ABSTRACT
Since the publication of Re-reading English (Widdowson 1982) it has become commonplace to speak of ‘a crisis in English Studies’ (p. 7). That crisis, in evidence long before 1981, and generated by the assault on established critical practice from a variety of carefully formulated theoretical positions, has resulted in a series of radical shifts of emphasis within the institution of English Studies. Criticism is now an openly pluralist activity, with proponents of particular positions contesting vigorously the intellectual space which it has occupied. Raymond Williams has recently argued that what is in crisis is ‘the existing dominant paradigm of literary studies’ (R.Williams 1984, p. 192) as it confronts serious challenges from a diverse variety of
alternatives. What is surprising in this situation is the extent to which the study of Shakespeare has remained largely untouched by these concerns, a still point with a seemingly infinite capacity to absorb and domesticate the most hostile of challenges. But what ardent admirers are disposed fanatically to regard as the plenitude of Shakespearean texts is no longer adequate as a means of fighting off or neutralizing the force of alternative accounts, and the time has now come to challenge from a number of positions this last bastion of the ‘existing dominant paradigm’.
