Shakespeare’s Compassion

"Through close readings of key plays - Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Hamlet and King Lear - the main classical sources and the drama of his contemporaries, this book argues that Shakespeare's dramatization of compassion, far from expressing a sense of universal empathy, reveals a complex early modern emotion available to be solicited and manipulated as a discursive vehicle for the exclusion of others. It demonstrates how Shakespeare's engagement with the classical literature enables his dramatization of key questions of race, gender, sexuality and the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals that are central to the current critical field"--