ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that Alexander Pope ‘saw William Shakespeare as a storehouse of moral thought’. It considers a form of engagement with Shakespeare’s language which stands in stark contrast to an attuned reading, since it is often entirely divorced from poetic experience. The book examines how Horatio’s behaviour and dramaturgical positioning express Stoic commitments concerning both the nature of material reality and the roles of reason and providence in happiness and in valuable interpersonal relationships. It focuses on reading Shakespeare with an understanding of existentialist approaches to human life. The book considers how the idea of a play’s ‘opening’ can be understood in terms of mechanisms of attention and expectation in audiences. It discusses the theme of the importance of embodied action to interpretation of plays, with Donovan Sherman discussing Stoicism as an essentially embodied philosophy and its realization in Shakespearean drama.
