Status Updates From The Complete Works of Willi...

'The Rape of Lucrece'

As with Richard III, will sets the limit of conscience for Tarquin--he effects what Hobbes would later call the 'last appetite in deliberating' vis-a-vis his planned crime, whereas a parallel solitary internal agon proceeds afterward within Lucrece, regarding the cause of the assault. For Tarquin, she is besieged Troy to be destroyed, a militarization of eros; but for her, she is Philomela.

As You Like It - 4/5

'Venus and Adonis'

After losing both the object of her affection as well as the debate between lust and love, Venus 'immures' herself on Paphos to remain the invisible legislator of eros, as disclosed through her nomothetic prophecy which includes all manner of things, including her own role at Troy.

Richard III

Richard ultimately fears 'shadow' rather than 'substance' because to him sovereignty is not a matter of bodies distributed through space but of manufactured consent, the theatricality of authority producing popular acclaim rather than rights 'due by birth.' The two wooing scenes are constitutive of theatrical sovereignty.

Titus Andronicus

Inheritor of classical conventions from Seneca and Athenian dramatists whereby the engine of tragedy is the conflation on the one hand of all executive and judicial offices in the person of the monarch as well as on the other hand the collapse of the despotic functions of the monarch's oikos with those offices of the polis aforesaid. NB the only good parent here is villainous atheist Aaron.

The Taming of the Shrew 3/5

Merchant of Venice - 4/5