Shakespeare's Double Plays: Dramatic Economy on the Early Modern Stage. Brett Gamboa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. x + 292 pp. $99.99.
on Othello’s arrival into love for Desdemona, Hamlet’s arrival into a “readiness” for “what is to come” (136), of Macbeth into violence and evil, is occluded by quotations from Badiou, Žižek, Derrida, Bradley, and Hazlitt, among others. At some point—particularly in a book called Shakespearean Arrivals (as opposed to Badiouan Arrivals)—the emphasis must shift from critics and theorists to a reading of the plays in light of those theories and philosophies. The book is at its best, its most exciting and enjoyable, when focused on the texts at hand, which Luke makes new. There is a great deal to value here, especially for those who are looking for a philosophical and theoretical consideration of character as exemplified by Shakespearean tragedy. Shakespearean Arrivals is sure to excite debate and to force a reconsideration of character as dynamic and multiple, shifting and changing, and, hence, new.