Skepticism and Belonging in Shakespeare's Comedy

This book recovers a sense of the high stakes of Shakespearean comedy, arguing that the comedies, no less than the tragedies, serve to dramatize responses to the condition of being human, responses that invite scholarly investigation and explanation. Taking its cue from Stanley Cavell’s influential readings of Othello and Lear , the book argues that exposure or vulnerability to others is the source of both human happiness and human misery; while the tragedies showcase attempts at the evasion of