Publisher Description
World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright's insight into bad (and often mad) rulers. As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution. Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules-these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues-and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them-and imagined how they might be stopped. As Greenblatt shows, Shakespeare's work, in this as in so many other ways, remains vitally relevant today.
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About Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Greenblatt, PhD, is Cogan
University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. General editor of The
Norton Shakespeare, he is also the author of several books. He has edited
seven collections of criticism, including Cultural Mobility: A
Manifesto, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations.
His honors include the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize for Shakespearean
Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England, the
Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Wilbur Cross Medal
from the Yale University Graduate School, the William Shakespeare Award for
Classical Theatre, the Erasmus Institute Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and
the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley.
He was president of the Modern Language Association of America and is a fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical
Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
About Edoardo Ballerini
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.