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Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics.

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Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics. By Andrew Hadfield. Arden Critical Companions. London: Thomson Learning. 2004. xii + 315 pp. 19.99 [pounds sterling]. isbn: 978-1-903436-17-2.

Shakespeare, Spenser and the Matter of Britain. By Andrew Hadfield. Early Modern Literature in History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. x + 220 pp. 52 [pounds sterling]; isbn: 978-0-333-99313-2.

In the preface to Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics, Andrew Hadfield aligns his work with New Historicist approaches to Shakespeare before recognizing that 'this seam of literary criticism is close to being exhausted' (p. vii). These two books give the opportunity for a reappraisal of current trends in Renaissance historicism. While Hadfield does not invariably follow New Historicist orthodoxy of revealing how Renaissance literature was 'implicated in the history of class oppression, misogyny, racism and other ideologies of exploitation' (p.vii), he reads literary texts from a firmly historicist perspective. The literary is seen through the lens of the historical; in Shakespeare and Politics, a wide range of plays are viewed as allegorical representations of contemporary events. As with the movement as a whole, there is much to recommend this approach as a corrective to hegemonic universalist and conservative readings of canonical literary texts. Yet, as Hadfield's caveat indicates, the question of...

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