Introduction

Shakespeare: the Renaissance and Empire focuses on the relation between word and world, text and context, and the first volume, with the subtitle, Geography and Language, shares many concerns with this volume, whose subtitle is Poetry, Philosophy and Politics. This chapter and the next chapter takes up Shakespeare as a universal but particular and particular but universal author, who is rooted in his time and place but who becomes for others times and places, from the Renaissance onwards, from before the English/British Empire, during and after. He represents republic and empire, the people, aristocrats and monarchs or emperors. Shakespeare’s work has poetic, philosophical, political and historical and, above all, human and natural dimensions.