Shakespeare without End

Abstract

There are various ends towards which critics, commentators and the public have believed Shakespeare was working. Yet we have no idea  what ends (other than palpably commercial ones) Shakespeare may have had in mind. What is true is that the ideological ends to which  we argue Shakespeare was committed are in fact our own ends. This has been the generally hidden presupposition of all critical  engagement with Shakespeare’s texts. For a brief period at the end of the twentieth century this notion was a contentious issue in what  used to be called, and celebrated, as “theory”. New Historicism became the secularised, hegemonic mode of academic research and criticism for over three decades, from the mid-eighties well into the noughties, offering endless Shakespeare. In this essay, the author  offers a personal reflection, or recollection, in discussing recent transformations of twentiethcentury theory, especially in the form of  Critical Race Theory. This offers us a new perspective on both Shakespeare towards an end and endless Shakespeare, in which the two,  apparently antagonistic, positions come together in a paradoxical union.