Shakespeare and interpretation, or what you will [electronic resource] / Brayton Polka.
Polka, Brayton.
2011
PR2976 .P57 2011eb
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Title Shakespeare and interpretation, or what you will [electronic resource] / Brayton Polka.
Author Polka, Brayton.
ISBN 9781611490435 (electronic book)
9781611490428
Imprint Newark : University of Delaware Press, 2011.
Language English
Description 1 online resource (xii, 315 p.)
Call Number PR2976 .P57 2011eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 822.3/3
Summary Brayton Polka takes both a textual and theoretical approach to seven plays of Shakespeare: Macbeth, Othello, Twelfth Night, All's Well That Ends Well, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet. He calls upon the Bible and the ideas of major European thinkers, above all, Kierkegaard and Spinoza, to argue that the concept of interpretation that underlies both Shakespeare's plays and our own lives as moderns is the golden rule of the Bible: the command to love your neighbor as yourself. What you will (the alternative title of Twelfth Night) thus captures the idea that interpretation is the very act by which we constitute our lives. For it is only in willing what others will - in loving relationships - that we enact a concept ofinterpretation that is adequate to our lives. Polka argues that it is the aim of Shakespeare, when representing the ancient world in plays like Julius Caesar and Troilus and Cressida, and also in his long narrative poem "The Rape of Lucrece,"to dramatize the fundamental differences between ancient (pagan) values and modern (biblical) values or between what he articulates as contradiction and paradox. The ancients are fatally destroyed by the contradictions of their lives of which they remainignorant. In contrast, we moderns in the biblical tradition, like those who figure in Shakespeare's other works, are responsible for addressing and overcoming the contradictions of our lives through living the interpretive paradox of "what you will," of treating all human beings as our neighbor. Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies, notwithstanding their dramatically different form, share this interpretive framework of paradox. As the author shows in his book, texts without interpretation are blind and interpretation without texts is empty.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Available in Other Form Shakespeare and interpretation. or what you will.
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Modernity, the Bible, and the interpretation of Shakespeare
Macbeth : consciousness and the consequences of action
I love, therefore I doubt : Othello and the proofs of love
Twelfth Night, or What You Will : the truth of willing deception
All's Well That Ends Well: the divine truth of self-knowledge
Julius Caesar : the honorable revenge of deception
Troilus and Cressida : revenge and the unknowability of good and evil
Hamlet and the truth of providence.

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