Shakespeare After Theory

Is Shakespeare really our contemporary? What relevance can literature writtenin the 16th century have for us today?In <strong>Shakespeare After Theory</strong> ... » 

Is Shakespeare really our contemporary? What relevance can literature writtenin the 16th century have for us today?In Shakespeare After Theory literary critic David Scott Kastan argues thatShakespeares value for us must first begin with the acknowledgement of hisdistance from us. Otherwise we never can be sure that what we hear are hisconcerns rather than projections of our own. Kastan sees Shakespearesartistry in the earliest conditions of its making in the collaborations of thetheatre in which the plays were acted in the practices of the book trade inwhich they were published and in the unstable political world of late Tudorand Stuart England in which the plays were performed for the public. A responseto recent theory that insists literary value and meaning are contestable andcontingent Shakespeare After Theory aims to recognize the radical historicityof literature itself and restore Shakespeares plays to the rich densities ofthe world that created them. «