Shakespeare's Anti-Politics

Daniel Juan Gil is the author of Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern England. He has written widely on cultural sociology, sexuality, religion, and the body, and his articles have appeared in prominent journals including ELH, Shakespeare Quarterly, Borrowers and Lenders and Common Knowledge.

"Gil argues that Shakespeare supports neither monarchical nor civic republican values, as both depend on the sovereign power of the state to control the bodies of subjects... Gil's introduction is especially insightful in relating his theory to the present. Summing up: Recommended." CHOICE "The strength of the book lies in the clarity of Gil's basic thesis and the consistency with which it is applied." Julia Reinhard Lupton, Renaissance Quarterly "...ambitious, incisive, and sophisticated. It is excellent... Shakespeare's Anti-Politics will be of tremendous interest to a range of scholars interested in Shakespeare's relationship to politics, the body, and performance." James Kuzner, Shakespeare Quarterly

• Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Historical Conditions of Possibility of the Life of the Flesh: Absolutism, Civic Republicanism and 'Bare Life' in Julius Caesar 2. The Life of the Condemned: The Autonomous Legal System and the Community of the Flesh in Measure for Measure 3. Unsettling the Civic Republican Order: The Face of Sovereign Power and the Fate of the Citizen in Othello 4. Life Outside the Law: Torture and the Flesh in King Lear Epilogue: The Afterlife of the Life of the Flesh Bibliography Index