Shakespeare's Individualism

Abstract

Providing a provocative and original perspective on Shakespeare, Peter Holbrook argues that Shakespeare is an author friendly to such essentially modern and unruly notions as individuality, freedom, self-realization and authenticity. These expressive values vivify Shakespeare's own writing; they also form a continuous, and a central, part of the Shakespearean tradition. Engaging with the theme of the individual will in specific plays and poems, and examining a range of libertarian-minded scholarly and literary responses to Shakespeare over time, Shakespeare's Individualism advances the proposition that one of the key reasons for reading Shakespeare today is his commitment to individual liberty - even as we recognize that freedom is not just an indispensable ideal but also, potentially, a dangerous one. Engagingly written and jargon free, this book demonstrates that Shakespeare has important things to say about fundamental issues of human existence.

Shakespeare, William

“…Jacob Burckhardt celebrates the Renaissance as the birth of individualism, and many critics see Shakespeare as sympathetic to this development (Holbrook 2010;Strier 2011).…”

Shakespeare and Senecan Tragedy

“…12 Peter Holbrook, who is explicit about wanting to champion a romantic-era idea of Shakespeare, makes the tradition's underlying claims more directly: "more than any other pre-Romantic writer, Shakespeare is committed to fundamentally modern values: freedom, individuality, self-realization, authenticity." 13 Historicist and posthumanist modes of criticism flourish in contemporary Shakespeare studies, of course, but the idea of Shakespeare as representatively modern in his approach to writing tragic character remains entrenched as part of the implicit common sense of the Shakespeare industry.…”