ABSTRACT
Interpretations of Shakespearean drama have been for centuries quite literally readings. Shakespearean meaning has been sought at the desk, through years of cerebration, of multiple rereadings, that gradually educe an abstract thematics, a fl owering of intricate ideal form too fi ne for the vulgarity of the senses. The richly petalled rose of Shakespearean meaning has been an exquisite bloom, separated from the roaring playhouse, nurtured to maturity in the decontaminating preserve of the library, unfolding delicately in the pure oxygen of scholarly sensitivity and disciplined erudition. Such readings not only employ, but imply, the primacy of a ‘textualist’ hermeneutics, privileging deskbound lucubrations and the saturating focus of exhaustive conceptual attentions. Its verdicts are the mighty meditations of Gutenberg men, supersubtle intricacies of hypermeditated sophistication.
