Hamlet versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Art

This book focuses on the two plays of Shakespeare that have generally contended for the title of "greatest" among his works. Recent critical theorizing has destabilized the texts and undermined the notion of "greatness" or any consideration of the plays as works of art. Foakes takes issue with such theories and reconsiders textual revisions, in order to argue for the integrity of the plays as reading texts, and to recover a flexible sense of their artistry in relation to meaning.