Full Description
Argues that the Essais of Montaigne were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean drama
A new way of accounting for the different sorts of plays that Shakespeare wrote later in his careerA detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection, from the eighteenth century to the present dayCase studies that, through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, shows the shared concerns of the authorsA new approach that differs from the more typical method of looking merely for verbal echoes, resulting in a deeper, richer sense of the way that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne shaped his writingIn this revisionist study, Peter G. Platt provides a detailed history of the literary-critical interest in the Montaigne-Shakespeare connection from the eighteenth century to the present day. Through sustained close-readings of Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's plays, Platt explores both authors' approaches to self, knowledge and form that stress fractures, interruptions and alternatives. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric and the alterations in Shakespeare's acting company helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare's reading of Montaigne is an under-recognised driving force in these later plays.
Contents
1. Introduction: "Were my mind settled, I would not essay but resolve myself"
2. Chapter One: Knowing and Being in Montaigne and Shakespeare
3. Chapter Two: "A Little Thing Doth Divert and Turn Us":Fictions, Mourning, and Playing in "Of Diverting or Diversion" and Hamlet
4. Chapter Three: Mingled Yarns and Hybrid Worlds:"We Taste Nothing Purely," Measure for Measure, and All's Well That Ends Well
5. Chapter Four: "We are Both Father and Mother together in this Generation":Physical and Intellectual Creations in "Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children" and King Lear
6. Chapter Five: Custom, Otherness, and the Fictions of Mastery: "Of the Caniballes" and The Tempest
7. Epilogue: Shakespeare before the EssaysWorks Cited
