Leading literary scholars and historians examine Shakespeare's engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.

What were Shakespeare's politics? As this study demonstrates, contained in Shakespeare's plays is an astonishingly powerful reckoning with the tradition of West

This is the first collaborative volume to place Shakespeare's works within the landscape of early modern political thought. Until recently, literary scholars ha

The turn to political concerns in Renaissance studies, beginning in the 1980s, was dictated by forms of cultural materialism that staked their claims against th

Early modern kings adopted a new style of government, Realpolitik, as spelled out in Machiavelli’s writings. Tudor monarchs, well aware of their questionable