Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Stephen Greenblatt has been at the centre of a major shift in literary interpretation towards a critical method that places cultural creation in history. In this book - a sustained and powerful exemplification of this innovative method - he asks how collective beliefs and experiences are shaped, moved from one medium to another, concentrated in manageable form, and offered to the public on the stage. As well as giving us a new way of understanding Shakespeare's achievement, the book is an original analysis of a cultural process. Shakespearean Negotiations provides significant insights into Henry IV and Henry V, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and The Tempest; it also includes fascinating analyses of such aspects of early modern culture as exorcism, cross-dressing, colonial propaganda, and martial law codes. It is, as well, a masterly example of a new critical method by its leading practitioner.