Philosophical Shakespeares

Shakespeare continues to articulate the central problems of our intellectual inheritance. The plays of a Renaissance playwright still seem to be fundamental to our understanding and experience of modernity.
Key philosophical questions concerning value, meaning and justice continue to resonate in Shakespeare's work. In the course of rethinking these issues, Philosophical Shakespeares actively encourages the growing dissolution of boundaries between literature and philosophy. The approach throughout is interdisciplinary, and ranges from problem-centred readings of particular plays to more general elaborations of the significance of Shakespeare in relation to individual thinkers or philosophical traditions.

John Joughin is Senior lecturer in English at the University of Central Lancashire. He is editor of Shakespeare and National Culture(1997).