Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self

Reconceptualises Shakespeare's representations of selfhood by drawing on the long history behind the modern West's assumption that to be human is to be an interpreter of reality

We share with Shakespeare, it seems, the assumption that to be human is to be an interpreter of oneself, others and the world – seeking but not always arriving at understanding. Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self explores this perspective on human subjectivity. This study reads the complex, compelling representations of the self as an interpreter (and misinterpreter) of reality in Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ alongside an intellectual history that links the culture-shaping theological hermeneutics of the playwright’s day to the similarly influential philosophical hermeneutics of our times. What is it to be an interpreting self? This book’s critical approach brings to the fore questions about the self’s finitude, agency, motivations, self-knowledge and ethical relation to others, questions that were of great relevance in Shakespeare’s England and which continue to resonate in our present-day dilemmas and debates about human experience and human being.