Towards a Modern Regime of Literary Comfort: Shakespeare and the Failure to Console

Abstract

The chapter starts off from Laura Bates’ Shakespeare saved my Life, the story of murder convict Larry Newton’s salutary encounter with the works of Shakespeare. It then moves on to a sustained reading of a number of scenes in four different plays by Shakespeare in which attempts at consolation significantly fail (Hamlet, Richard II, Measure for Measure and Romeo and Juliet). Drawing on writings by German philosopher Hans Blumenberg and Swedish author Stig Dagerman, the experience of failed consolation and inconsolability are identified as typical of the modern regime of comfort.