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 is 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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