Shakespeare, Dissent and the Cold War

Alfred Thomas is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, having previously taught at Rutgers, Harvard and Berkeley, USA. He is the author of seven books, including A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2007) and Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory, and the City (2010).

"Thomas has written a lively, intelligent, and interesting study of the politics of Shakespearean drama and its relationship to the literature and theater of Cold-War (and post-Cold-War) Europe. He examines Shakespeare's deliberate employment of religio-political codes that call attention to the persecution of English Catholics, the repressive practices of the English government and the socially disruptive effects of religious antagonisms. In analyzing Russian film versions of Hamlet and King Lear as indirect criticisms of the Soviet system, the Czech-English playwright Tom Stoppard's Cahoot's Macbeth in the context of post-1968 Czech political resistance, and Ingeborg Bachmann's poem 'Bohemia Lies on the Sea,' Thomas highlights the political potential of Shakespearean drama that can be translated into powerful political protest and analysis in changed (modern) circumstances." - Arthur Marotti, Wayne State University, USA

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Culture and Dissent in Shakespeare's England and Cold War Europe 2. 'The Heart of My Mystery:' The Hidden Language of Dissent in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Grigorii Kozintsev's Film Gamlet 3. 'A Dog's Obeyed in Office:' Subverting Authority in Shakespeare's King Lear and Grigorii Kozintsev's Film Korol' Lir 4. 'Faith, Here's an Equivocator:' Language, Resistance, and the Limits of Authority in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Tom Stoppard's Cahoot's Macbeth 5. 'In Fair Bohemia:' The Politics of Utopia in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Ingeborg Bachmann's 'Bohemia Lies on the Sea' Epilogue Bibliography Index