespeare. His work exceeds conventional models, past and present, for understanding playworlds. In this book, Simon Palfrey goes right to the heart of early modern popular drama, revealing both how it works and why it matters. Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare gives independent life to all his instruments, and to every fraction and fragment of the plays. Palfrey terms these particles 'formactions' - theatre-specific forms that move with their own action and passion. Palfrey's book is critically daring in both substance and format. Its unique mix of imaginative gusto, thought experiments, and virtuosic technique generates piercing close readings of the plays. There is far more to playlife than meets the eye. Influenced by Leibniz's visionary original model of possible worlds, Palfrey opens up the multiple worlds of Shakespeare's language, scenes, and characters as never before.