Shakespeare and Montaigne
Edited by Lars Engle, Patrick Gray, William M. Hamlin
- Introduces and explores a wide range of fresh approaches to comparative study of Shakespeare and Montaigne
- Illuminates connections, parallels, and discontinuities between the artistry of Shakespeare’s plays and the complexity of Montaigne’s thought
- Considers Shakespeare and Montaigne within the intellectual history of the Renaissance and the Reformation
- Reflects on Shakespeare and Montaigne as thinkers and innovators speaking to the present day, as well as their own more immediate historical moment
- Examines arguments for and against Shakespeare and Montaigne as forerunners of modernity
Shakespeare and Montaigne share a grounded, genial sense of the lived reality of human experience, as well as a surprising depth of engagement with history, literature and philosophy. With celebrated subtlety and incisive humour, both authors investigate abiding questions of epistemology, psychology, theology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. In this collection, distinguished contributors consider these influential, much-beloved figures in light of each other. The English playwright and the French essayist, each in his own fashion, reflect on and evaluate the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of new modern perspectives many of us now might readily recognise as our own.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors x
Preface: Reading Montaigne by Colin Burrow xv
Introdu ction: Shakespeare and Montaigne:
A Critical History 1
William M. Hamlin
Introduction: Shakespeare and Montaigne as
Thought-Experiment 28
Lars Engle
1. Of Birds and Bees: Montaigne, Shakespeare and
the Rhetoric of Imitation 59
N. Amos Rothschild
2. The Nature of Presence: Facing Violence in Montaigne
and Shakespeare 78
Anita Gilman Sherman
3. Narcissism, Epochal Change and ‘Public Necessity’ in
Richard II and ‘Of Custom, and Not Easily Changing
an Accepted Law’ 90
William McKenzie
4. Shakespeare, Montaigne and Ricoeur: Identity as Narrative 105
Zorica Bečanović-Nikolić
5. Genre and Gender in Montaigne and Shakespeare 123
David Schalkwyk
6. Shakespeare, Montaigne and Moral Luck 140
Maria Devlin McNair
7. Cavell’s Tragic Scepticism and the Comedy of the Cuckold:
Othello and Montaigne Revisited 166
Cassie M. Miura
8. Feeling Indifference: Flaying Narratives in Montaigne
and Shakespeare 180
Alison Calhoun
9. On Belief in Montaigne and Shakespeare 198
William M. Hamlin
10. Making Sense of ‘To be or not to be’ 216
Richard Dillane
11. ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn’: Mixed Worlds
and Kinds in Montaigne’s ‘We Taste Nothing Purely’
and Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well 233
Peter G. Platt
12. Radical Neo-Paganism: The Transmission of Discontinuous
Identity from Plutarch to Montaigne to Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra 246
Daniel Vitkus
13. Montaigne, Shakespeare and the Metamorphosis of
Comedy and Tragedy 263
Richard Hillman
14. Montaigne’s Essais, Shakespeare’s Trials and Other
Experiments of Moment 282
Richard Scholar
15. Montaigne’s Shakespeare: The Tempest as Test-case 296
Lars Engle
16. Falstaff’s Party: Shakespeare, Montaigne and Their
Liberal Censors 326
Patrick Gray
Afterword: A Philosophical Shakespeare or a
Dramatic Montaigne? 374
George Hoffmann
Afterword: A Philosophical Montaigne and a
Dramatic Shakespeare? 384
Katharine Eisaman Maus
Bibliography 392
Index 435
Describing books as ‘this world’s theatre’, Montaigne admitted his curiosity to read and thereby ‘discover and know the mind of my authors’. This book’s dynamic discoveries about the shared literary, historical and psychological sympathies of Shakespeare and Montaigne illuminates the mind and work of both. It is a field-changing collection.
Among the qualities that characterize the achievement of Montaigne and Shakespeare is the capacity over many centuries to arouse not merely interest but love, a love often deepening across the course of an entire lifetime. Despite their differences – the one a French nobleman, the other the son of an English glover, the one a famously personal essayist, the other a famously impersonal playwright– many readers, loving them both, have sensed a profound affinity between them. In exploring and testing the grounds of this affinity, this exemplary collection of essays finds new, often surprising ways to enrich our understanding of their individual talents and their shared gifts.
