Wow! eBook
Tyranny in Shakespeare
Author(s): Mary Ann McGrail (Author)
- Publisher: Lexington Books (UK)
- Publication Date: 1 July 2001
- Language: English
- Print length: 208 pages
- ISBN-10: 0739100823
- ISBN-13: 9780739100820
Book Description
Even the most explicitly political contemporary approaches to Shakespeare have been uninterested by his tyrants as such. But for Shakespeare, rather than a historical curiosity or psychological aberration, tyranny is a perpetual political and human problem. Mary Ann McGrails recovery of the playwrights perspective challenges the grounds of this modern critical silence. She locates Shakespeares expansive definition of tyranny between the definitions accepted by classical and modern political philosophy. Is tyranny always the worst of all possible political regimes, as Aristotle argues in his Politics? Or is disguised tyranny, as Machiavelli proposes, potentially the best regime possible? These competing conceptions were practiced and debated in Renaissance thought, given expression by such political actors and thinkers as Elizabeth I, James I, Henrie Bullinger, Bodin, and others. McGrail focuses on Shakespeares exploration of the conflicting and contradictory passions that make up the tyrant and finds that Shakespeares dramas of tyranny rest somewhere between Aristotles reticence and Machiavellis forthrightness. Literature and politics intersect in Tyranny in Shakespeare, which will fascinate students and scholars of both.
Editorial Reviews
Review
To be at once subtle and clear is no small achievement, but Mary Ann McGrail makes it seem deceptively easy. Her fine study sheds a new, bright light on Shakespeare”s profound explorations of the impulse to tyrannize over others. — Ralph Lerner, University of Chicago
About the Author
Mary Ann McGrail is currently an attorney and Federal Judicial Clerk, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, J.D. She holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature.
