Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self

We share with Shakespeare, it seems, the assumption that to be human is to be an interpreter of oneself, others and the world seeking but not always arriving at understanding. Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self explores this perspective on human subjectivity. This study reads the complex, compelling representations of the self as an interpreter (and misinterpreter) of reality in Shakespeares problem plays alongside an intellectual history that links the culture-shaping theological hermeneutics of the playwrights day to the similarly influential philosophical hermeneutics of our times. What is it to be an interpreting self? This books critical approach brings to the fore questions about the selfs finitude, agency, motivations, self-knowledge and ethical relation to others, questions that were of great relevance in Shakespeares England and which continue to resonate in our present-day dilemmas and debates about human experience and human being.