Touching on the work of philosophers including Richardson, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Dewey, this study examines the history of what philosophers have had to say about "Shakespeare" as a subject of philosophy, from the seventeenth-century to the present. Stanley Stewart's volume will be of interest to Shakespeareans, literary critics, and philosophers.

Stanley Stewart is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.

Abbreviations and Bibliographical Note Acknowledgments 1: Philosophy's Shakespeare: Defining Terms 2: Philosophy's Shakespeare: Breaking the Silence 3: Hume's Shakespeare 4: "Philosophy" in Richardson's Philosophical Analysis of Shakespeare 5: Enlightenment Shakespeare 6: Shakespeare and Subjectivity: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche 7: Pragmatism's Shakespeare 8: Shakespeare and the "Limits of Wittgenstein's World" 9: Shakespeare and "The Litrification of Philosophy" Appendix: The Evolution of Richardson's Philosophical Analysis Notes Bibliography Index