Introduction

This introduction presents the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts to show, through a series of detailed case studies, what the questions are, how they are expressed and explored, and what kinds of thinking they set in motion. It suggests that the questions raised by Shakespeare's work may be called 'philosophical' in so far as they have to do with ethical, political, epistemological, and metaphysical matters of general human concern. The book discusses the phenomenon of the 'false trial' in Shakespeare and various other contemporary dramatists; the trial in which one person is subjected to a quasi-legal testing that is not strictly necessary. It investigates the double myth of death and resurrection throughout Shakespeare, and the manipulation of what T. S. Eliot calls 'the ultra-dramatic'. The book examines the ways in which Shakespeare's plays, while primarily works of imaginative literature, might also be said to perform philosophical work.