Shakespeare lived in a world of absolutes--of claims for the
absolute authority of scripture, monarch, and God, and the
authority of fathers over wives and children, the old over the
young, and the gentle over the baseborn. With the elegance and
verve for which he is well known, Stephen Greenblatt, author of the
best-selling "Will in the World," shows that Shakespeare was
strikingly averse to such absolutes and constantly probed the
possibility of freedom from them. Again and again, Shakespeare
confounds the designs and pretensions of kings, generals, and
churchmen. His aversion to absolutes even leads him to probe the
exalted and seemingly limitless passions of his lovers.
Greenblatt explores this rich theme by addressing four of
Shakespeare's preoccupations across all the genres in which he
worked. He first considers the idea of beauty in Shakespeare's
works, specifically his challenge to the cult of featureless
perfection and his interest in distinguishing marks. He then turns
to Shakespeare's interest in murderous hatred, most famously
embodied in Shylock but seen also in the character Bernardine in
"Measure for Measure." Next Greenblatt considers the idea of
Shakespearean authority--that is, Shakespeare's deep sense of the
ethical ambiguity of power, including his own. Ultimately,
Greenblatt takes up Shakespearean autonomy, in particular the
freedom of artists, guided by distinctive forms of perception, to
live by their own laws and to claim that their creations are
singularly unconstrained.
A book that could only have been written by Stephen Greenblatt,
"Shakespeare's Freedom" is a wholly original and eloquent
meditation by the most acclaimed and influential Shakespearean of
our time.
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