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Virtue, as a Renaissance ideal, was largely conceived as a rational governing of unruly passions. Revising this early modern commonplace, this study shows how Shakespeare dramatizes a discerning Aristotelian conception of virtue as a touchstone of excellence: executing just action at the best time, in the best way, and for the best end within the contingent world. Not only situational, Aristotelian virtue is, moreover, integrative, harmonizing passion and reason, will and understanding, towards personal and civil good. Yet as a surprising backfire on the misogynist streak in Aristotle, the resistant female characters in Shakespeare emerge as the exemplars of ethical action, appropriating traditionally male-inflected virtue. At the junction of ethical, psycho-physiological, cultural and gender studies, this approach of prudential psychology bridges an apparent but needless divergence of critical focus between affect and cognition, ethics and prudential action. Firmly situated in new historicist practices, prudential psychology goes beyond narrow discourses of power into the all-encompassing arena of virtue as the complete life, which recommends an interdisciplinary approach for a fuller understanding of Shakespeare's works.

This volume maps Shakespearean virtue in all its plasticity and variety, providing thirty-eight succinct, wide-ranging essays that reveal a breadth and diversity exceeding any given morality or code of behaviour. Clearly explaining key concepts in the history of ethics and in classical, theological, and global virtue traditions, the collection reveals their presence in the works of Shakespeare in interpersonal, civic, and ecological scenes of action. Paying close attention to individual identity and social environment, chapters also consider how the virtuous horizons broached in Shakespearean drama have been tested anew by the plays' global travels and fresh encounters with different traditions. Including sections on global wisdom, performance and pedagogy, this handbook affirms virtue as a resource for humanistic education and the building of human capacity.

Explores how Shakespeare uses global wisdom literatures to encourage spiritual and moral growth and the arts of living in a connected world Invites readers to consider Shakespeare as a wisdom writer Welcomes readers into a wisdom ecology reflecting the ongoing interactions of agents from ecumenical, ecological, ethico-political, emotional and experiential angles Explores Shakespeare’s plays transhistorically in conversation with the pre-modern Indo-European lifeworld as well as Indigenous ways of being Shows how eco-logic replaces ego-logic in this sapient lens, poised to confront the challenges of homo sapiens in the Ecocene Highlights Shakespeare’s women as curators of knowing and agents of communal care This volume interweaves Shakespeare’s wisdom with ancient spiritual practices and the insights of a post-secular age in order to explore a transhistorical space of sapient knowing and living. Pursuing the delight of heart, soul and understanding in the synaesthetic experience of theatre and the meditative space of poetry, sapiential Shakespeare explores knowledge, love, beauty, nature, will and power in conversation with multiple wisdom traditions, tapping into a global sensus communis rooted in energetic knowing-with. This collection of essays begins in the Mediterranean with classical, biblical and Egyptian wisdom, moves to the East to consider Sufi and Buddhist wisdom and then turns to the West to reflect on Indigenous science and ways of knowing. Sharing a common root in oikos, meaning home, the ecumenical and the ecological converge in an embodied ethics and politics of care premised in an ecological rather than ego-logical way of being.

This volume investigates the early modern understanding of twinship through new readings of plays, informed by discussions of twins appearing in such literature as anatomy tracts, midwifery manuals, monstrous birth broadsides, and chapbooks. The book contextualizes such dramatic representations of twinship, investigating contemporary discussions about twins in medical and popular literature and how such dialogues resonate with the twin characters appearing on the early modern stage. Garofalo demonstrates that, in this period, twin births were viewed as biologically aberrant and, because of this classification, authors frequently attempt to explain the phenomenon in ways which call into question the moral and constitutional standing of both the parents and the twins themselves. In line with current critical studies on pregnancy and the female body, discussions of twin births reveal a distrust of the mother and the processes surrounding twin conception; however, a corresponding suspicion of twins also emerges, which monstrous birth pamphlets exemplify. This book analyzes the representation of twins in early modern drama in light of this information, moving from tragedies through to comedies. This progression demonstrates how the dramatic potential inherent in the early modern understanding of twinship is capitalized on by playwrights, as negative ideas about twins can be seen transitioning into tragic and tragicomic depictions of twinship. However, by building toward a positive, comic representation of twins, the work additionally suggests an alternate interpretation of twinship in this period, which appreciates and celebrates twins because of their difference. The volume will be of interest to those studying Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in relation to the History of Emotions, the Body, and the Medical Humanities.

Shakespeare and Happiness is a study of attitudes to happiness in the early modern period and in Shakespeare’s plays. It considers the conflicting influences of religion and Aristotelian philosophy in shaping attitudes to the possibility of attaining happiness. By being the first book to focus specifically on the representation of happiness in Shakespeare’s plays, it contributes to feminist approaches to Shakespeare by foregrounding the important role of women in showing the right way to live and achieve happiness. timely criticism, as it considers Shakespeare in the current context of the #MeToo movement providing new insights to studies of the emotions by approaching them from the perspective of research conducted by positive psychologists. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines methodologies from literature, psychology philosophy, religion and history, emphasizing the richness and complexity of Shakespeare’s exploration of the nature of happiness.

Speech Act Theory and Shakespeare delves deeper than linguistic ornamentation to illuminate the complex dynamics of thanking as a significant speech act in Shakespearean plays. The word “thanks” appears nearly 400 times in 37 Shakespearean plays, calling for a careful investigation of its veracity as a speech act in the 16th-century setting. This volume combines linguistic analysis to explore the various uses of thanks, focusing on key thanking scenes across a spectrum of plays, including All’s Well That Ends Well, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, The Winter’s Tale, and the Henriad. Shakespeare’s works indicate the act of thanking to be more than a normal part of dialogue; it is an artistic expression fraught with pitfalls similar to those of negative speech acts. The study aims to determine what compels the characters in Shakespeare to offer thanks and evaluates Shakespeare’s accomplishment in imbuing the word “thanks” with performance quality in the theatrical sphere. This work adds to our comprehension of Shakespearean plays and larger conversations on the challenges of language usage in theatrical and cultural settings by examining the convergence of gratitude with power dynamics, political intrigue, and interpersonal relationships, drawing on a multidisciplinary approach that includes pragmatics, philosophy, religion, and psychology.

This book challenges the status quo of studies in literature and religion by returning to “experience” as a bridge between theory and practice. Essays focus on keywords of religious experience and demonstrate their applications in drama, fiction, and poetry. Each chapter explores the broad significance of its keyword as a category of psychological and social behavior and tracks its unique articulation by individual authors, including Conrad, Beecher Stowe and Melville. Together, the chapters construct a critical foundation for studying literature not only from the perspectives of theology and historicism but from the ways that literary experience reflects, reinforces, and sometimes challenges religious experience.

Often set in domestic environments and built around protagonists of more modest status than traditional tragic subjects, 'domestic tragedy' was a genre that flourished on the Renaissance stage from 1580-1620. Shakespeare, 'Othello', and Domestic Tragedy is the first book to examine Shakespeare's relationship to the genre by way of the King's and Chamberlain's Men's ownership and production of many of the domestic tragedies, and of the genre's extensive influence on Shakespeare's own tragedy, Othello. Drawing in part upon recent scholarship that identifies Shakespeare as a co-author of Arden of Faversham, Sean Benson demonstrates the extensive-even uncanny-ties between Othello and the domestic tragedies. Benson argues that just as Hamlet employs and adapts the conventions of revenge tragedy, so Othello can only be fully understood in terms of its exploitation of the tropes and conventions of domestic tragedy. This book explores not only the contexts and workings of this popular sub-genre of Renaissance drama but also Othello's secure place within it as the quintessential example of the form.