Shakespeare and the character of sheep

Bruce Boehrer

pp. 58-76

in: Stefan Herbrechter, Ivan Callus (eds), Posthumanist Shakespeares, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Extracted from my recent work on nonhuman identity in early modern literature (Boehrer, 2010, passim) the two halves of this chapter stand in relation to each other as does theory to its applications. The first section considers, in broad terms, the role played by the species divide in the development of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century models of literary character. The second section offers commentary on a specific Shakespearean passage — Titus Andronicus IV.4.89–93 — whose meaning is grounded in cross-species relations. Taken together, these two scholarly exercises move from the general to the particular while approaching the topic of Shakespearean posthumanism from the perspective of animal studies.

Cited authors

Shakespeare William