• Close-up of a historical handwritten manuscript page in cursive ink, showing dense text on aged paper, held open by a person’s hand at the bottom edge.

Shakespeare’s Instability

by Jeffrey Knapp The first speaker in one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays is not a prince, like Hamlet, or a lover, like Juliet, or a warrior, like Macbeth. He’s a drunken beggar. And he’s incensed that the hostess of the tavern…