Here is a collection of seven critical essays on Shakespeare as a visionary playwright. In this book, Shakespeare’s various visions—ironic, deconstructionist, semiotic, psychoanalytic, racial, humanist, and Nietzschean-Foucauldean—are discussed, each in the spotlight of one single play or a few plays that can best manifest the theme. The reader will find that the author with his critical acumen has given us a number of original ideas regarding Shakespeare’s views of life, history, nature, power, and humanity as well as specific verbal details used in the plays to express the views. These Shakespearean studies have indeed stood as some new, interesting “spear-shaking soldiers” in the arena of Shakespearean forum or “war-dom,” fighting like so many “ham-lets” to decide whether they are to be or not to be. But it is hoped that after the trial of tempestas, they will all be blessed by Prospero, proving that all’s well that shakes well.

作者簡介

　　Alexander C. H. Tung is currently a professor emeritus of National Chung Hsing University and a professor of English at Chung Shan Medical University in Taichung, Taiwan. He is also the establisher and maintainer of the much-visited DGD English-Learning Website (dgdel.nchu.edu.tw). He has published quite a number of academic and creative works in English or in Chinese, including Literary Theory: Some Traces in the Wake and Critical Inquiry: Some Winds in Works, which were published by Showwe before this book.

Preface
Chapter 1　The Most “Lamentable Comedy” of Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare’s Ironic Vision
Chapter 2　Kingship and Counterfeit: Shakespeare’s Deconstructionist Vision in Henry IV
Chapter 3　Signification and Equivocation: Shakespeare’s Semiotic Vision in Macbeth
Chapter 4　The “Strange Eruption” in Hamlet: Shakespeare’s Psychoanalytic Vision
Chapter 5　The Jew and the Moor: Shakespeare’s Racial Vision
Chapter 6　The Two Lears: Shakespeare’s Humanist Vision of Nature
Chapter 7　The Nietzschean and Foucauldean Prospero: Shakespeare’s Vision of Power