Arild Haaland
Shakespeare
His Intellectual and Moral
Universe
Revised and translated from Norwegian
by Marianne Haslev Skånland in collaboration with the author
Special consultant: Richard Holton Pierce
Bergen 1993
2nd edition 2006
The book
The author and the translator
Translator's foreword
Contents:
A Emotions and reason in affairs of the heart
1. A young man's endeavour. Romeo and Juliet
The limits of a boy's life
Society outside
2. The poet observes. A Midsummer Night's Dream
'The present' as a philosophy of life
The theatre as an image
3. First woman takes over. Antony and Cleopatra
The love goddess
The world is waiting
4. The bankruptcy of reason. Othello and Iago
With Machiavelli for a friend
Nature as a danger
5. Love turns into war. Troilus and Cressida
The origin of aggressiveness
The dramatist as sociologist
6. Victorious women. As You Like It and Twelfth Night
What happens in disguise?
Viola
Roles and results
Summing up so far
B Power, history and society
7. Personality and politics. Coriolanus
Romeo as statesman?
8. Does history have a meaning? King Richard the Third
What kind of mechanism?
Richard, Duke of Gloucester
Cowardly victims
Limitation and background
9. The concept of 'community' in King Lear
The ruler
King and fool
The blood-bath at the end
10. The beginning and end of tragic themes. Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens
Early and late
How wise are the embittered?
Text as a sign of something else
11. A power-labyrinth. Macbeth
Solidarity is wounded
The personality disintegrates
The opponent Malcolm
C Exploring new depths
12. The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare and Spinoza
Petruccio's recipe
What is the meaning of 'sovereign' ?
13. The Life of Henry the Fifth - a play of triumph
What goes before
Royal splendour
The warrior proposes marriage
From fame to growth
14. Shakespeare's sexual morality. Measure for Measure
Judges, offenders and victims
Revelation as punishment
The dramatist and God
15. Hamlet's failure
Hamlet the hero
The story
Hamlet the innocent observer
The first cracks in the glazing
With a ghost as his banner
The family of Polonius
The ambitious intellectual
Does Hamlet kill the fool?
Human and political collapse
16. Turbulence resolved. The Tempest
Prospero's world
Airy spirit and poet
From Miranda to Rousseau
17. Shakespeare, Ibsen and Plato
A mode of understanding
Myth and ritual
Background and cause
Text and life
The work and its creator
Logic and language
Rationality and consequences
Philosophy, doomsday and the theatre
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