Peter Holbrook, 'Shakespeare's Politics of Nature'

Peter Holbrook is Professor of Shakespeare and English Renaissance Literature at The University of Queensland, and a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. His research focuses on political, social and philosophical aspects of English Renaissance literature, and on the influence of Shakespeare on later writers and thinkers. He is currently working on self-control and the conflict between reason and the passions in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. This paper, which was delivered at a conference on ‘Shakespeare and the Body Politic’ at The University of Queensland on 28 November 2016, discusses political understandings of nature in Shakespeare’s plays.