Introduction to Part I - Shakespeare and the Political

Summary

The first Introduction to Part I defines the book’s three central concepts of the political, the aesthetic, and the utopian and shows a Shakespearean trajectory within the sequence of plays about power that grows more and critical before turning to utopian alternatives to power politics. It then reviews the history of how Shakespearean critics have framed and conceptualized the theme of power in Shakespeare, with emphasis on the second half of the twentieth century up to recent decades to provide context for what follows. Finally, the last section takes up the issue of how Shakespeare’s approach to politics evolves and changes over the approximately twenty years of his writing career, from an initial period of political eclecticism in the early histories and Titus, to a period of the acceptance of amoral power in the second Henriad and Julius Caesar, to the tragic period, which turns to indictments of political cruelty and immorality, and finally to a late period of utopian alternatives to politics.