Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen

by Victor G. Kiernan

In this book the distinguished historian Victor Kiernan makes a case for seeing Shakespeare as a writer profoundly sensitive to the great social and political upheavals through which he lived. Shakespeare’s poetic and dramatic achievement, Kiernan argues, was not something which transcended his environment but was directly enlarged by his civic consciousness and his critical reactions to a changing social fabric.

Shakespeare’s phase of dramatic activity coincides with the first challenges to the institution of monarchy. Kiernan analyses the cycle of History plays in the light of the demise of feudal allegiances and the emergence of the modern state apparatus. He shows how the far-reaching transformations in social hierarchy which simultaneously began to take place are crucial to an understanding of the Comedies, in which confusion of identity, disguise and cross-dressing are central. And he examines the ways in which women’s roles are affected by this nascent individualism, especially in relation to the ideas of romantic love around which the Comedies revolve.

Poet and Citizen draws a vivid portrait of the outstanding dramatist of modernity. Lucid, scholarly and absorbing, it will be a rich resource for both students and the general reader.

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Professor Victor Gordon Kiernan was an English Marxist historian and a former member of the Communist Party Historians Group with a particular focus on the history of imperialism. He was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Kendra Drischler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book makes a lot of good local obsesrvations, giving historical contexts for various moments in Shakespeare's work, but there is no overall argument. It reads like notes for a commentary that was supposed to say more.

[russell barnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having based my entire degree on this book, Sophie's World and the Animated Tales of Shakespeare, I now remember quite why this wasn't the best plan of action (cartoons and philosophy books for kids aside), mainly as this book not only was quite dull, but almost impenetrable and quite clearly written in the 40s. To some up, Hitler and powdered eggs probably ruined this book...