Shakespeare's Re-Visions of History: Social Collusion, Violence, and Resistance in Nine Plays

Shakespeare's Re-Visions of History provides close readings of important, widely studied Shakespeare plays, and puts forward some unique arguments. In The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Othello, Measure for Measure, and Hamlet, Shakespeare depicts how violence is made possible by social collusion, both deliberate and inadvertent. Bystanders' acts of omission and commission allow groups such as Jews, old people, and women to be violently mistreated, and vulnerable individuals to be silenced and excluded. Vanita shows how Shakespeare's dramaturgy draws attention to this collusion through choric comments, understated irony, play with parts of speech, and songs.

Later plays, such as King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and Henry the Eighth, contemplate what might happen when society collaborates with the powerless. Tyrants may still triumph but Shakespeare appeals to collective memory and imagination with images of female power, such as the Virgin Mary and the saints, which had been exiled by the Reformation. He recollects histories of miracle and resistance to present a vision of what a future open to forgiveness could look like.