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This thesis undertakes a fundamental reappraisal of Shakespeare's existentialism. The drama of Shakespeare and existentialist philosophy, I contend, are equally fascinated by issues such as inwardness, authenticity, freedom, and self-becoming. In recent years, Shakespearean criticism has shied away from these fundamental existentialist concerns reflected in his drama, preferring to investigate the historical and cultural conditioning of human subjectivity. However, as this thesis argues, a failure to acknowledge and address the existential problems and intensities at the heart of Shakespeare's plays prevents a full appreciation of both the philosophical and the theatrical dimensions of his drama. This thesis treats Shakespeare as existentialism's prolific precursor, as a writer who experimented with existentialist ideas in his own distinctive theatrical and poetic terms long before they were fully developed in the philosophical and literary terms of the twentieth century. The introductory chapter of this thesis provides a preliminary sketch of existentialist thought and surveys the influence of existentialism on readings of Shakespeare. This paves the way for the second chapter, which offers a historical account of the inception of existentialist thought in the early modern period. By identifying existentialist concerns and ideas in the work of writers such as Montaigne, Pico, Raleigh, Bacon, Donne and others, I argue that an embryonic form of existentialism was beginning to emerge in the literary, philosophical and religious discourses of the Renaissance. The third chapter suggests that Shakespeare and modern existentialist thinkers share a deep interest in the creative fusion of fiction and philosophy as the most faithful means of articulating the existentialist immediacy of experience and the philosophical quandaries that existence as a human being entails. The subsequent three chapters explore the existentialist predicaments and problems dramatised in three Shakespearean tragedies. My readings trace the broad trajectory of existentialist thought in these plays, firstly by looking at the ontological and subjective concerns of Hamlet, then by examining Shakespeare's treatment of ethics in Coriolanus, and finally by considering the existential resonance of the politics in King Lear.

This thesis argues that, as well as collecting extracts from Shakespeare, anthologists also create Shakespeares. Extracts from Shakespeare’s texts have been included in printed anthologies since the end of the sixteenth century, yet a comprehensive study of this significant means of disseminating Shakespeare and its influence on what we understand by Shakespeare has not been undertaken. In filling this gap I argue that anthologies hav been and are important disseminators of Shakespeare. In this way anthologists have contributed to the creation of the icon we now call ‘Shakespeare’ by creating their own independent Shakespeares. These anthologists’ Shakespeares might reflect wha was understood by Shakespeare at any time or stand in opposition to it. Thus this thesis extends the work of previous critical studies that have argued that each age and culture appropriates and reinvents its own Shakespeare. I examine the Shakespeare texts included in anthologies that collect from many writers and also those that collect exclusively from Shakespeare. Anthologists create Shakespeares because an anthology is more than just a collection of texts; it reflects its compiler’s ideas and preoccupations through the work that s/he adds to the collected texts. I regard the anthologist as a kind of author and by considering the anthologist’s work - their choices, textual manipulation and paratexts - I discover the Shakespeare that the anthologist creates. Although this thesis is mainly concerned with printed anthologies, I define anthology widely to include texts and formats that may not have previously been considered to be anthologies. Whereas previous studies of anthologies including Shakespeare’s texts have restricted themselves to particular examples or time periods, this thesis offers a diachronic study of the dissemination of Shakespeare by anthologies from Shakespeare’s lifetime through to the present day. This allows the opportunity to reveal the similarities and differences in the Shakespeare created by anthologists at different times – and finds remarkably consistent Shakespeares.

This thesis provides a new set of analytical tools with which to approach Shakespeare’s plays in production. This approach, which I am terming theatrical geographies, operates through a tripartite process which involves an analysis of the textual geographies, an examination of the geographies of staging across the play’s performance history, and a close reading of the workings of space and place in a selection of contemporary productions. By combining theoretical perspectives and conceptualizations of space and place from cultural geography with existing ideas on theatrical space, this critical framework furthers understanding of the multiple spatialities that performance generates and illuminates the role of space(s) in creating meaning. This research brings together elements of traditional Theatre History and Performance Studies, and builds on previous work which has focused on the individual areas of space as a dramaturgical element, theatre architecture, the histories of individual theatres, and scenography. By taking account of important questions left by these engagements with theatrical space and adding an interrogation of space in action in postmodern performance, theatrical geographies offers an integrated approach to the complex interactions between text, place, and performance. This enables a more nuanced analysis of the real and imagined spaces of the theatrical event as it facilitates an examination of the materialization of the fictive world and a consideration of the ways in which individual plays intervene in the identities of their places of performance. My test case is Richard II. An analysis of the textual geographies reveals the richly ambiguous places that comprise the playworld, and applying a geographical consciousness to contemporary productions demonstrates the negotiations between Shakespeare’s dramatic-geographical imagination and spatial issues of concern in the postmodern world, thus uncovering fresh nuances in the play and opening up new conceptions of its potential cultural work.

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The relationship between the Church in England and 'Victorian Shakespeare' has been outlined by Richard Foulkes and, more recently, Charles LaPorte in his parallel study of biblical and Shakespearean criticism. These works have traced the Victorian conceptualisation of what Gail Marshall has termed the metonymical Shakespeare: that is, the establishment and interaction with Shakespeare the product rather than, strictly speaking, the fundamental interpretations of his drama. This thesis extends Foulkes' work on the official Church sanction of Shakespeare, and asks how it was that the 'Church' in Victorian England influenced critical readings and performances of the plays Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, King John and Henry VIII. Split into two parts: critical readings and performances, this thesis explores to what extent religious events such as the Oxford Movement, the so-called papal aggression and Public Worship Regulations Act affected interpretations of the plays and their Catholic characters both on the page and stage. Each of these plays invited discussions about sinfulness, disillusionment and redemption: three key themes that recurred in debates about religion throughout the period. More importantly, this study argues that each play was interpreted within an anti-Catholic climate, where nunneries and confessionals were feared; idolatry was considered dangerous, and where Roman Catholic rituals and gestures were outlawed in the Church of England. By re-assessing Victorian Shakespeare discourse as part of a tradition where the languages of Christianity and, specifically, anti-Catholicism were endemic, this thesis proposes that religion was a critical framework within which Shakespeare's drama was interpreted; it was also a subject actively introduced and explored in the visual and spoken world of the stage. Therefore this work is part of the expanding historicist study of Victorian Shakespeare reception, because it rationalises the celebratory interpretations of the plays from the period and, crucially, proposes that religious discourse facilitated a revolution in Shakespeare criticism.

This thesis has as its aim the exploration of a figure forgotten in the dramatic text of Shakespeare and Renaissance painting: the garden snail. Taking as its point of departure the emergence of the gastropod object/subject in the text of King Lear as well as its iconic interface in Bellini's painting Allegory of Falsehood (circa 1490), this study sets out to follow the particular path traced by the snail through the oeuvre. From the central scene in which the metaphor of the snail and or" its shell is specifically made manifest when Lear discovers, in a raging storm, the spectacle of Edgar disguised as Poor Tom coming out of his shelter (III.3.6-9) to the monster, this fiend displaying, on the cliffs of Dover, "horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea" (IV.6. 71), this thesis is the trace of a narrative - of a journey of the gaze - during the course of which the cryptic question of the gastropod - "Why a Snail [ ... ]?" (I.5.26) - will not cease to be developed and transformed. Incorporating a wide-ranging post-structuralist critique, the study aims to bring to light the particular functions of this "revealing detail" in both its textual and visual dimension so as to put forward a new and innovatory understanding of the tragedy of King Lear.

This thesis examines the ways that Wordsworth and Coleridge transform the works of Shakespeare, in order to stage the imagination as it functions in the lives of the characters in their poetry. I look especially at the importance of the play A Midsummer Night 's Dream to their poetic project, and show how elements of the play resurface in various poems, prefaces and prose writings of the two poets over a span of nearly twenty years. I argue that Wordsworth's transformations of Shakespeare contribute to a democratising of poetry, and a valorising of 'our common human heart'. Chapter one discusses Lyrical Ballads as a series of poems, which have Theseus' speech on Imagination as their unifying theme, emulating Shakespeare’s staging of passion. Chapters two and three examine Alexander Tytler's Essay on Translation as a 'negative' stimulus for Wordsworth's challenging poetic theories, and a source for some of his earliest 'transformations' of Shakespeare. Chapter four is a detailed survey of the critical background, and the Romantic reception of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and examines key themes in the play to elucidate the poets' poetry and prose. Chapter five is a comparison between 'The Last of The Flock' and The Merchant of Venice, showing how Wordsworth 'imitates' the tale, and transposes the 'tone' of the comic play into a quieter and sadder 'music'. Chapter six analyses 'Michael', as a transformation of Gaunt in Richard into the 'history homely and rude' of Michael the shepherd. Chapter seven is on Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, which re-tells the tale of the genesis of Lyrical Ballads, and Wordsworth's transformative poetics, as a 'translation' of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Chapter eight returns to Alfoxden, and Hazlitt's 'First Acquaintance with Poets', to revisit the poets as the protagonists of 'the dream' that was, and became, Lyrical Ballads.