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Veils and disguises

The everlastingly multifarious Shakespeare
by
October 2024, no. 469

Straight Acting: The many queer lives of William Shakespeare by Will Tosh

Sceptre, $34.99 pb, 292 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on how leaders rise, rule, and fall by Eliot A. Cohen

Basic Books, $55 hb, 277 pp

Veils and disguises

The everlastingly multifarious Shakespeare
by
October 2024, no. 469

Shakespeare’s world view – his multiplicity and pluralism, all that teeming vitality crashing up against itself – acts like a tabula rasa even when it is precisely the opposite: one can project oneself onto his work not because it is a blank slate but because it contains multitudes. When it comes to his actual opinions, however – his inclinations and proclivities, his personal, political, and spiritual beliefs – he is notoriously difficult to pin down. One of his greatest skills, after all, is a consummate ability to play both sides of an argument.

Books about Shakespeare tend, therefore, to tell us more about their authors than they do about the playwright, although they are no less valid for this. Two recent additions to the scholarly ephemera make the case that, even when we might feel a subject is exhausted, there is always something new to illuminate.

Straight Acting: The many queer lives of William Shakespeare

Straight Acting: The many queer lives of William Shakespeare

by Will Tosh

Sceptre, $34.99 pb, 292 pp

The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on how leaders rise, rule, and fall

The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on how leaders rise, rule, and fall

by Eliot A. Cohen

Basic Books, $55 hb, 277 pp

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