Disowning Knowledge

In Six Plays of Shakespeare

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by Stanley Cavell

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published January 1987, 238 pages, paper

ISBN 0521338905

Cavell on Shakespeare, including an introduction that culminates in an extensive discussion of Antony and Cleopatra, and essays on Hamlet, and The Winter's Tale. The pieces are bound together by a concern for skepticism. With Coriolanus' disdain, Leontes' and Othello's jealousy, Hamlet's inertia, and Lear's exorbitance, Cavell sees Shakespeare offering a profound diagnosis of the skeptical refusal to acknowledge truths about oneself and one's relations to others, its motives and its (tragic) consequences.