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My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

It would be difficult to prove conclusively that Shakespeare was not invited or requested to write a play based on the popular story of Coriolanus. J.M. Robertson concretises this possibility with an intriguing thesis that the play was in fact rewritten from an original by Chapman. The story, he argues, would have had a far greater appeal to Chapman with his consuming interest in the heroic age of Classical antiquity, than to Shakespeare. Further, it is likely, he says, that Chapman was familiar with Alexandre Hardy 's Coriolan which, it is generally accepted, Shakespeare was not, hence the startling similarities in some of the two plays' deviations from their common source. This is hardly a more satisfactory explanation than the kind of airy alternative that disposes of the mystery by saying the source material is such that it would invite any dramatist to make similar changes. Chap. 1

This dissertation examines the role of aesthetic activity in the pursuit of political agency in readings of several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet (1600), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), The Tempest (1610), the history plays of the second tetralogy (1595-9), Julius Caesar (1599), and Coriolanus (1605). I demonstrate how Shakespeare models political subjectivity—the capacity for individuals to participate meaningfully in the political realm—as necessitating active aesthetic agency. This aesthetic agency entails the fashioning of artistically conceived public personae that potential political subjects enact in the public sphere and the critical engagement of the aesthetic and political discourses of the subjects’ culture in a self-reflective and appropriative manner. Furthermore, these subjects should be wary auditors of the texts and personae they encounter within the public sphere in order to avoid internalizing constraining ideologies that reify their identities into forms less conducive to the pursuit of liberty and social mobility. Early modern audiences could discover several models for doing so in Shakespeare’s works. For example, Hamlet posits a model of Machiavellian theatricality that masks the Prince's interiority as he resists the biopolitical force and disciplinary discourses of Claudius's Denmark. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus advance a model of citizenship through the plays’ nameless plebeians in which rhetoric offers the means to participate in Rome’s political culture, and Shakespeare’s England for audiences, while authorities manipulate citizen opinion by molding the popularity of public figures. Public, artistic ability affords potential political subjects ways of not only framing their participation in their culture but also ways of conceiving of their identities and relationships to society that may defy normative notions of membership in the community.

This essay examines the conditions for translation into Swedish, and reception of Shakespeare’s dramatic works during the 19th century. By looking at the critical discussion around Shakespeare in Sweden from 1790 until 1850, and the biographies of several translators, the conclusion is that the Romantic movement was a crucial component in introducing his plays, as well as a modernization of political and literary culture after the French revolution. The essay also aims to tie a specific play – The Tragedy of Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s later tragedies – which was performed in Stockholm in 1866 to the political conditions of modernity, with its focus on class struggle and the taming of public opinion. The play dramatizes the for democracy as against aristocracy and tyranny – an issue well alive in the late 19th century. By situating the text of the play as a narratological homology for political and capitalist modernity, Shakespeare is brought into sharp relief as a thoroughly modern playwright, whose problems still concern us today.

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This thesis examines the relationship between speech and action in Dionysius' Antiquitates Romanae. It consists of five main chapters, an introduction and a conclusion. In the introduction I establish the status quaestionis and consider different modes of presenting discourse. Chapter 2 is an intertextual analysis of Dionysius' first preface, AR I.1-8, exploring Dionysius' engagement with his Greek and Roman predecessors. I take one modern theory, concerning Dionysius apparent 'idealisation' of the Roman past, in order to examine the relationship between the Antiquities and Dionysius' rhetorical works. In the four chapters that follow, I trace the changing texture of narrative across the Antiquities, sinking shafts at moments to examine closely what is going on. First (ch. 3), I analyse speech in the Regal Period, focusing on the story of Lucretia and Brutus (AR IV.64-85), and the way that Herodotean allusion meshes with intratextual devices to narrate the fluctuations of the Regal Period. Chapter 4 is a paired reading of (4a) the story of Coriolanus' trial (VII.21-66) and (4b) the story of Coriolanus' encounter with his mother (VII.39-62). Ch. 4a concentrates on Thucydides and Isocrates, and how Coriolanus' trial binds the Greek literary past to the first-century Roman present. In 4b, I examine how Dionysius manages the shift between high politics and family relationships. Chapter 5, on the decemvirate (X.50-XI.44), explores again Roman tyranny, this time in a Republican frame; the power of the senate is consequently in point here. Chapter 6, on AR XIV-XX, probes the questions of Greek and Roman ethnicity and the individual which had arisen in the earlier chapters. In the conclusion I consider the precise question of Dionysius' Augustanism, relating it to Dionysius' apparent status in Rome.