The Truth-Teller makes the case that Shakespeare repeatedly responds to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity—debates that persist in later centuries and that inform major developments in Western intellectual history. To live one’s truth may have been a radical (and controversial) proposition for ancient Greek democracy, but Shakespeare reveals it to be an equally vexed task for drama, which aimed both to represent political truths and warn against the dangers of over-identifying with the figure of the lone truth teller. The book contends that as ... More

The Truth-Teller makes the case that Shakespeare repeatedly responds to sixteenth-century debates over the revolutionary potential of Cynic critical activity—debates that persist in later centuries and that inform major developments in Western intellectual history. To live one’s truth may have been a radical (and controversial) proposition for ancient Greek democracy, but Shakespeare reveals it to be an equally vexed task for drama, which aimed both to represent political truths and warn against the dangers of over-identifying with the figure of the lone truth teller. The book contends that aspiring critics from the sixteenth century to the present cathect onto the figure of the Cynic because they mistake literary character for viable political formula. Shakespeare, the book argues, works to diagnose this interpretive error through his Cynic characterizations of Lear’s Fool, Hamlet, and Timon of Athens. Offering new ways of thinking about early modernity’s engagement with classical models as well as literature’s engagement with politics, The Truth-Teller insists upon the necessity of literary thinking to political philosophy.