Shakespeare in Hindsight

Amir Khan is Xinghai Associate Professor of English in the School of Foreign Languages at Dalian Maritime University. His books include Comedies of Nihilism (2017) and Shakespeare in Hindsight (2016). He is managing editor of Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies. He lives and works in China.

A splendidly original investigation of Shakespeare’s most beloved tragedies. I applaud Khan for his courage and ambition in offering the reader a way of experiencing these familiar plays as if for the first time by re-examining the basic premises of character and action. For readers of his book, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Othello will never be the same.

• Acknowledgments; A Note on Texts; 1. Introduction; 2.My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet; 3. Reversing Good and Evil: Counterfactual Thinking and King Lear; 4. Staging Passivity: Counterfactual Thinking and Macbeth; 5. Reversing Time: Counterfactual Thinking and The Winter’s Tale; 6. ‘Why Indeed Did I Marry?’ Counterfactual Thinking and Othello; 7. Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography.