Shakespeare, Dissent and the Cold War is the first book to read Shakespeare's drama through the lens of Cold War politics. The book uses the Cold War experience of dissenting artists in theatre and film to highlight the coded religio-political subtexts in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and The Winter's Tale.

Alfred Thomas is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, having previously taught at Rutgers, Harvard and Berkeley, USA. He is the author of seven books, including A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2007) and Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory, and the City (2010).

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Culture and Dissent in Shakespeare's England and Cold War Europe 2. 'The Heart of My Mystery:' The Hidden Language of Dissent in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Grigorii Kozintsev's Film Gamlet 3. 'A Dog's Obeyed in Office:' Subverting Authority in Shakespeare's King Lear and Grigorii Kozintsev's Film Korol' Lir 4. 'Faith, Here's an Equivocator:' Language, Resistance, and the Limits of Authority in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Tom Stoppard's Cahoot's Macbeth 5. 'In Fair Bohemia:' The Politics of Utopia in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Ingeborg Bachmann's 'Bohemia Lies on the Sea' Epilogue Bibliography Index