Ebook: Shakespeare’s Virtuous Theatre: Power, Capacity and the Good

Presents Shakespeare’s theatre as a powerful forum for shaping our capacity for virtue

• Opens virtue ethics to new political and ecological stakes by building bridges between ancient philosophy, contemporary virtue ethics and Shakespeare’s drama
• Demonstrates the semantic, pragmatic, and phenomenological range of virtue in Shakespeare’s plays and dramatic practice by emphasizing the embodied, performative and deliberative dimensions of virtue
• Offers new readings of virtues such as courage, friendship, constancy, kindness and judgment, as staged in Shakespeare’s drama

This collection of essays explores how the Shakespearean drama enacts ancient virtues and conceptualises new ones in complex fictional scenarios that test virtues for their continuing value. Contributors approach the virtues as a source of imaginative, affective and intellectual nourishment and consider how Shakespeare’s art increases our capacity for new pursuits of the good. Examining Shakespeare’s virtuous theatre in tragic, comic and romance modes and from ethical, theatrical and political perspectives, this volume establishes virtue as a framework for a socially, environmentally and spiritually renewed literary criticism. Contributors balance historical depth and philosophical insight with the art of close reading as they contemplate the dynamic field of virtue – embodied, responsive, energetic and dynamic – as it ebbs and flows across time, among multiple wisdom traditions, and in the entangled lives and troubled circumstances of Shakespeare’s characters.