Description: The chapters in Shakespeare and the Body Politic examine the tensions between the passion and ambition of individuals and the limits of the political communities that encompass and inform them. Shakespeare provides his audiences and readers both timely and timeless political l...
Review Quotes:
"[T]he articles provide interesting and instructive perspectives. Teachers and students within the undergraduate forums of several disciplines should find ideas to explore here, as well as a useful bibliography." --Sixteenth Century Journal
"The abundance of fresh insights in this collection owes to the contributors' uncommon familiarity with issues that distinguish early modern from classical political thought." --John Alvis, professor and director, American Studies Program, University of Dallas ""This lively collection of essays, assembled by Bernard J. Dobski and Dustin Gish, organizes its contents under three rubrics: the heart, the limbs, and the head. The book is an insightful exploration of one of Shakespeare's most enduring metaphors: that of the political state as a sentient body whose parts, in Menenius's memorable fable in Coriolanus, correspond to the human frame, with the belly as the senators of Rome, sending nourishment through the "rivers" of the blood to all "the cranks and offices of man" only to meet with the insolent defiance of the "mutinous members," the populace, the outward limbs. This concept, explored with fresh analysis and fruitful observations in this collection, gives us much to think about in Shakespeare's world where princes, statesmen, nobles, clergymen, and commoners are all political actors. The body politic, in the words of this volume's editors, is 'perhaps the most vivid and enduring image in speech describing political community ever proposed.'"" --David Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago