David Womersley, "Thinking Through Shakespeare" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Apr 28, 2026

David Womersley, Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford and noted critic, discusses his book Thinking Through Shakespeare. He explores how four tragedies probe perennial human problems. Short, sharp takes examine identity, civilization versus barbarism, political and religious authority, and means versus ends. The conversation shows Shakespeare as a forensic thinker who invites ongoing debate.

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ANECDOTE

How A Theater Tour Sparked The Book

David Womersley developed his book idea while watching Paul Stebbings' New Theatre bring simplified Shakespeare worldwide and seeing consistent audience engagement.
Stebbings noted that mild adaptations resonated in Patagonia, China, India, showing Shakespeare's cross-cultural appeal.

INSIGHT

Shakespeare As Forensic Explorer

Womersley argues Shakespeare's plays function as forensic probes that heighten problematic human questions rather than supply answers.
He points out Shakespeare often wrote plays pointing in opposite directions, making art a tool to clarify dilemmas not settle them.

INSIGHT

Perennial Human Traits Beneath Cultural Surface

Womersley rejects a simplistic 'unchanging human nature' claim but defends a level of perennial human traits beneath cultural variation.
He organizes the book around four enduring problems as candidates for that deeper human continuity.

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In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson’s view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare’s plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.
Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.
By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare’s plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work.

David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume’s complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

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