DID SHAKESPEARE KNOW THE WRITINGS OF HEGEL, MARX, NIETZSCHE, FREUD, WITTGENSTEIN AND DERRIDA?

DID SHAKESPEARE KNOW THE WRITINGS OF HEGEL, MARX, NIETZSCHE, FREUD, WITTGENSTEIN AND DERRIDA? Graham Holderness has a review in the Times Literary Supplement (April 20) of SHAKESPEARE AND LITERARY THEORY by Jonathan Gil Harris. The book has chapters for the major developments in literary theory in the last 20 years (“formalism, structuralism and deconstruction;…Marxism, …and postcolonial theory”). Holderness and Harris highlight the role of Shakespeare as inspiring the literary theory. Rather than theory interpreting Shakespeare’s plays, Shakespeare gives rise to modern theory. Holderness quotes Harris: “Literary theory is less an external set of ideas imposed on Shakespeare’s texts than a mode… of critical reflection inspired by, and emerging from, his writing.” Holderness and Harris both quote Terry Eagleton: “it is difficult to read Shakespeare without feeling that he was almost certainly familiar with the writings of Hegel, Marx, Nietszche, Freud, Wittgenstein and Derrida.”