Shakespeare and Modern Culture

From one of the world’s premier Shakespeare scholars comes a magisterial new study whose premise is “that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makes Shakespeare.”

        Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as “naturally” true: ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, from James Joyce’s_Ulysses_to George W. Bush’s reading list. From the persistence of difference in_Othello_to the matter of character in_Hamlet_to the untimeliness of youth in_Romeo and Juliet_, Garber discusses how these ideas have been re-imagined in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news, and in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law. Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a brilliant recasting of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of the protean Shakespeare.

From the Trade Paperback edition.