The promotion of Shakespeare to the centre of the English literary canon was largely facilitated by ten major eighteenth-century editions of his plays: by Nicholas Rowe (1709), Alexander Pope (1723-25), Lewis Theobald (1733), Thomas Hanmer (1744), William Warburton (1747), Samuel Johnson (1765), George Steevens (1766), Edward Capell (1767-68), Johnson and Steevens (1773) and Edmond Malone (1790). The popularity of Newtonian science in eighteenth-century England helps to explain the mentality that impelled this energetic enterprise. In their Prefaces, the editors describe Shakespeare as a Newton-like genius who understood the underlying principles of human nature and expressed them through his characters. Shakespeare, however, unlike Newton, was not a systematic thinker, and the editors are critical of his language and of his tendency to cater to the low tastes of the Elizabethan theatre. They view him as a genius who understood fundamental truths about human nature and, at the same time, metaphorically, as nature itself---a site of heterogeneity and confusion where the editor must find hidden knowledge. They figure themselves as, scientists charged with the task of altering, restoring and annotating Shakespeare's writings. In the editions leading to and including that of Johnson, the editors' focus is on the universality of Shakespeare's discoveries. The early editors promote a transcendental image of Shakespeare as a timeless genius who rose above the relatively barbaric age in which he lived. The two editors following Johnson, however, place an increasing emphasis on Shakespeare's Englishness. While the idea of Shakespeare as a universal genius persists, Steevens and Capell also view him as a specifically English figure whose writings are to a large extent a product of his society. This nationalist emphasis goes hand in hand with an increasingly historical approach to the annotation and textual restoration of Shakespeare. The development of editing as a professional scientific vocation culminates with Malone, who augmented the editorial apparatus with thoroughly researched accounts of Shakespeare's life and theatre. The persistent emphasis on knowledge in the editors' work helps to account for the rise of Shakespeare's canonicity in relation to the Newtonian truth-seeking project of the eighteenth century.

This thesis attempts to resuscitate the use of the much-disparaged term "problem plays" to describe Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure; three works which, I argue, share a strong and unifying thematic interest in the vexed relationship between individual sexual desire and social cohesion. Although each of these plays offers a unique perspective on this conflicted interaction, I attempt to demonstrate through close readings of each work that the broad trajectory traced by the problem plays is a movement from the festive comedies' idealistic faith in the possibilities of both romantic and generic "happy endings," to the bleak cynicism which characterizes the great tragedies' depictions of sexual relationships and social structures. Finally, I point to the romances, particularly The Winter's Tale, which, I argue, rework the problem plays' interest in sexuality and social order in such a way that the growing pessimism and inconclusiveness of these earlier works is transformed into aesthetically balanced narratives of romantic reconciliation and social integration.

This thesis studies the human rights philosophy presented during the first productions of Shakespeare's plays, putting it in touch with that reflected in United Nations human rights law and the political theory of John Rawls. Its opening chapter discusses twentieth-century scholarship exemplary of the criticism relevant to human rights ideas in Shakespeare. The sixteenth-century historical context, so emphatically identified by historians with the institution of modern freedom, is kept in sight throughout, and provides, with the cultural context (especially the semantic context), the key to detailed explications, of four plays: King John, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well. Interpreted by these means, the first two plays are seen to have enacted, at the time of their first performances, the religious strife that ironically gave birth both to the ideal of freedom of conscience and ideological complications restricting its implementation. The latter plays unfolded arguments concerning the relationship between epistemology and freedom of conscience. The questions addressed in these four plays range from the relationship between social stability, moral values, and the practicability of freedom of conscience to the criteria whereby coercion and abuse of freedom of conscience may be distinguished from legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. The characteristics of epistemologies enhancing the implementation of freedom of conscience and the educational process that promotes the moral attributes and social conditions necessary for the adoption of these are delineated. The freedom of conscience theory the plays proposed for those members of their first audiences attuned to its metaphoric language is remarkably thought-provoking as regards current challenges in human rights philosophy and law, and reinforces the argument that literature, and in particular theatre, have vital roles in social change and intellectual development.

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Critics have long neglected Shakespearean comedy's examination of the household's role in the formulation of community values by reading its references to domestic life allegorically as commentary on the ostensibly more important public realms of marketplace and state. This dissertation argues that representations of the household in the comedies are best understood as theatrical explorations of ethical inquiry as it pertains to everyday lived experience. Using contemporary sermons, political tracts, and conduct books to situate Shakespeare's plays within a larger cultural movement that was coming to understand the household as a foundation of the moral economy of early modern England, this study provides readings of The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest that emphasize each play's investigation of the household as a potential locus of the good life. The characters in these plays develop an awareness of themselves as members of broader communities by negotiating the particular details of household existence---by sharing meals, exchanging gifts, and falling in love. This awareness is in turn presented as a necessary component of personal happiness and a fundamental constituent of a just and merciful state. By developing an account of household life in the plays, this dissertation argues that recognizing the importance of affective domestic relations to constructions of the self as socially embedded moral agent is crucial to understanding the comedies' nuanced analysis of gender, class, and race relations.

This dissertation---"The Necessity of Affections: Shakespeare and the Politics of the Passions"---is a contribution to an important and interesting aspect of early modern thought. It examines the role of the passions or emotions in Shakespearean tragedy and in early modern politics. Shakespeare can be seen to share a perspective on tragedy and political thought with a number of other writers, some of whom were his contemporaries, and some of whom---like Thucydides and Tacitus---were classical writers. What these figures, here called 'politic historians,' have in common is an interest in using the passions as an explanatory category to reveal the states of mind of tyrants, princes and also other agents, including manipulative Machiavellians. Shakespeare's use of this politics of the passions is shown to be more acute and insightful than the rival treatments given by Stoicism, Hobbes and Machiavelli, in terms of explaining motives, agency and action. It is also argued that an understanding of the passions tells us something about tragedy, necessity and chance: namely, the need for realism about the dangers posed by those who seek to fashion or shape our minds. However, this dissertation proposes that this political realism does not go so far as to become the cynicism of realpolitik. A discussion of a number of important passages and themes in the tragedies---in particular, Hamlet, Macbeth and Coriolanus---shows how the notion of a rich and vividly articulated self plays a significant role in Shakespearean tragedy.

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Traditionally, Macbeth has been read as a morality tale about the perils of ambition. The question that has implicitly animated most treatments of the play is, "Why does Macbeth kill Duncan?" By shifting the emphasis away from Macbeth's motives for killing Duncan onto his inability to refrain from killing him, I draw attention to the striking fact that, in killing King Duncan, Macbeth acts against a fully considered better judgment not to. This suggests the possibility that Macbeth's much-discussed ambition can be understood as a subset of the broader theme of akrasia , the condition in which an agent is unable to perform an action he knows to be right. After identifying and exploring the theme of akrasia in several of Shakespeare's plays, I go on to situate Macbeth's murder of Duncan in the context of the long literary and philosophical debate on incontinence. I then suggest four interrelated explanations of Macbeth's akrasia. First, Macbeth's connection to the motivational conditions of his knowledge is shallow; he does not feel what he knows. Second, Macbeth's lack of self-control is habitual because his weak connection to the conative dimension of his knowledge prohibits him from appealing to techniques of skilled resistance. Third, his habitual lack of self-control renders him vulnerable to Lady Macbeth's taunts, which not only deplete the motivation supporting his better judgment but also prevent him from giving full deliberative weight to his better judgment. Finally, Macbeth also engages in a consistent pattern of self-deception that not only facilitates his akratic slaughter of King Duncan but also enables him to murder Banquo and MacDuff's family. My explanation of how Macbeth is able to act self-deceptively against his better evidence echoes my account of how he is able to act akratically against his better judgment: he does not feel what he knows.

William Shakespeare's plays, Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V, form a tetralogy in which the conditions and nature of kingship are extensively explored. Richard II is an incapable ruler because his own desires are always uppermost in his mind while the welfare of the realm matters little to him. However, in spite of his faults, Richard II is a divinely ordained king, God's deputy on earth, and, therefore, he is the only legitimate monarch. When Henry IV usurps Richard II and has him murdered, he commits an unforgivable crime. Thus, in spite of the fact that he is a more capable ruler, his reign is plagued by rebellion and civil war. Only his son, Henry V, a legitimate ruler, can restore order to the chaotic nation. This study is an analysis of the reigns of these three monarchs. It is based on four aspects of the text: dramatic action, speeches on kingship, figurative patterns, and thematic movements.Taken as a unit, the four plays create a portrait of the ideal "statesman-king"; viewed individually, they produce added insight into the variations in interpretations of inadequate king, Henry IV, who is troubled human. of his kingship, king and its occupant. Richard II is an but a very talented poet, in contrast to a capable ruler, but a guilt-ridden, Henry V can be characterized only in terms as he is forced to subject his personal of the office self to his political role in order to be a successful monarch.