Michael Witmore is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. His book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (Stanford, 2001) was the co-winner of the Perkins Prize for the Study of Narrative Literature in 2003.

'Foregrounding dramaturgy (the staging of bodies, audience, the materiality of performance) in Twelfth Night, King Lear, and The Tempest rather than ideas voiced in speeches, and deploying a different philosopher -- Whitehead, Bergson, Spinoza -- for each play, Witmore builds a compelling vision of Shakespeare as a metaphysician of immanence...Lucid and original.' - Brian Rotman, Professor, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University, USA

• General Editors' Preface; Acknowledgements; 1.Shakespearean Metaphysics and the Drama of Immanence; 2.Whitehead and the Final Satisfaction of Twelfth Night; 3.Lear's Intensity, Bergson's Divided Kingdom; 4. Spinoza and The Tempest: An Island of One Bibliographical Note and Further Reading; Index.

Michael Witmore is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. His book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (Stanford, 2001) was the co-winner of the Perkins Prize for the Study of Narrative Literature in 2003.

'Foregrounding dramaturgy (the staging of bodies, audience, the materiality of performance) in Twelfth Night, King Lear, and The Tempest rather than ideas voiced in speeches, and deploying a different philosopher -- Whitehead, Bergson, Spinoza -- for each play, Witmore builds a compelling vision of Shakespeare as a metaphysician of immanence...Lucid and original.' - Brian Rotman, Professor, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University, USA

• General Editors' Preface; Acknowledgements; 1.Shakespearean Metaphysics and the Drama of Immanence; 2.Whitehead and the Final Satisfaction of Twelfth Night; 3.Lear's Intensity, Bergson's Divided Kingdom; 4. Spinoza and The Tempest: An Island of One Bibliographical Note and Further Reading; Index.