Meaning by Shakespeare

Developing the arguments of Terence Hawkes' "That Shakespeherian Rag" (1986), this book uses the work of influential critics to question whether we could have any genuine access to final, authoritative or essential meanings in respect of Shakespeare's plays. Implicitly and explicitly, it argues that all we can ever do is use Shakespeare as a powerful element in specific ideological strategies. Traditionally, critics, producers, actors and audiences of Shakespeare have assumed that the "meaning" of each play is bequeathed to it by the Bard and lies within its text. Each account, or production of the play, claims to discover and lay hold of this meaning, hoisting it triumphantly, like buried treasure, into view. These essays rest on a different, almost opposite, principle. If we have no access to any "essential" meaning nestling within Shakespeare's texts and awaiting our discovery then what is their function and how do they work?