Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Shakespeare is, and always was, political. This is the contention of the most challenging of the new critical approaches currently disrupting literary criticism: cultural materialism. It disallows the idea of Shakespeare as a universal genius whose work is great precisely to the extent that it transcends politics and history. Combining historical enquiry, theoretical method, political commitment and textual analysis it produces not just new readings of the plays but distinctive kinds of knowledge about the meanings they achieve in particular social conditions. The essays in part one of Political Shakespeare situate Shakespeare's texts historically and challenge the range of meanings traditionally ascribed to them. Colonialism, authority and its subversion, sexuality and patriarchy, the imagined and actual force of subordinate cultures and voices-- these are some of the main topics of this section. The second half of the book insists on the political dimension of Shakespeare today, in film, education and of course the theatre itself. The diverse and sometimes mutually antagonistic appropriations of Shakespeare are considered not simply as so many separate viewpoints but as contributions to the process whereby our culture is both reproduced and contested. Political Shakespeare carries the most exciting of the current critical perspectives in accessible form into the heartland of traditional ideas of literature. It will challenge and inform experts, students and admires of Shakespeare generally." --,Publisher's Description.

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