Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare

"Some have claimed that the early modern period lacked a concept of privacy. Huebert shows conclusively that not only was the concept highly developed but that early modern people valued their privacy highly. His book is unique in its wide generic and chronological range and in its willingness to address many different forms of privacy (the domestic, the sexual, the devotional) under the same rubric." -- Katharine Eisaman Maus, Department of English, University of Virginia "Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare is a fine and nuanced account of where and how the line between public and private was drawn in the early modern era." -- Andrew Wallace, Department of English, Carleton University

In Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare, Ronald Huebert challenges these assumptions by marshalling evidence that it was in Shakespeare’s time that the idea of privacy went from a marginal notion to a desirable quality.

For at least a generation, scholars have asserted that privacy barely existed in the early modern era. The divide between the public and private was vague, they say, and the concept, if it was acknowledged, was rarely valued. In Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare, Ronald Huebert challenges these assumptions by marshalling evidence that it was in Shakespeare’s time that the idea of privacy went from a marginal notion to a desirable quality.

The era of transition begins with More’s Utopia (1516), in which privacy is forbidden. It ends with Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), in which privacy is a good to be celebrated. In between come Shakespeare’s plays, paintings by Titian and Vermeer, devotional manuals, autobiographical journals, and the poetry of George Herbert and Robert Herrick, all of which Huebert carefully analyses in order to illuminate the dynamic and emergent nature of early modern privacy.