Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought

to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Kings College, London, and the LMU in Munich,

online at historyofilosophy.net.

Today's episode has any philosophy in the William Shakespeare.

When I first started my new job in Munich back in 2012, one of the delights in store was

my first visit to the dedicated Shakespeare library at the LMU. I walked in and stood there

just gazing at the floor to ceiling bookshelves full of volumes about the greatest literary

figure of the English language.

Translations, studies of every possible theme, every aspect of historical context, comparisons

to authors of the same time period, and of other periods, you name it.

Now I work in ancient philosophy, so I'm used to the fact that more has been written about

Plato and Aristotle than anyone could ever hope to read.

But Shakespeare studies I now realized are of a whole different order.

This was a secondary literature of truly mountainous proportions.

I walked in, started to look around and noticed that there was a second room.

So now, some years later, I feel the need to explain why I'm adding my own pebble to the top

of that mountain, if only in the form of a few podcasts. After all, there are plenty of podcasts

about Shakespeare too. One justification would be if it were fresh and original to

approach Shakespeare from a specifically philosophical direction, which is sort of true.

The introduction to a fairly recent companion to Shakespeare and philosophy

calls this particular area of scholarship, and emerging in comparatively small field.

But when the comparison is the rest of Shakespeare studies, that isn't saying much.

...