Late Shakespeare：A New World of Words

Shakespeare''s late plays are usually seen in terms of courtliness and escapism. But the critical tradition has been too decorous. Neither neo-Christian pieties nor high-political allegory can account for the works'' audacity and surprise, or the popular investment in both their form and meaning. Post-structuralist and historicist approaches show the indeterminacy and materiality of language, but rarely identify how particular figures (words and characters) capture and energize contested history. Recent criticism tends to put a pre-emptive ''master-paradigm'' above all else; a more sinuous, minutely attentive critical vocabulary is needed to apprehend Shakespeare''s turbulent, precise, teeming metaphorical discourse.