ABSTRACT
Traditionally, or at least since 1892, 1 Hardy has been seen as Shakespearean – in his tragic depth and characterizations, mastery and invention of language, and in his ambitious scope. His allusions to Shakespeare have been frequently noted but no comprehensive list has been compiled. 2 No major work connecting the two authors has been accomplished, only relatively short occasional paragraphs, articles and chapters have appeared. 3 ‘Shakespeare and Hardy’ is seen as too vast a subject to be contained in a monograph; Hardy is, famously, ‘Shakespearean’ and critics leave it at that. My aim here is to trace the steps by which Shakespeare influenced Hardy’s sense of himself as a writer, from childhood through the writing of Desperate Remedies. For this purpose I will be focusing on the passages that Hardy annotated in his copy of Shakespeare which he bought in 1863.
