Late Shakespeare

Palfrey presents a new vision of character metaphor and politics in late Shakespeare. Closely analyzing Shakespeare''s use of language and genre he shows how the plays revamp theatrical decorums. The plays are not courtly sober and escapist as their reputation suggests; rather they are peculiarly sensitive to the turbulent unfinished quality of Shakespeare''s historical moment. In both court and wilderness Shakespeare analyzes the violence of authority the tensions in language and the origin and prospects of both. Palfrey argues against a conventional sense of the plays'' movement towards divinely sanctioned closure; mischief irony polysemy remain; romance''s political problems are competitive multiple and tumescently unpredictable.